The DAP Skudai assemblywoman declining to defend her post in the next Johor election reminded me of something that economist Thorstein Veblen once said.
For context, Marina Ibrahim, the DAP assemblywoman in Skudai, has decided not to participate in the next election after she was asked by DAP to contest in Tiram instead of defending her seat in Skudai in the next election.
Why?
I will go on a limb and allege that DAP likely made a “racial bait” calculation and decided that the right “racial bait” to stand in Tiram is a Malay.
What is the “racial bait” calculation, you ask?
Well, it goes like this.
S. Gopalakrishnan of PKR won Tiram in 2018 after defeating an Umno incumbent who had held the seat for three terms.
However, in 2022, Umno recaptured the seat while Gopalakrishnan came in third place, behind the candidates from Umno and Perikatan Nasional.
Seeing that the two candidates who got the highest votes in Tiram in 2022 were from Malay-majority parties, DAP likely also made the “racial bait” calculation and decided that to win in Tiram , it has to field a Malay candidate .
Of course, DAP is not going to say that it just sees Marina as “racial bait.” The euphemism that Johor DAP chief Teo Nie Ching used to justify Marina being asked to contest in Tiram is that Marina was “the most winnable candidate” for Tiram.
But considering that Marina likely has little to do with Tiram — she likely does not live there, does not travel there often, has no close family members living there, has not done any work there, doesn't know many people there or has not spent any significant part of her life there — makes me quite confident that DAP chiefly chose her for Tiram because of the “racial bait” calculation.
So how did Marina take the instruction to contest in Tiram in the next election?
Well, she decided to call it a day.
Has she gotten another job? Has she decided to quit politics to reevaluate her life choices? Is she sick?
No.
She is in the pink of health. She has not gotten another job and says she is going to continue with her community service activities even without a political position.
If anyone quits politics without an alternative plan and continues serving their community even without a political position, I will go out on a limb and say they are probably just frustrated with the party they are in.
If I put myself in Marina’s shoes, I can see why.
She is Malay after all — and Malays obviously do not join DAP because they identify with it racially.
I will go out on a limb and suggest that maybe Marina joined DAP because she actually believed in DAP — that she truly believed in a multiracial Malaysia where, regardless of your race, you will be seen and treated as a Malaysian based on merit, competency and performance.
Imagine how disappointed you would be when, at the end of the day, you find out that despite all the idealism and talk about creating a better Malaysia, when you peel away one layer of DAP, what you will find is just the same old political party in the same old Malaysia.
That DAP might actually be a carbon copy of Umno — except in a Chinese flavour — was further reinforced when Teo Nie Ching defended moving Marina to Tiram by saying that she had assured Marina that even if she loses in Tiram, the party will find her a position in a GLC.
A position in a GLC for a politician who did “national service” for the party but loses an election — isn’t this exactly what you would expect from an old regime party like Umno?
In other words, when Marina said she was not going to contest in the next election, instead of considering that Marina might be disappointed that all her work serving the people of Skudai was not appreciated by a party that perhaps only saw her as “racial bait” — whose only worth is her race and her name regardless of her contributions, talents, thoughts, aspirations and aims — the first instinct of the DAP Johor chief is to defend her decision by saying that she shouldn't be blamed for Marina's decision to quit, because she had assured Marina that even if she loses in Tiram, she will still have her share of the spoils of war.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the true face of DAP, isn’t it?
Forget the competency, accountability and transparency part. Forget the “Malaysia for all” part. Forget the institutional reform and good governance part.
When you break them down to their essence, they are basically just another run of the mill political party run by run of the mill politicians whose chief focus is winning and getting a slice of the spoils of war.
Anyway, back to Thorstein Veblen.
One of the things Veblen is famous for is explaining is why the workers’ revolution predicted by Karl Marx never truly happened as Marx envisioned.
According to Marx, the struggle between the bourgeois capitalist class and workers would one day culminate in an ultimate workers revolution where the workers will overthrow capitalists and establish a communist utopia.
But despite numerous communist revolutions all over the world, a workers utopia has never been realised.
To explain this phenomenon, Veblen argued that workers may sincerely be angry at capitalists, but they are not necessarily angry at the excesses of the capitalism itself.
Instead, they may simply be angry at the capitalist for having what they themselves wanted.
Their anger, in other words, is more in the form of envy rather than righteous anger.
Once a revolution achieves some success and the workers are able to possess all that the capitalist used to have, they will simply continue with the same old practices of the capitalist they once condemned.
This entire Marina Ibrahim, “spoils of war” and “racial bait” episode reminded me of what Veblen said because, for the same reason Veblen predicted communist revolutions would fail to create an workers utopia, I also predict that the reform movement that PH is purportedly spearheading will also ultimately fail.
It will fail because, just like how the communist revolutionaries only envied the capitalists they oppose, our so-called reformists also likely only envy the old regime they condemn as corrupt, racist and debauched.
Once the reformists succeed in replacing the old regime, that envy will disappears, and then the so-called will reformists will continue the same corrupt, racist and debauched practices that they condemned in the old regime, without blinking an eye.
TheRealNehruism (nehru.sathiamoorthy@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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