reduced and recycled

I wanted to write something about PAS and PKR’s refusal to participate in the Batu Talam elections some days back, but couldn’t find the time in my schedule (surprise, surprise). I loaded up my word-processor several times over the course of a few days, typing something appropriately grave, measured and utterly stupid and hit the backspace key time and again. There’s no easy way to talk about disengagement without a stentorian voice and an appropriately dramatic flair. I find myself getting sick of drama – I blame my friends for this – so I’ll just go straight to the point (if there is one).

You’re either engaged in the political process or you’re not. It’s quite a simple either/or. If you’re a political party, to be engaged in the political process means engaging, no doubt, in activities with a view to the final goal: to be voted into power and then to consolidate that power. Make sense? I think it does. Once in power, you govern – or try to. This political process – mind, I’m not a political scientist – involves listening to the will of the people via the ballot box. To disagree to get involved in this process is to vote yourself (the party) out of the political process. Seems simple enough, if only in general terms.

Well, obviously the Opposition parties are not pulling out of politics. They’re just pulling out of Batu Talam. That’s all. The refusal to engage is instructive, and I find myself agreeing with the move the more I think about it. From what I understand, the reasons to stay the course in Batu Talam are as follows:-

1. It gives the voters who want to vote opposition the opportunity to do so. Disengagement therefore disenfranchises by restricting choice, perhaps?
2. Disengagement destroys any chance of getting voted in. Yes, I think it’s different from point 1, above.
3. Disengagement is impractical because it has no pragmatic utility.
4. To disengage from the political process, if only in Batu Talam, is to protest against the system but gains nothing with the people.

I’m sure the reasons are cogent but I do think that disengagement is hardly a matter of pragmatics and more a matter of principles.

Firstly, if disengagement restricts choice to voters, it is because it is the belief of the opposition that choice has been restricted in the first place; running in (what is believed to be) rigged elections already disenfranchises the voters of their choice – consider: rigged elections render any choice, beyond that favouring the incumbent, to be insignificant⁽¹⁾.

Secondly, if claims of rigged elections are true, then it follows that there is from the onset no chance of the Opposition winning. Disengagement is, in my opinion, merely acknowledging reality.

Thirdly, disengagement has at least one practical utility: it forces bystanders to wonder “why?!”

Fourthly, and lastly, to engage in a system which you believe is wrong, lopsided or fixed is merely to perpetuate such a system. Such as system finds its basis in the people. To disengage is not the scoff at the system and forget the people. To disengage, in my opinion, is to focus the attention of the people on the flaws of the system.

However I think of it, disengagement from the Batu Talam elections is both pragmatic and, more importantly, symbolic. To deny that the act of voting itself has any efficacy in determining the will of the people, the corollary of believing that the electoral process is flawed, is to declare the basis of Malaysia’s democracy unsound, in general.

The reality, of course, is that BN wins Batu Talam unopposed.

1. But really, has anyone confirmed the Opposition’s claims that there are 100 Indian voters in a district of a few Indian families in reality? (↩)