By Joe Fernandez
Muslim shun MIC and MCA, Indian Diaspora and Chinese Diaspora are not about ‘race’-based parties!
Commentary And Analysis . . . It’s the coup de grâce (final blow) when the Court counts votes — read Election Petition — at the risk of consequences.
Any analysis on political behaviour was complex and requires the patient work of data, history, and legal analysis.
Muslim
The Narrative in the social media on Muslim unity offers none of these.
The student of politics must look beyond such surface‑level polemics for the electoral record, the archives, and the Constitution.
The truth, having lifeforce, may indeed come into being, it will do so through evidence, if not by assertion.
The electorate in Malaysia has fragmented viz. “race”‑based parties have lost monopoly. It’s plausible description of contemporary political reality. It’s not analysis.
Swettenham Doctrine
The Narrative’s explanatory framework in the social media — Karma, the Swettenham Doctrine, and the ISA (Internal Security Act) repeal — needs further and better particulars.
The British, it’s alleged, deliberately engineered Malaysia’s race‑based party system for perpetuating the Swettenham Doctrine of divide‑and‑rule. The collapse of that system can be seen in history repeating itself.
There must electoral data, archival evidence, and causal reasoning.
The freedom of association, the electoral system, and the history of constitutional governance provide reliable lens for understanding fragmentation. The law rewards evidence, not so much aphorism.
Many may read the voter shift beneath the surface as karmic consequence.
The neutral law of cause and effect returned the deed: bloc voting caused elite capture; shunning caused dispersal. Truth, with lifeforce, came into being when voters stopped voting as blocs and started voting as individuals. The court of law, being only about law, would not notice. Karma notices.
No one can deny the fragmentation of the electorate. The Narrative’s explanatory framework — karma, colonial conspiracy, and a single attributed quotation — isn’t peer-reviewed work in scholarly journals in academia. The quotation, by Resident-General Sir Frank Swettenham in “Letters from Malaya”, explains the cornerstone of British administrative policy in Malaya.
Thesis
The new dramatic thesis: that the Muslim electorate in Malaya has fragmented, abandoning the binary choice between Umno and PAS that once defined communal politics.
(https://jesseltontimes.com/2026/06/12/bn-disregards-pas-narrative-on-uniting-the-ummah/ )
(https://jesseltontimes.com/2026/06/15/bersatu-abandoning-malay-first-embraces-diversity/)
Muslim now shun the traditional “race”–based parties of the Indian and Chinese communities — MIC and MCA — and the Indian and Chinese diaspora themselves reject race‑based political vehicles.
(https://jesseltontimes.com/2026/06/16/dap-lawmakers-allegedly-swollen-headed/ )
This, the Narrative asserts, was karmic reckoning viz. neutral, balanced consequence of past discrimination, the legacy of the British Swettenham Doctrine, and the repeal of the draconian Internal Security Act 1960 (ISA) which systematically destroyed opposition parties, Muslim and non-Muslim alike before 2009, across both sides of the Southeast Asia Sea.
These are sweeping claims, encompassing electoral behaviour, colonial history, ethics and moral values.
There may be academic toolkit out there for understanding, albeit ala science, the evolution of political association in Malaysia since independence for Malaya in 1957 and partnership with the former British Borneo Territories in 1963.
Politics
Politics isn’t about democracy and the rule of law, the basis of the Constitution.
Politics was about power, based on self-serving Agenda, driven by Hidden Agenda. There’s apologist born every minute somewhere.
The rule of law and democracy will only work if the people participate in the Debate. It’s Karma if they don’t participate. It’s Karma if they participate.
The people, between elections, form movement/s on issues and take over the streets if the government closes the door for dialogue and/or the court denies hearing.
The aim of all movements are the same viz. help rein in politicians and thereby keep the people from harm.
There should be bottom up people’s movement for democracy in the form of local government and collection of taxes locally, against top down control freaks.
There should be local government elections, elected town councils, elected village committees and elected Church committees.
Local government, if elected, can help determine the form of government in the provinces and the centre.
The Constitution, Parliament, and the court of law — colour blind institutions — can’t get into anything but the rule of law, the basis of the Constitution.
The court of law, being only about law, was only about law.
It has no jurisdiction on ethics, moral values, Civilisational values, theology, religion, “race”, ethnicity, language, culture, customs, traditions, rituals, food, geographical origin, DNA, genes, blood, sin, God, justice, righteousness and truth.
In law, the majority isn’t based on demography but the number on the government side in Parliament on Budget Day.
The minority, in law, means the losing votes in seats on D-Day.
If democracy means the right of the majority on ruling, it also means the right of the minority getting hearing in the legislature.
We can go on and talk about the consent of the governed for legitimacy and sovereignty, the First Past the Post System (FPtPS) from Britain falling on undemocratic soil in Singapore and Malaysia and the need for run-off within two weeks if no one in a seat gets at least 51 per cent of the votes counted, assuming that at least 51 per cent of the electorate in a seat turns up on D-Day.
Malay
Malay was used as lingua franca, about 500 years ago, in the Archipelago.
It’s also spoken on Christmas Island, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, South Africa, Surinam and the Netherlands.
DNA does not know language or how we look like. Again, not all the people who speak a language look alike.
Those who habitually speak English, for example, don’t look alike.
Also, we may look like the others in the habitat, based on immune system reaction, given the environmental factors.
Again, the commentary arises from the social‑media Narrative that Muslim voters in Malaya have abandoned single‑party political alignment, that they now shun the MIC and MCA, and that the Indian and Chinese diasporas have moved beyond “race”—based political vehicles.
The Narrative further attributes these developments as the karmic consequences of discrimination. — TJT
Longtime Borneo watcher Joe Fernandez has been writing for many years on both sides of the Southeast Asia Sea. He should not be mistaken for a namesake formerly with the Daily Express in Kota Kinabalu. JF keeps a Blog under FernzTheGreat on the nature of human relationships.
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Jesselton Times.
