EC Chief talking cock again

From The Sun:

Election Commission (EC) chairman Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman has expressed concern over the direction election campaigns are taking, with many banking on personality attacks rather than on substance.

He was sharing his views during a live interview with RTM2's Hello On 2 programme early today when the discussions touched on election campaigns, which are a favourite topic today.

"Most election campaigns are against personalities without any other substance being brought in," Abdul Rashid said.

Describing this as a disappointing trend, he said: "We don't hear issues like education, foreign affairs, agriculture and many other important ones debated or used as a subject to campaign. I don't hear such things during campaigns."

(for full story, click here)

Lately, this EC chief seems to have taken upon himself to make statements calculated to add to the "feel-good factor" spin which is being flooded across the nation through the mostly pliant and castrated mainstream media. The present "concern" that candidates are resorting to personal attacks rather than raising issues is the latest of a string of "nice-to-hear" statements from him, but when push come to shove (for e.g. when cornered by BERSIH on various evidence of electoral fraud) he will either just

- act dumb, be aloof
- spit out "sue me in court lah!"
- claim the EC can't do anything

I, for one, find it really amusing that he sees it fit to continue with this "sandiwara", of trying to paint a picture that the EC is concerned for the nation and they are doing their best in ensuring elections are free and fair. There really is no point in wasting his breath talking cock and bull stories such as this when it is patently clear they have no intention of doing anything about it, regardless if they have the means or not. If there is no will to do anything, one shouldn't even bother to start.

Back to the above issue of personal attacks. To be fair, personal attacks are part and parcel of almost all political exchanges the world over. Just look at how the US Presidential nomination campaign is progressing now. The difference is really on the degree of subtleness, or outright-ness. If the EC chief is trying to paint the opposition as being bankrupt of ideas, he really needs to look himself in the mirror and encourage his bosses to do the same. I still remember the BN campaign ads in 1999 spread across whole pages in the trashy mainstream papers. One couldn't get more low down and crass than that.

Yes, it's fine and dandy to think that all political exchanges should be based entirely on issues. But try telling that to Malaysians. The opposition cannot be faulted with not bringing up various "serious" issues, but how successful have such issues translate to votes, especially when you're dealing with rural folks who seem more content with newly tarred roads (never mind the fact that it was never tarred for the last 10 years), new lamp posts, and sudden extension of their land grants? To be honest, I myself am perplexed at how the opposition is going to gain any ground in these traditional BN strongholds where crass developmental politics seems to be a clear winner. Without similar means of doing the same (i.e. putting up lamp posts, fixing clogged drains, etc.), I just can't see how raising issues, even "bread & butter" issues (whatever that means) would help win any more votes.

Khoo Kay Peng in his recent article explains it very well. As long as Malaysian voters see "vote-buying" as more important than issues such as governance, economics, racial polarization, I think one can hardly fault both sides of the political fence to resort to personal attacks as a means to "spice" up the debate and environment. The question now is how can we get Malaysians to start weaning off this "bad habit". Does education help? To a certain extent if education means enabling our children and ourselves to think critically, and always question assumptions. I don't see the current education system as being helpful at all considering it is to the ruling party's interest to keep students inline all the time.

How about the internet then? In a way I would agree that the internet really has broken the ruling party's monopoly on information, and I believe they do understand it (which explains why they are ramping up their attacks on bloggers and the internet media). The problem with it, for now at least, is the level of internet penetration among Malaysians. All the talk of increasing broadband penetration is all just that, talk. And even then you have the issue of language. Would a predominantly English medium strike any chord among rural internet users who would most likely have proficiency issues in a language which they hardly use?

Nevertheless, I do think the most realistic method in ever changing the mindset of Malaysian voters (urban and rural) is through the dissemination of unfettered information using the internet. But whether having that information would mean anything to somebody who require a better road into his kampung is debatable. At least we hope that he would be able to make a more informed choice compared to current. Perhaps then we could say issue based campaigning would be the order of the day and limited personality attacks will be just the side condiments to spice elections up.