Najib is simply targeting the weaker sections of the Malay community to propagate horror stories that the Christians are taking over this country.

I hope Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak doesn’t underestimate the discerning capabilities of the rural folks and Umno members.

Umno members can no longer be divided into old and new Umno.

By old I mean those Umno members who desire a return to the old Umno, the party that was founded on the principles of saving the Malay honor. The Umno that wished for honorable things for the Malays.

By the new Umno I mean the Umno people who were seduced by the seemingly robustness of former premier and Umno president Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Mahathir’s Umno is the Umno that sees itself as the dispenser of life’s sustenance.

In the process Umno members and Malays in general lost their dynamism. Umno has become the father figure to dependent children.

So what kind of audience is Najib targeting?

I am afraid, the audience that Najib is addressing is the pliant sections of the Malay community who are susceptible to horror stories that the future PM will be non-Malay and that Christians are taking over this country.

That brings me to a characterization of the Malays referred to frequently by the Oracle of Syed Putra.

It’s the section of the Malay community that’s easily seduced by ghost stories, tales of the occult and of a world inhabited by creatures of the night and mythical beings.

I understand that many Umno leaders are on intimate terms with certain creatures of the night.

Najib is, simply put, addressing Malays who are addicted to ‘cerita-cerita hantu’ (ghost stories).

Inhibiting thoughts

For that reason alone, the periodical ‘Mestika’ achieved an envious circulation of more than 400,000.

That’s more than some of the Malay newspapers and the mainstream newspapers.

So Najib is appealing to this segment of the Malay public- those who are addicted to ghost stories and who believed in them.

This reading public represent the belief system of the Malays.

This group of Malays are easily taken in by far-fetched tales of Christians taking over Malaysia and non-Malays become premiers.

If these are the Malays Najib are targeting at, then Malays have not really climbed up the ladder of social consciousness from the state in which they were in when former Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak wanted to free them from.

Consider the philosophical and political underpinnings when Tun Razak formed Felda.

Trapped by horror tales

Tun Razak’s aim of forming Felda schemes and transplanting whole section of Malays there was to free the community from ‘inhibitory thinking.’

The ‘inhibitory thinking’ Tun Razak refered to was characterized mainly by beliefs in supernatural stories and fairy tales.

Razak wanted to deliver Malays from the debilitating mindset that was trapped by ‘cerita cerita hantu’ (ghost stories).

So as what the Oracle observed, if present day Malays are still stuck in cerita cerita hantu, then they have not achieved the deliverance that was intended by Tun Razak.

The people chiefly responsible for that paralysis are the Umno leaders themselves.