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You spin Umno right round baby

AUG 20 — It is actually quite easy to explain why Umno is struggling with public perception. Though it is the past master in spinning stories, it can't deal with re-spins.

Therefore living in a world where everyone gets to tell a story — irrespective of whether you have a blog for your poker mates or write a column in an uncensored online newspaper — is a scary proposition for the boys and girls of Putra World Trade Centre.

Umno's previous successes are making it — poetically perhaps — ill-equipped for new successes in the present.

How did it work before?

The whole period between the 1930s till the late 1990s is just a rolled-up ball, with little connectivity to most Malaysians — since stats show 70 per cent of the population are under 30, all of them started school after 1985. They are all children of the Mahathir legacy, they all grew up with blinders.

Race horses have blinders put on them in order to let them see only their lane and not the other horses, so that they don't get frightened by adjacent competitors and to help them focus only on the finishing line, to win the race. But you have to understand, the horses don't win, the jockeys and horse owners do.

So our owners went to work on us, placing the blinders.

The rule was to let the subjects (the people I mean) know only what is necessary for them to sustain their commitment to the type of Malaysia laid in front of them. Denying that construct is tantamount to being ungrateful, rebellious, irresponsible, ill-mannered, lost, irreligious or even stupid — the spin doctors get the suitable label out electronically, in print and on TV. I'm told the latest hip phrase is "traitorous".

The truth is Umno has always had it relatively easy, it is only their press that maintains they had arduous journeys to power. And with enough media reinforcement over decades, they have always screamed "struggle" to all and sundry.

Two things in the late 90s changed that paradigm forever. The Internet mushroomed and Anwar Ibrahim was booted out.

There was a tool and there was a cause. This is not to celebrate Anwar and his 16 years in Umno, but to emphasise the opportune nature of the development.

Since those days of one-page websites with "Maha-zalim" posters, the monopoly of information in this country was broken.

Then the converging of tools — phones as AV instruments, phone-downloads to PCs, etc. — made the improbable occur, Malaysians were independently being connected beyond their perceived polarised sub-groups and they quickly realised they were not alone.

The sense of disdain with how things are done, in how we are manipulated into submitting into a spiral of hate through the promulgation of constant and debilitating mistrust was being confronted.

In the breaking of the state institutionalised hate, we ourselves will come to points of disagreements, but this is expected. When so much expression on so many unexamined issues comes out at the same time, neuron misfiring occurs.

However in time we will come to a consensus on not what is the true path, but that there are various paths to perceived truths and all these journeys are legitimate. All our ideas are legitimate, and a nagging government will become a lagging government.  Which brings us to why Umno sporadically — though the intensity and frequency grows — wants to dominate the Internet. Since they have dominated all tools of control ever since, without realising their own limitations in a shrinking planet they honestly believe they will control the national conversation once again.

Because the bully in the playground, having only punched the scattering masses, when punched back — even if it is the tiniest of punches by the smallest of us — is caught unawares, in a daze. And tinged in frustration, anger and confusion he will punch out wildly.

Fortunately, the disoriented bully is ready to hit the ground for a 10-count. No sucker punches needed, just constant jabs.

Article source: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/opinion/praba-ganesan/35591-you-spin-umno-right-round-baby-