Emotionality leads to irrationality

Having built up euphoria among BN parties through the giving out of all sorts of goodies in cash and kind, throwing free dinners and organising world-class entertainment events, to win the hearts and minds of the voters, and believing that that objective would surely be achieved, it must be devastating to face the reality that BN only managed a popular vote of 46.8% compared to PKR’s 50.3%. Najib’s job is now at stake as the de facto PM had warned he could lose his job if he does not deliver a two-thirds majority.
Emotionally upset people can lose their rationality. When this happens, they can hallucinate and say things irrationally. Thus, instead of carefully analysing the election results, and considering the factors that must have moved the voters in different localities to vote the way they did, scapegoats are quickly looked for and flogged.
Blaming and flogging a certain community for the dismal performance of the BN is clearly misplaced. Even rational Malays and Umno members have said so.
The picture is very clear. Voters in urban areas voted differently from those in rural areas, regardless of race or religion. This is because urban voters used a different criteria to evaluate the performance of the incumbents. A different criteria was used because people living and working in urban areas have problems and needs that are different compared to those experienced by people in rural areas.
For example, urban people face housing problems, transport problems, they don’t feel safe with murders, robberies, snatch thefts happening around them all the time. A lot of schools in urban areas are in a mess with discipline completely broken down. Rural people do not face all these problems. So when the authorities say that crime is down, the rural people may believe it, but surely not the urban people who feel, see and even suffer the effects of what they consider broken law and order on the streets. The authorities are in denial mode about school discipline, but the people, and surely the teachers as well who suffer from this indiscipline, cannot stomach the indifference of the authorities to this serious problem. Again, rural schools do not have such indiscipline problems.
People in urban areas are also better educated, IT savvy and more discerning. They can, for example, easily recognise selective prosecution for what it is but which is not an important matter to those in rural areas. They are not prepared to accept things lying down, but want accountability. They want to know why all the financial hanky-panky reported by the Auditor General is not acted upon. They want to know what happened to the findings of the various Royal Commissions.
These are but just a few issues that affect all regardless of race or religion. When the authorities would rather sweep these issues under the carpet than take measures to tackle them, the people, and definitely no particular race or religion, can be blamed for wanting a change. The Umno candidates who lost, lost because Malays too did not vote for them.
This should be a lesson that telling a lie and repeating it often enough so people would finally believe it is the truth does not work anymore with the urban people. Therefore let rationality prevail over emotionality. It is too late to cry over spilt milk.

No comments: