AWANG Azman Pawi, a political analyst from Universiti Malaya, believes it will be impossible for PAS, Bersatu and UMNO to cooperate at the 16^th General Election (GE16) unless they set aside their egos.

According to him, the three parties need to work towards finding a common ground if they were to forge any alliance for the next national polls.

There is nothing new to what Awang Pawi is saying here. Everybody and their cat in the country knows that the Malay parties will never come together because of the egos of their leaders.

Personally, I don’t think ego is necessarily a bad thing as long as it operates under a condition of fairness and competition.

The problem with third world cultures like Malaysia, however, is that we tend to curtail the development of the ego too early in the name of promoting humility and we tend to equate the concept of challenge or competition as a form of rudeness or disrespect.

Because of that, our people at the lower level of the social strata tend to have low self-esteem because their ego was broken from a young age itself while at the higher strata, our leaders tend to have egos that are out of control because their ego have never been tempered by sufficient competition or challenge.

The clearest sign that a person has an out-of-control ego is that their self-interest will always exceed their principle which will then manifest itself as two sets of standards - one for themselves and one for everybody else.

Malays have to unite themselves

When you have egotistically developed one set of standards for yourself and another one for everybody else, what will happen is that when you steal, you will call it national service but when others steal, you will call it theft.

When you take the other side’s MP you will call it your rights but when the other side takes your MP, you will call it an infringement of the law.

When you are dealing with a person with two sets of standards, there is no point trying to reason with them. Reasoning only works with those with the same set of standards for themselves and others.

Those who have two sets of standards because their ego has gone so out of control that it has convinced them that they are “special” are impervious to reason.

If Azman Pawi is right in that the leaders of PAS, Bersatu and UMNO are unable to set aside their egos, then his advice that the three parties must find a way to work towards finding a common ground to forge any alliance for the next nationwide election is meaningless.

Even if they manage to suppress their ego and work together for a while, their cooperation will not last long. In 17 months or 15 months, their suppressed ego will somehow or other find a way to unleash itself and cause double the havoc that it is already causing now.

Rather than expect their egotistical leaders to cast aside their ego and work together for the common good, what is more feasible for the Malays to do is to start a movement from the grassroot level to create a condition where the Malay leaders will be forced to fight each other in a zero-sum manner.

The one that wins in this battle will rule them all while the one that loses will disappear into oblivion forever.

The only way for the Malays to be united is for 80% to 90% of their leaders to disappear into oblivion forever.

It is up to the Malay grassroots to create a field where 80% to 90% of their leaders will disappear when the dust settles.

If the Malays succeed, maybe the Indians will follow their example as well for the Indians have the same problem with egotistical leadership as do the Malays.

This is the cold hard truth. - July 27, 2024

Nehru Sathiamoorthy is a roving tutor who loves politics, philosophy and psychology. 

https://focusmalaysia.my/malay-unity-destiny-is-in-the-hands-of-the-grassroots-never-party-leadership/