IN 2016, a reality TV host ran for President of the United States and won. He did so by taking a page out of one of the biggest reality TV brands – wrestling.

If you want people to think you’re the good guy, you need them to believe there is a bad guy to fight and overcome.

This plotline is one of the oldest, most generic and overdone threads in the history of stories. But it is still effective today and one very popular with politicians.

But where John Cena has Randy Orton, and Luke Skywalker has Darth Vader, real life doesn’t exactly have black-and-white, clear-cut heroes and villains.

So how do politicians find their bad guys? Usually, they make them up.

For Donald Trump, it was Latin Americans – a minority race that were suddenly violent rapists, murderers and criminals that were taking over the country.

For Rodrigo Duterte, it was the drug problem, which was and still is lower than the global average prevalence rate according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, but was suddenly an epidemic running out of control conveniently after he began talking about it.

But it’s not just an authoritarian thing. Liberals love it too. Emmanuel Macron painted his election as a tipping point. Either vote for him or there is no turning back for France down the far-right path.

Closer to home, there are parties that have taken turns to swing against hudud whilst conveniently forgetting they were in coalitions with parties that were pushing for them.

The political scare tactic of the “bogeyman”, which is the make-believe threat against a society that will only go away if people do what the politicians want, has been used time and time again to win elections and to divert attention away from weak points which politicians don’t want people to see.

And this is dangerous because it allows politicians to manipulate emotions and create a false agency around their campaigns.

People are not being driven by fact. They are being driven by emotions created by false issues. The key to being a smarter electorate and looking past the fluff is to ask three very simple questions: 1) Who started this issue? 2) Who is blowing this issue up? 3) Why are they blowing this issue up?

The scare tactic is in play again, right now and under our noses with the lnternational Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).

To recap, last week, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department P. Waythamoorthy announced that Malaysia intends to ratify the ICERD, a United Nations convention that asks members to commit to eliminating racial discrimination, outlaw hate speech and criminalise membership in racist organisations.

This announcement was followed by political backtracking and outright protests from Malay members of the Pakatan Harapan government. It also saw a 1,000-strong street protest, claiming ratifying such a convention would undermine Malay special rights and the position of our Sultans.

Clearly, some see the ICERD as a threat to their legacy and position in Malaysia.

The hullabaloo over the ICERD has been covered by the media and talked about at length by people much smarter than I, over the implications of such a convention becoming reality in Malaysia.

But in all our frenzy about the ICERD, we are forgetting to ask the right questions. Who started this issue? Who is blowing this issue up? Why are they blowing this issue up?

Before we ask those questions, let’s first take a look at the “threat”. The general fear is the ICERD will erode Malay rights because it dictates that racial discrimination be done away with.

So let’s explore that.

Firstly, the ICERD is a convention. Which means it is a non-legal agreement that is not enforceable in any punitive way. It’s a symbolic agreement on a set of guidelines between governments, but rarely is it ever upheld.

Let’s look at one of its biggest signatories: the United States. Now, if those afraid of the ICERD are to be believed, once Malaysia ratifies the convention, it will no longer discriminate races, and will criminalise hate speech and membership in racist organisations.

Now look at the United States, a country that ratified it 24 years ago, and tell me there is absolutely no racial discrimination. Tell me that racist organisations like the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis are not only allowed to voice themselves freely but also able to recruit and hold rallies. Tell me that the President and his posse have not said a single inflammatory word.

Ratifying a convention means squat. It’s a symbolic gesture. It doesn’t matter.

Even if it was enforceable, political scientist Dr Chandra Muzaffar points out that Article 1 (4) of Part 1 of the ICERD acknowledges that affirmative action – which is what the Malay special rights are – is not racial discrimination, and therefore will not affect the landscape of Malaysia’s racial equilibrium.

With this in mind, we return to the questions.

Who started this issue? It was a Minister who reports to the Pakatan Harapan Prime Minister’s Department. The ICERD had never been mentioned until last week. It was an issue that was raised by the government exclusively.

Now ask yourself, who is blowing this issue up?

Well it’s a mixed bag. Umno and PAS have come out strongly against this. Members of the Pakatan Cabinet have also voiced dissatisfaction with this move and have called for it to be stopped.

It’s quite curious, how the Cabinet that first introduced this issue is also the one stoking fears about it. You would think that an international convention ratification would at least have some discussion before it was announced willy-nilly.

So we have an issue that is of no threat to the way things are being run in this country whatsoever, being brought up by the government, and also being lambasted by that same government which is using it as a talking point of how it can threaten race positions in the country, when clearly it will not.

This doesn’t sound like governing to me. It sounds like a political scare tactic.

Create a bogeyman – a convention that can be seen as a potential threat to Malay special positions. Blow it up – create a big fuss in the media, lie about what this convention, which you brought up, might do, stoke fear and then come out lambasting it so those who have been riled up by this issue will see you as someone defending their rights.

Last question. Why are they blowing this issue up?

I honestly don’t know. There is no election to win. And no scandal to divert attention from.

Was this done to create a platform for one party to make a case as a better defender of Malay rights than its opponent?

Perhaps. I don’t know.

What I do know is that all it has done is to manufacture more racial politics and race-based division.

This may work on TV, where people love a good story. But this is a country with real people, real communities, and real consequences.

Who does this ICERD nonsense benefit? The people or the politicians?

Nicholas Cheng is a former Malaysian journalist. He was a US Daniel Pearl media fellow and a Chevening scholar. He aims to write about what young people think about 'New Malaysia'. He cna be reached at:

Twitter: @nichocheng



Email: nicholascheng90@gmail.com