CHIAROSCURO 
MGG Pillai

Today is election day in Lunas. It is one in which Barisan Nasional must be returned. If it does not, more than a seat is lost. The BN threw in its heavy guns in the three by-elections since the November 1999 general elections, each it had to win at whatever cost.

The Chinese vote in all three was crucial.

In the Sanggang state by-election in Pahang, the BN had to threaten and cajole the Chinese, especially in one area where many were rehabilitated supporters of the Malaysian Communist Party (MCP).

In Teluk Kemang, for parliament, it was Chinese pig farmers of Bukit Pelanduk, similarly pressured with promises, of high compensation for their culled pigs if the MIC candidate was returned, which were not kept. And so in Lunas.

In other words, the solid flank of Malay votes, once with the BN, is no more with it. The BN believes it can still be ahead with the Chinese votes, but the Chinese, ignored and sidestepped, wants more proof than it can offer.

The BN cried wolf once too often. And pays the price in Lunas. The Chinese ignore the MCA and Gerakan, the Umno ministers do not convince, the MIC leader so threatened that he throws caution to the wind and promises more than he can deliver.

Vacuous proposals

With this proviso: that if the government does not come through with the promises, whoever wins, it would damage the BN when the next election comes along if it does not complete what it promised. The BN cannot any longer wind down its electoral development works after the elections without a backlash further down.

The Chinese issue in Lunas is the vacuous Vision School proposals, of which not even the minister of education knows what it is, but all are expected to accept in good faith. The government used the big stick to force compliance, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad questioning the loyalty of those who raise questions the government cannot answer.

The Chinese educationists were out in full force in Lunas, putting their case forcefully and which no Chinese minister would counter, leaving it to the Malay cabinet ministers to explain the unexplainable.

Unlike in Teluk Kemang over the Japanese encephalitis epidemic, which turned out into a shouting match between the DAP and MCA, neither the MCA nor Gerakan has any answer to the questions, doubts and fears the Chinese educationists posed.

The BN is on tenterhooks in Lunas more than at any other by-election. Two days ago, it was told the election is lost, possibly with a higher majority than the BN's 5,000 plus in the November results.

The Deputy Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, secretly visited the military cantonment in Lunas to plead for their votes, while the Prime Minister decided the ground too disruptive and skipped a planned appearance in Lunas.

Uncontrolled anger

It had lost the Malay vote before the campaign began, its optimistic hope of half the Chinese votes under threat, with even the Indians not as solidly behind the MIC as once thought. 

The quiet uncontrolled anger at the arrogance with which the vote is demanded, and the down-to-earth and low-key campaign of the Opposition makes BN's promises and threats disbelieved.

An Umno leader said, ironically, nine days is too short to counter Opposition's "lies, calumny, falsehoods". I gently reminded him this was the Opposition refrain about government "lies, calumny, falsehoods".

What about the obvious, unreported threats BN campaigners routinely make, especially to the Chinese, to vote it or else? It was done in Sanggang, Teluk Kemang. Would it in Lunas?

The BN accuses the opposition of superimposing the photograph of the Catholic MIC candidate, S Anthonysamy, on a bishop's mitre and distributing the posters widely.

How different is this from the Umno falsely insisting a few days before the 1990 general elections that Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, then leading the Semangat '46, wore a Kadazan headdress, at a communal function in Sabah, had a Christian cross, when it was merely a decoration with no religious significance? 

Is the second all right but not the first? And how so? Or is all right if the BN indulges in such theatrics but wrong if the Opposition does?

Two more by-elections?

The BN cannot allow more time for campaigning without destroying its own case. If it can be unnerved in nine days, it would be worse if it were longer. Unless it takes a brutal look at itself and plans now for the next by-election. 

In the horizon loom two by-elections: one for a state assembly and the other for Parliament. An Umno MP, seriously ill, has told Umno to prepare for a by-election. The Gerakan state assemblyman has lost his voice. In a sense, the Lunas by-election, whoever wins, is a watershed. 

Elections are, to use a trite overused phrase, a more level playing field than ever. The Opposition does not see the nine-day campaign an imposition, it has learnt to live with it, and use that period effectively, ignoring the world outside and concentrating on getting the voters to its side.

The government, which once had the Opposition on the run, is now on the run itself, not knowing how to campaign when the chips are down. The magisterial pronouncements, of which we saw many in the Lunas campaign, do not work anymore.

The threats work only if the recipients shiver at it. But when a resident can ask why it is the deputy prime minister, not the prime minister, who comes to see him, more than pride is lost.

Here and now

The Lunas by-election rewrites how elections would be conducted in future. Playing to the gallery will not have the same pull as ground contact. Speaking in forked tongues is out.

Elections will be decided not upon the good behaviour of the nine days running up to it, but of actions before and after. The tired old phrases of development and the Opposition having no plans and policies does not work any more.

The voter wants, and not just in Lunas, reassurance, a better life now, not a promise in the future.

Henceforth, both the BN and the Opposition must view their voters not as idiots there for threatening and force feeding, but as voters with a mind who wants his immediate life to be better rather than some intangible idea that means nothing.

The Opposition understands this. The BN does not. That is why Lunas is a bellwether to future elections.