Recently, I read one lady’s account of why she fears Trump’s presidency. This lady talked about how her community loves Trump and all he stands for. Trump’s entire campaign was built on fear – fear of immigrants stealing American jobs, fear of minorities leading ‘change’, fear of terrorism and Islam, fear of America becoming weak.

They want the old America back, the ‘strong’ America with nationalistic people, the America where dreams are made (but only for ‘real Americans’, not immigrants). Trump, with his OTT braggadocio might not appeal to all Americans, but they’re willing to ignore the problems in the hope that he can give America back to the people.

One thing this lady wrote that really struck me was this: to rural American folks, what liberals called ‘progress’ they saw as godlessness. Legalising gay marriage, not teaching religion in schools, spending millions on sex education when abstinence should be enough, getting government involved in family through crisis counselling and legal aid centres – that, according to these people, is not progress. It is, rather, immoral and unacceptable. And that mindset was Trump’s ticket to the presidency.

When I look at Trump’s campaign, I can’t help but draw parallels to Barisan Nasional’s reign. Both feed on fear. Trump focuses on Americans who fear the current liberal system and want change, while BN focuses on Malaysians who are content with the current system, no matter how flawed it is, and would do anything to keep it that way because it benefits them (or perhaps, they think they stand to lose more from any change).

Trump in America

Let’s look at Trump first – and let’s pretend that he hasn’t flip-flopped on every issue at least once, and just look at his latest position on some of these issues:

He’s against abortion, he wants to allow searches in mosques for profiling and build a wall along the US-Mexico border (which he now says some parts can be just a fence, who knows with this guy any more), he believes we should stop focusing on climate change and spend the money on researching cures for diseases and solutions for clean water, he wants to bring jobs back to America – jobs that were sent out to poorer Asian countries because labour is cheap there.

To liberals in America, they look at his positions and they see a man trying to break up the world, trying to isolate America, to push away their allies, and to become even more conservative and selfish – a regression.

People who voted for him see a man who is willing to fight for the things that matter to them. These are Americans who are struggling to make ends meet and are constantly being ‘retrained’ as their jobs are moved overseas, who feel like their voices are being drowned amidst the cries of immigrants and migrants, who don’t have clean water and are ‘dying of disease’.

Climate change doesn’t immediately affect them, it’s a broad, sweeping issue that they cannot relate to. Trump is smart, as are his campaign managers and strategists. This is why they won; they spoke to the people, at their level. They talked about issues that Americans were facing – individual, grassroots level, issues.

Najib in Malaysia

If you look at Barisan Nasional and their campaign strategies, you’ll see the same thing. Najib and BN are still in power despite five Bersih rallies, umpteen calls for resignation, and a massive corruption scandal – because they’re smart about how they campaign. They craft their messages to focus on what the Malaysian people – the rural Malaysian people – care about.

Rural Malaysians are still the ones with the power and BN can lose the popular vote but win the electoral vote, just like in the US with Trump. It just so happens that BN strongholds have more electoral votes.

Malaysians who support BN are farmers and fisherman; they are factory staff and low-level government workers. They live day to day and get by because the government helps them (just enough). What does 1MDB matter to them? As long as they keep getting the help they so desperately need, they’ll vote for the hand that feeds them. And you can’t blame them.

As far as they’re concerned, BN is their saviour and no one can give them a good enough reason to stop believing in them. If I were in their position, I’d probably feel the same way.

Many feel that BN preys on Malaysians who fear that their ‘race’ is being threatened by others. The politicians tell them that the opposition want to take away their jobs, and take their families out of the villages; they tell them that the opposition thinks they are stupid and uneducated, that their cultural and religious way of life is threatened by pluralism as promoted by the opposition.

Clinton’s shortcomings

The political techniques used by the BN over the last few decades and by Trump during his meteoric rise are no different. This is why people like Trump get to be president of the US and coalitions like BN stay in power for decades: they know which buttons to push.

Hilary Clinton didn’t run a smart campaign. She talked about big issues, not individual ones. She didn’t truly show that she was for the people. She’s a champion for minorities, yes. But minorities don’t keep you in power. She won a staggering number of votes from blacks, Hispanics, women, and the LGBTQ+ community. In terms of political experience, she was clearly the more qualified candidate, yet she lost.

What I think many people don’t understand, and something I have only just truly realised (thanks to researching this article) is that for minorities to see the changes they want, the majority has to make sacrifices. Which means we have to also placate the majority sometimes if we want to continue to empower and protect minorities. I don’t mean withholding progress (or ‘godlessness’) for their sake, but we should at least let them know that we’re fighting for them too.

Lay it out to them how a progressive world works for everyone, not just the minorities. We cannot expect everyone to simply understand this – and this is what Clinton failed to do. She championed progress and change, but she failed to explain to the majority they aren’t being left behind and that their grievances are being heeded.

The future of Malaysia

In this tanah tumpahnya darahku (‘the land where my blood has spilled’, a line from the Malaysian, national anthem), it’s the same, same, but different. BN is placating the majority so much that they’re ignoring the minorities. When Najib announced the 2017 budget, he also announced the TN50, a 30-year transformation plan for the nation.

He said that the TN50 will “steer the nation in a new direction”:

“TN50 is our lucky charm. Let the old legacy pass. The future of Malaysia, we will recreate”.
– Najib Tun Razak, PM of Malaysia

At the same time, he said, in a nutshell, that the agenda of empowering Malays and Bumiputeras (Malaysia’s indigenous people) will continuously be upheld.

I know, I know. We can argue all we want about how that isn’t exactly a new mindset or a new future. We can talk about how continuing to preserve the special Malay rights enshrined in the constitution is just legalised racism. We can debate how these rights do more harm for Malays than good; how for years it’s been used as a tool of control, not empowerment.

But that won’t make any difference because we liberals are forgetting that many Malays fear that they won’t be able to afford homes, cars, a good education, or food if their special rights are taken away. They don’t know if they can survive. We are not paying attention to the fears of the majority.

As a minority in this country, I can honestly say that I have felt the unfairness of this. Perhaps not as severely as others, but I do know that it happens. I know many qualified non-Bumiputera students who are declined admission into public universities in favour of lower-scoring Bumiputeras, thanks to the quota system.

At the same time, I know of many Bumiputeras who work hard and earned their top level positions and salaries but are constantly ridiculed and underestimated, people assuming they only got there because of their special rights.

A time for change

We’re all afraid. We don’t want to suffer; we don’t want to be left behind. But we cannot and must not ‘preserve’ rights and protect our own well-being at the expense of others or of progress.

We do not live in an isolated world anymore. Globalisation isn’t the future, it’s the present. If we truly want to be a developed nation, we have to be willing to make changes. We have to drive away our fears and have enough faith that our neighbours – all our neighbours, regardless of colour or creed – will have our back.

We have to start trusting each other. Greed has become the prerequisite for politicians in Malaysia. As Rafizi Ramli, Vice-President and Secretary-General of the People’s Justice Party (PKR), and co-founder of National Oversight and Whistleblowers (NOW), has noted, this needs to change.

Give me more Rafizi Ramlis and fewer Trumps.