Nomination Day over: Let the (propaganda) show begin!

Election campaigning leading to polling day on 8 March has officially begun now that Nomination Day proceedings are over today, 24 February. So far, the mainstream media have already given us some good indication of the kind of coverage we can expect from them. Let’s focus on the New Straits Times (NST) here.

On the very day (13 February) the PM dissolved parliament, Kalimullah Hassan sounded out the BN issues for the election contest in his NST piece on 14 February. For him, the issues that matter are what the PM and BN have done since the last general election and what more we could expect from them. In short, the bread-and-butter issues - because, according to him, voters are pragmatic.

Perhaps that’s how it should be since Badawi now has a track record as PM since the last election. But there are track records and there are track records. And the only ones that matter to Kalimullah are the bread-and-butter issues. In particular, Badawi’s attempt to bridge the rural-urban economic divide through the corridor development programs that focus on development outside of the Klang Valley.

What about Badawi’s promise in 2004 to tackle corruption in high places? Nothing, not a word on it in Kalimullah’s piece. Perhaps he was just too embarrassed to say that Eric Chia, who was charged just prior to the last election, got off scot free. What, indeed, could he say since Badawi has done hardly anything about the promise since the last election?

Only bread and butter issues matter?

What about racial issues and human rights? All Kalimullah could say is, well, the opposition would surely bring up these issues, but all that is mere “verbiage” and Badawi and BN should not waste time getting entangled; only the bread-and-butter issues matter.

One might think those issues are also always most important in elections everywhere else - like the United States, for example. But the differences are often conveniently ignored. The bread-and-butter issues would be more significant when the overall economy is experiencing a downturn. This was the situation with the US economy when Bill Clinton ran for presidency the first time in 1992 with the slogan “It’s the economy, stupid.” But such issues did not take centre stage when Clinton ran successfully for his second term. Neither did they figure prominently in George W Bush’s successful bid for presidency in 2000 and 2004. The economy, however, is becoming a major issue again in the run-up to the US election this November because the US economy is on the downturn again.

Another difference is that even when the economy takes centre stage in election years, other issues are never deemed insignificant or ruled out altogether. The situation in Iraq, for example, is still a major one today for Democratic front-runner Barack Obama and Republican front-runner John McCain.

Indeed, in the last Malaysian election, the more important focus of Badawi’s BN campaign, faithfully propagated by the NST and other mainstream media, was who he was as a man and the kind of PM he would make. Remember the Pak Lah moniker? BN election machinery and PR crafted an image of Badawi as gentle, patient, consultative and respectful of differences unlike the confrontational, noisy and authoritarian former PM Mahathir Mohammad. Openly espousing the view that he would be the servant of the Malaysian public, Badawi was tirelessly depicted as willing to listen to the voters (including the young), who were asked to work with him rather than for him. There was also the Pak Lah who, just before the last election, tantalised Malaysia with two high-profile and highly media-promoted promises to fight corruption in high places and clean up the longstanding problem of an unprofessional, corrupt police force.

Kalimullah thus sure has a peculiar idea of Malaysians, a dim view of them as human beings. His mythical Malaysians exist merely to eat, leaving all the thinking to the BN. There is a word for political governance based on such a polity. It is called dictatorship, however full the citizen’s belly is or how many cars they may own.

Brain dead readers?

Kalimullah’s piece in the NST the day after the PM dissolved Parliament merely offered a broad theme for NST coverage of the run-up to election day. The very next day, 15 February, Zubaidah Abu Bakar reported on how a development project outside the Klang Valley—the Iskandar Development Region in Johor—has been doing swimmingly well, dismissing outright any and every issue Pas has tried to raise about it. Everything is just hunky-dory and nothing is amiss, according to Zubaidah. Hmm, is this not what we heard early in the development of the Port Klang Free Zone (PFZ) scandal until it was revealed that millions of ringgit had gone down the drain? Of course, no one was brought to book for it. The BN government offered a massive bailout of RM4.6 billion, dubbed it subsidy, and explained it away as hardly out of the ordinary.

The day after Zubaidah’s piece, Joan Lau’s article indicated that the young actually cared only for bread-and-butter issues based on her observations in Kota Kinabalu. She appeared surprised. But why? Is it not the case that the young or those who just get out of school are mostly preoccupied with getting good jobs and settling down? Her piece is not considered part of the Election 2008 coverage that NST editors have been adopting to try and make clear to readers which news items in the paper are election-related. Oh, what a nice coincidence that the piece happened to be published a mere two days after Kalimullah’s. Who are they trying to deceive? Kalimullah’s mythical brain-dead Malaysians?

What else can we expect from NST coverage in the run-up to the 8 March election? Oh yes, what about the longstanding issue with the police as corrupt, inefficient and disrespectful of the rights of the people they are supposed to serve and protect? Remember how Badawi set up a Royal Commission to study the problem ostensibly to get rid of all that baggage once and for all? But when the Commission called for the creation of the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC), he refused, preferring instead to select those recommendations amenable to the police force to be incorporated in the amendments to Penal Code.

Well, on 19 February, a couple of NST pieces focused on the police force. Again, both pieces were not considered by NST editors as Election 2008 coverage. But it is quite clear they were an attempt to show that the PM actually has kept his promise to clean up the police.

Talk is cheap

Santha Oojitham’s piece tells us the human rights training sessions have been well received by the police, according to those who conducted them. Police officers were found supportive of the “pro-victims” approach. If so, someone must have forgotten to tell it to the many police who dragged, punched, and engaged in an assortment of violent behaviour toward peaceful Bersih and Hindraf demonstrators. Or someone must have forgotten to remind them that the police’s job is to protect citizens not just BN supporters. If Bersih and Hindraf demonstrators broke the law by not having a police permit for their assembly, what about Khairy Jamuluddin? Did he have a permit for some of the public demonstrations he took part in or led like the protest rally against the Burmese government?

Talk is cheap. Before the Royal Commission, the police also offered nice, soothing statements for the public about how professional they were in enforcing the law. But that did not stop constant public complaints to the contrary, finally leading to the setting up of the Royal Commission. Is it difficult for folk at NST to understand that actions speak louder than words? Or are they similar to Kalimullah’s brain-dead Malaysians?

Another certainty we can count on in the NST coverage of the run-up to polling day is not giving noticeable coverage to the opposition except in a negative way. Already PKR has been given such treatment.

Everything's hunky dory with MIC

Then, there was the scandal surrounding the DAP’s Fong Po Kuan. After she said she refused to defend her Batu Gajah parliamentary seat because of internal DAP politics, the NST, like other the mainstream media, went to town with the story and concluded that the DAP was in disarray. It also highlighted Najib’s comment the day after Fong pulled out by calling her a “calibre” MP. How nice when she no longer wants to contest in the election. But when she was a parliamentarian for the past eight years, all he and his BN colleagues did was ignore, ridicule or vilify her.

But Fong has since decided to defend her Batu Gajah parliamentary seat after all. So, would Najib want to take back what he said about her? Would the NST say that Fong and the DAP have patched up? More likely, they would find another way to slam the DAP as well as Fong, perhaps along the lines that they cannot be trusted.

The point here is not that Fong’s sudden refusal to contest was not news. Of course it was. And yes, it also showed the DAP up badly. But what about the BN? In particular, Samy Vellu, who has been publicly hounded, yelled at, even thrown slippers at whenever he was seen in public since the recent Hindraf demonstrations? And we are talking about the head of the MIC, a major component party of BN. No sign of the MIC in trouble at all except for sporadic reports in some of the media?

Instead, we get assuring reports in NST that all is hunky dory with the MIC and the BN. Shahrizat Abdul Jalil of the BN was reported (19 February) as saying Indian Malaysians in her Lembah Pantai constituency still support her – and thus the BN as well - in large numbers. No problem then with the MIC. Evidently, balanced news coverage as a cardinal principle of journalism in a democracy is either an alien concept to the NST or something it could not be bothered with.

Finally, expect the NST to be equally brain dead as Kalimullah’s brain-dead Malaysians when covering BN politicians giving out election goodies—like land leases and school construction—in the run-up to the election, seeing nothing at all unethical with it or how the BN is abusing its power. Instead, the paper will keep up with its tradition of taking part in what the BN continues to do— such as,vote buying—and happily giving the BN candidates the photo-ops.

The above topics and approaches to election coverage could already be found in the NST. Expect more of the same when the run-up to the polls gets under way after nomination day today. We would love to be proven wrong but we would be truly brain-dead if we were to hold our breath waiting for it to happen.