Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 26 May 2014 issue)

Dear Kam,
My question is simple: Dyana Sofya?
New Wave

Malaysian politics has been moving at breakneck speed in recent years. For decades, things seemed to change at a snail’s pace, if they changed at all. Barisan Nasional would win general elections with predictable ease, nobody dared rock the boat and, er, that’s about it. And then, there was a seismic shift that coincidentally happened at the same time as the birth of the Internet. If we compare Malaysia now with the Malaysia of 10 or 20 years ago, then it’s as if we’re a different country.

Even with all the changes and the previously unimaginable possibility that BN could actually lose a general election, we seem to have settled into new predictable patterns. Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim goes in and out of jail on the same old charge, race-based politics is still the norm and even opposition politicians all too often are mirroring the authoritarian style of BN that they profess to despise. As Led Zeppelin might have said, the song remains the same, but I didn’t even realise this until very recently. I was like a lobster being boiled in a pot. The change in temperature was so gradual that I didn’t know what was happening to me.

Until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of Dyana Sofya, but as you must all know by now, she’s a young Malay woman, a law graduate of Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), her mother is a member of Umno and she’s standing in a parliamentary by-election in Teluk Intan for DAP. Wait, did I say that right? DAP? But she’s Malay, a graduate of UiTM, she’s from an Umno family, and now, she’s with DAP? That’s like seeing a unicorn riding a bicycle — it hardly ever happens. Something has changed.

She’s only been in the limelight for a short while and she might yet crash and burn and disappear into political oblivion, but her very existence seems to have frightened Umno to the core. They’ve launched several of their usual clumsy attacks and each one has been swatted away with, well, wit and intelligence, which is rare and refreshing. The first smear attack and its demise are particularly telling. A photo was posted on the Internet of a girl in bikini, purportedly Dyana Sofya. Of course, it wasn’t Dyana Sofya — it was a Filipino actress. When it became abundantly clear that nobody was falling for the false, clumsy and misogynistic smear attack, the response from Utusan Malaysia was that BN’s bloggers had been “trapped” into spreading the photo by the notorious “Red Bean Army” (DAP’s cybertroopers). Unfortunately, this argument is completely self-defeating because it uses the BN bloggers’ own stupidity as their defence. And also, there’s no such thing as the Red Bean Army. It’s complete fiction; and it doesn’t matter how many times the fiction is repeated, it’s still a fiction. One is left wondering to whom this is supposed to appeal? New and undecided voters? Or the hardcore? The hardcore are essentially irrelevant because they’re going to vote for you anyway.

Dyana has proven to be a hit on social media, but something of the near-hysteria reminds me of Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential nomination in the US. Dyana is clearly much smarter than Palin (not a hard thing to achieve), but when Palin emerged onto the political stage, the Republican supporters went delirious with joy. The problem was that Palin failed to appeal to anybody outside the hardcore supporters (because she is scary stupid). It remains to be seen if a Dyana Sofya can appeal to new voters beyond Klang Valley liberals. A constituency like Teluk Intan will be an interesting barometer. DAP likes to sell itself as a multiracial party, but, let’s be honest, it’s traditionally a strongly Chinese and Chinese-speaking party. If Dyana is a shock to Umno, then she’s probably also a shock to DAP’s hardcore supporters. They might react to her like the old chant: “What do we want?” “Change!” “When do we want it?” “Not right now!”

Whether or not she wins in Teluk Anson, sorry, Teluk Intan, it is possible that the emergence of Dyana is the harbinger of something new. A Dyana Sofya is simply not supposed to exist. So much effort and money have been spent capturing or at least neutralising young Malay students, and if there are any more Dyana Sofyas, then clearly, the whole enterprise was for nothing. If there are more Dyana Sofyas, if her existence and example can appeal to enough who secretly think like her, then she and her kind would be Umno’s worst nightmare. Is she a one-off, or the first of a new wave?

Dear Kam,
Have you learnt any new German words recently?
Mind Your Language

It’s funny you should ask because it just so happens that I have. Every language has words that have no equivalent in any other language. How, for example, do you translate lah? It can mean so many things, from “Know what I mean?” to “That’s insane.” Ultimately, it means nothing at all, and yet it also means everything. It’s a tonal inflection unique to Malaysia and Singapore and, I am told, Liverpool.

In the German language, separate words can be joined together to create new meanings that have no equivalent in other languages, at least not in English. A famous example is zeitgeist — the spirit of the age. So, the Beatles represented the zeitgeist of the 1960s. Another is schadenfreude — pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. Well, create your own sentence that includes the words 1Malaysia, complete and shambles.

I learnt a new German word: fremdschämen — the almost-horror you feel when you notice that somebody is oblivious to how embarrassing they truly are. I experience fremdschämen whenever I see senior politicians who keep taking selfies to show how fun, popular and hardworking they are. Unfortunately, they merely look childish and smug, but what makes it especially cringe-worthy is that they don’t realise how embarrassing they truly are. Smartphones are great fun, but perhaps some people should only use an old Nokia 1100? And as a basic rule, don’t use hashtags on tweets if you’re over the age of 50. Where will it all end? Delivering a political manifesto in the style of slam-poetry? It’s just not cool. #justsaying.

Reprinted with the kind permission of