Today is the day that Tamil Nadu goes to election, and in commemoration of it, I am going to correlate Tamil Nadu politics with Malaysian politics, and express what I see in this post.
The first similarity I see between Tamil Nadu politics and Malaysian politics is that the key metric in determining electoral success is 1) identity and 2) the ability to generate the image of a winner.
Voters will only vote for you if they identify with you to the extent that they see your victory as their victory and one of the most important image that you have to possess in order to create this identity with the voters is the image of a winner.
You can be an angel sent by heaven to guide humanity to paradise, but if voters perceive you as a loser, they are still not going to identify with you or vote for you.
As a rule, voters tend to identify more with a party than with any individual politician, because in both Tamil Nadu and Malaysia, it is usually the case that it is only political parties are able to give out the image of a winner .
In Malaysia, the two political parties or coalitions that voters perceive to have the image of a winner is PH an PN, while in Tamil Nadu, it is DMK and AIADMK.
In this round of the Tamil Nadu elections however, an exception has occurred, because an individual politician has been able to generate such a strong identity with the voters, that it might be the case that he might be able to defeat both DMK and AIADMK, solely by the strength of his individual presence, charisma, narrative, weight, gravitas and personality
That individual politician is Thalapathy Vijay, who until recently, was the reigning star of Tamil Cinema.
Vijay only entered Tamil Nadu politics a little more than two years ago by creating his own party, called TVK, but the chances are high that TVK might create the biggest ever upset in the history of Tamil Nadu politics, by defeating both DMK and AIADMK, which hitherto have been reigning in Tamil Nadu for almost as long as the modern state of Tamil Nadu was created.
Now the closest equivalent that Malaysia has ever had to someone like Vijay was Anwar Ibrahim in the late 90s.
After Anwar was sacked and imprisoned by Mahathir in the late 90s, for a while, he was individually such a potent force, that by the strength of his presence , charisma, personality, weight and narrative alone, he looked like he had a chance to topple the Mahathir led BN and and become the Prime Minister of Malaysia from jail.
However, unlike Tamil Nadu which has a tradition of identifying with charismatic leaders, Malaysians by and large decided to keep it's faith in the political parties, and chose to vote for the tried and tested BN, rather than the new and unknown party that Anwar created, after he was sacked from BN.
Although Anwar could not bring down BN through the ballot box, his impact was still significant enough that he managed to cause Mahathir to lose so much support, that Mahathir was compelled to resign, even though BN had won convincingly at the polls.
Now you might ask, how can Anwar who had been sacked, humiliated and jailed at the time, be seen as a winner, by a sizeable number of Malaysians at the time - to that, I will just say that different people who are in different circumstance will perceive who is a winner in different ways.
In Myanmar today for example, it is Aung San Suu Kyi that is seen as the winner, although she is under house arrest.
Mandela in his time was seen as a winner too although he was in jail for decades.
For decades, Che Guevara is seen as a winner by youths all over the world, although he was captured and shot dead while failing to achieve his goal.
The Spartan king Leonidas is also universally considered a winner by history, although he was roundly defeated in Thermopylae.
A winner is basically just someone who makes you feel better about yourself when you identify with them.
They don't necessarily have to be daring, rich, victorious, handsome or exceptionally intelligent for you to feel better about yourself if you identify with them.
In different circumstances, different people require different winners to make them feel better about themselves.
In the late 90s for example, the younger Anwar, who despite overwhelming odds, dared to oppose the older Mahathir , who was perceived to have been ruling for too long and that too in an autocratic manner, was the sort of winner that many Malaysians needed and identified with.
Today however, the jury is still out as to what is the sort of winner that Malaysians are looking for.
If you ask me, I think that the winner that many Malaysian voters are looking for today, is actually someone who can make Anwar look like a loser.
Why?
Because Anwar projecting the image of a winner today is making many Malaysians feel like losers, and thus many Malaysians will likely only feel better about themselves, if they can find someone who is as able to make Anwar look like a loser.
Of course, it is not easy to make Anwar look like a loser, because he is the prime minister of the country, so the person who can achieve this difficult task, will likely look like a winner to many Malaysians.
Currently, I think the person that is most able to make Anwar look like a loser is Rafizi, and that is why I believe that the support level for Rafizi will keep on increasing , for as long Anwar continues projecting the image of a winner.
But as to whether the support level that Rafizi will receive will be able to translate into electoral victory, that is not yet certain.
We must remember, that even if we do have a winner, there is also the question as to whether the said winner - be it Rafizi or someone else - will be able to form a strong personal identity with the a sufficient number voters in a short period of time as Vijay has done in Tamil Nadu today.
And even if they can form such a personal identity with the voters as Vijay, there is still the question as to whether it will be enough to defeat an established political party, that has spent decades building relationships, finances, presence, history and machinery, in the politics arena.
Also , we must remember that in Tamil Nadu, Vijay only has to compete against DMK , because AIADMK, for various reasons, has become too weak.
In Malaysia however, PN is still a potent force, and under Samsuri, it is now regaining strength, after being weakened by the lethargic and uninspiring leadership of Muhyiddin for the past 4 years.
If Rafizi - or someone else were to form a third party like Vijay - they will not only have to contend with Anwar and PH, but a rejuvenated PN as well.
Anyway, the result of the Tamil Nadu election is scheduled to be out in the first week of May.
In the way I see it, if Vijay manages to create a historic upset, then perhaps Rafizi or whoever else who is capable of stopping Anwar from projecting the image of a winner, , might be able to do the same in Malaysia, even if the chances that they will be able to do it is still low.
But if even Vijay can't do it in Tamil Nadu , then I doubt that Rafizi or anyone else will stand a chance to do it in Malaysia at all.
Let us wait and see how the cookies shall crumble .
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