Stability is Umno and BN’s rally cry for this general election. But it is a disingenuous political messaging given that all recent instabilities are directly caused by Umno and their allies.
Umno’s argument for stability is akin to racketeering. Wikipedia has a concise definition: when somebody offers “a service that solves a problem that would not exist without the racket.” One concrete example involves a shop paying protection money, which the protection is from violence perpetrated by the fee collectors. Yet another concrete example is, well, Umno’s version of stability.
Umno and their allies, and this included Pas until recently, manufactured ethnic tensions throughout the 2018-2020 Pakatan Harapan administration. The manufactured inter-ethnic crisis brought instability to the country, all with the hope that Pakatan Harapan would fall, and be replaced with a government that Umno would be part of. Pakatan Harapan government collapsed under the pressure as Bersatu—naive and shortsighted as they are—fell for the racket.
Ethnic tension quietened once Umno were back in power, which highlights the fact that high ethnic tension during that period was unnatural. It was manufactured by partisan forces that were Umno and Pas. It was a racketeering done at the expense of the country: a dishonest scheme to obtain power and money. To more than a few people, it was a scheme to avoid jail time.
Despite being part of the federal government after the fall of Pakatan Harapan government, Umno members were unhappy that they played second fiddle to Bersatu. To address their unhappiness, Umno sabotaged their own government for their own partisan benefits. Instability ensued until they won. Stability is something Umno want only when they are at the apex of power. When they are out of it, stability is a liability to them and must be pushed aside, regardless the cost to the country.
And the country paid the cost: Malaysia lost anything between 2 to 6 weeks of reaction time during the Covid-19 economic and health crisis. While Umno maneuvered for private partisan gains, thousands paid the price with their lives. More than 36,000 deaths in Malaysia are linked to Covid-19 up to this day. Millions more suffered economic hardship due to incompetent and late handling of the crisis, as the Umno raced to secure their political positions.
Ultimately, the 2018 change in power itself was, in a large part, caused by Umno and their corruption. 1MDB was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was the final factor that made public anger go bubbling. Without the 1MDB corruption and the subsequent power abuses to cover up the crimes, Malaysians would not have been so angry to do what they have done in 2018. And the people did not make a mistake in 2018 as Umno alleged. The people went out of the their way to make sure the check-and-balance mechanism worked, in spite of all the institutional abuses by Umno.
If Umno really want to label the 2018 democratic change as instability, then everybody should see through the veil: that the source of the so-called instability is Umno themselves. Truly, Umno has no moral authority to campaign for stability and their calls for stability is nothing but a racketeer’s slogan.