A democracy will mature into a vibrant way of life if and when among other things the citizens can change the government of the day through the ballot box. This is stating the obvious.

But alas, the obvious is not always self-evident in Malaysia. The Barisan Nasional government has so institutionalised their hold on power through the decades, and the political language in the mass media has so monopolised the moral legitimacy of BN rule over the people, that opposition parties are regarded by many as no more than "anti-government elements".

Instead of being accorded the status of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, and given all the prestige and privileges of a government-in-waiting, opposition parties here are exiled to the margin of our national life.

In fact, some people avoid opposition politicians like the plague. Many civil servants and business people including old friends, former schoolmates and even relatives - would give them a wide berth during chance encounters in public places, some pretending not to know them.

The prospect of any public association with members of opposition parties would strike terror in their meek hearts, evoking in them the dark images of ISA arrests, loss of jobs and business opportunities, or all of the above.

Machiavelli's advice to the princes of the world has proven true down through the ages. To impose effective rule over a populace for an extended period of time, fear is always a more powerful tool of imposing obedience than love. Love for the ruler is whimsical whereas fear works every time.

Effectiveness of ISA

That is why the ISA will not likely be repealed voluntarily by any prime minister. The Home Ministry and the Police will never give up their ultra-constitutional jurisdiction willingly under the ISA of course, simply because this and other emergency legislative enactments give them fantastic powers and mark them off from the other branches of government. No instrument of state power, and especially no police department, which executes the state's monopoly on the use of violence, will give up their turf willingly.

The effectiveness of the ISA lies in its psychological power of suggestion. The police do not even have to use it often. The fact that the ISA is there, like an omnipresent shadow, aided by the occasional but highly publicised arrests of the most vocal critics once every so often, is enough to intimidate potential dissidents into despair, hopelessness and a mortal sense of futility.

Furthermore, by virtue of its moral authority embedded in our historical necessity in combating emergency, the ISA in its perennial existence serves as a psychological weapon for socialising public judgement. For many of the uninformed rakyat, anybody arrested under the ISA must be against the government and the rakyat at large. Occasional ISA arrests of opposition activists, together with the arrests of passport-forgers, religious or other fanatics, will entrench the moral stigmatisation against opposition parties.

But the more enlightened power brokers also know that fear alone may not be enough. The carrot must be added to the stick. Over the years, following rapid economic development in the last few decades, the common public resources available for distribution has become another powerful tool for ensuring loyalty and support for the ruling parties.

Through the engineered identification of the ruling parties with the government, political leaders are perceived as the ultimate patron, and all rakyat are seen as clients at various levels. Two parallel top-down structures of dispensing patronage have developed, working in close collusion with each other.

One relies on the government machinery, from the federal cabinet, through the state government, and finally filtering down to the village level, determining the rules of the game for the appropriation of public resources. From the mega-projects awarded by the cabinet, right down to the construction of roads and jetties in the villages, the magic word is "projek"!

No ethical meaning

What the rakyat should enjoy as a matter of right has now become a form of largesse, to be dispensed to the clients at the discretionary pleasure of the political patrons, on condition of continued political support. That is how the electoral process has degenerated into a form of business transaction devoid of ethical meaning.

The other, parallel channel of dispensing patronage works along the national structure of the ruling alliance, from their KL headquarters right down to the party branches in the towns and villages. The opposition parties will never find the resources to fund and run such a national organisation. This gives the ruling parties an invisible but deciding advantage over the opposition in electoral politics, especially in the rural areas.

Every small town and every remote district will have at least a local branch of some sort, established by one or more BN parties. From Kedah in the north to Sabah to the east, these BN national networks penetrate deep into the local communities, often getting very involved in the daily life of the people at many levels, such as organising religious, cultural, educational and developmental events. They make representation on behalf of the local people to the government for small development projects. During the general elections, they provide the local contacts and organisational machinery for an effective campaign.

The civil service at all levels have been heavily politicised anyway. Their ability to discharge their official duties in a neutral professional manner has long been stripped by political interference. Those few conscientious public servants who have the courage to make independent decisions will not last long; they will be demoted, transferred or sacked outright.

In this way, the civil service has become an unofficial administrative arm of the ruling parties, dispensing with patronage such as business licenses, development projects, and contract awards at the personal behest of political leaders at the federal, state and district levels. Supporters of opposition parties will be black-listed, ostracised, and excluded from the distribution of all these goodies, as if they are outcasts and lepers, as if they are subversive elements against the State.

Behaviour and thought

The carrot-and the-stick philosophy is the essence of Machiavellian exercise of power for the purpose of conditioning behaviour. However, the real insurance against any disruption to the existing scheme of things is by conditioning thought. This is done mainly through the public institutions which are traditionally responsible for the transmission of values from one generation to another, the family, the community and religious organisations, the schools and universities, and most important of all, the mass media of communication.

More than any other factors, our television, radio and newspapers as different manifestations of "print capitalism" shape our consciousness as members of an imagined nation-state called Malaysia. They serve as the battleground in which various sources of power compete for the right to express themselves, in articulating what should constitute national consciousness and national identity.

In a vibrant democracy, the mass media should be the fertile soil where a hundred flowers bloom, so that the open-ended national discourse will bring forth a congruence of hearts and souls, and yet the whole that emerges shall be larger than the sum of its parts. In short, the media ought to express the mirrored aspects of our "general will" as a people.

Naturally, the Machiavellian Princes of the world know the power of the media well, and seek to enslave them for their own purpose. Over decades of direct and indirect control over our mass media, the ruling parties have come to monopolise the right to express our nation's twin ideology, racism and economic development.

The ideology of racism, often hidden behind the avatar of ethnic nationalism, ensures that the people will always be divided, and that no broad-based opposition alliance can break through the colour curtain to mount a credible national challenge to the ruling alliance.

The ideology of development, on the other hand, has depoliticised what ought to be the all important political process of building a shared experience and a common destiny. The distortion of meaningful development to mean only personal material enrichment has generated our widespread belief in greed and apathy.

The messages of the twin ideology are broadcast daily, over decades, until they sink into the subconscious mind of the rakyat through a slow but effective process of mental osmosis, until race and development are but the sole variables with which younger generations of Malaysians can interprete their reality.

Without countervailing voices in the media, many among the rakyat cannot help but internalise the norm of the ruling parties as the absolute truth, and worship their political leaders like some Olympian deities. Of course they will accept the newspeak of our Brave New World, that hate is love, fear is freedom, and war is peace.

Little space

In this Asian version of the Brave New World of our own making, there is little space in the hearts of the rakyat for opposition politics. The idea of an alternative government is largely hidden, even by some opposition leaders. The prospect of changing our government of the day is unthinkable for most Malaysians, even though such a change would be a standard and essential practice for a thriving democracy.

Even for many disaffected citizens, especially the educated urban middle-class Malaysians, they will probably end up voting for the BN, or not vote at all, because they see no real alternative to the status quo.

Some people write to the press, urging the government to take this or that measure, to solve our legion of social and economic ills, without realising that these ills have their root cause in the political malpractices of people in power, and that the radical way to correct the wrongs is to change the government.

For many fence-sitters, the familiar devil is always more comfortable to live with, than an unfamiliar angel.

Fortunately for us, we do have our federal constitutions that provides for the peaceful election of opposition parties into power. That does not seem likely in the next general election, but the option for such a change remains open.

Our opposition parties are also relatively alive and well. If only they can find the will and wisdom to plan for the formation of an alternative government!