Mat Sabu has once again come out today to say that the unity government will continue to rule post GE 16. This is not the first time he has said it. A couple of weeks ago he said the same thing too.
Anwar has also been saying more or less the same thing that Mat Sabu has been saying. The last time he said it was at the one year of Madani government celebration at Bukit Jalil last week. The Madani government’s roof is made out of concrete, Anwar said during his closing speech, to indicate that there will be no move to topple the government through internal conflicts, dissent, or political manoeuvring. This, by the way, was not the first time that Anwar has said that his government is going to reign for a full term and it is likely not going to be the last time he will say it either.
Another minister who has come out to testify about the strength of the unity government is Law Minister Azalina Othman. According to her, Anwar doesn’t need the support of 5 opposition MPs who switched their support towards him, because he already has the support of 149 MPs.
These are but the three ministers that I can recall off the cuff repeating the mantra “we are not going to be toppled, we are strong and we shall reign for a full term”. Although I remember just these three, I have a feeling that these three are not the only Ministers or politicians within the Madani government who have been repeating this mantra.
I daresay that all the ministers and politicians in the PH coalition have been repeating this mantra in their own capacity wherever they can.
Now there are two ways that we can look at the penchant of Madani ministers to laud the strength of their reign.
One is that they are just being descriptive of reality. The other is that they are desirous of conjuring up an illusion to create a desired reality.
Of the two, my reckoning is that it is the second that is more likely true.
People say that you should always tell the people you love that you love them, and don’t simply presume that they know that you love them, but I disagree.
I think if you love someone, they will know it even without you saying it. They will know it because it will be a part of their reality. Couples who love each other don’t express their love for each other too frequently. They only say it to each other as a gift or a medicine or for the sake of others. If you love your spouse, you will only tell them that you love them because you might not be seeing them for a long time, because you hope that saying out loud that you love them will give them strength at a time when they are weak and because you want your outward expressions of love for them to create a condition where they can stand tall in the eye of others.
It is when you don’t actually love your spouse, or if you are not sure that they love you, that you will keep on saying that you love them like a mantra, even on the inanest of occasions.
You will keep saying it because you are hoping that if you say it often enough, you will be able to conjure up an illusion that you love each other, to substitute the fact that you cannot experience your love for each other in reality. If you sustain this illusion for long enough, you are hoping that both your spouse and you will believe that the illusion is true, and if all of you believe in the veracity of the illusion, then the illusion will indeed come true in reality.
Youngsters actually have a term for this. They call it the “fake it till you make it” method. According to this method, if you fake something for long enough, it will become real.
Joseph Goebbels, The Nazi propaganda Minister, was also a believer in the concept.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it” Goebbels has infamously said.
Why do the Madani Ministers keep repeating the mantra “our government is strong, our government is strong, our government is strong.”
It can’t be because they believe that their reign is really strong. During the old Umno- BN reign, no prime minister or cabinet minister went around repeating the mantra that their government was strong enough to reign for a full term, although their government was in reality strong enough to reign for more than a full term. When you believe that something is self-evidently true, you tend not to express it outwardly, because it will appear silly, even to you. It is when you yourself don’t really believe in something, but wish to make what you believe come true, that you will repeatedly state your belief outwardly, in order to convince yourself that it will come true.
I don’t know if the Madani government realises it or not, but the more that they inanely repeat the mantra “we are strong , we are strong, we are strong…”, the less stable their reign will look in the eyes of the people and in their opponent.
Their reign will look weak, because people subconsciously realise that the only reason why they are repeating the mantra, is because they themselves doubt its veracity.
In the ancient east, there is a saying. “When a house does not have a painting of a Pai Che, it is like having no ghosts at all.”
In the old days in the east, if someone suspects that a house is haunted by ghosts, they will put up a painting of Pai Che to ward off the ghost. When people see the picture of Pai Che in the house, they will automatically know that the house is haunted.
If you don’t want anyone to know your house is haunted, don’t put up a painting of Pai Che.
Nehru Sathiamoorthy is the author of “While Waiting for the World to end”. He was a columnist at FMT and a frequent contributor to the South China Morning Post, Malaysia-Today, MalaysiaNow, MalaysiaKini and Focus Malaysia.
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