By the time you read this article, the nomination process would have been done with, and campaigning would now be in full swing.

The time for all kinds of speculation is finally over. The cocks - and some hens - are finally in their pit, ready to leap into battle. Election betters have their cash in hand, but it is still too early for real deals to be struck.

Already, the season for rhetoric, slogans, propaganda, and mud-singing has begun in earnest.

Any experienced hand in election publicity campaign would tell you, this is the time for neither long theoretical argument nor moderate reasoned persuasion. Given the short campaign period, this is the time for one well-aimed blow at the opponent's jugular vein, while avoiding the risks of backfiring. Timing is everything, for in a few days' time, the whole game would be over.

With so much at stake, all means justify the end of winning, as long as you can get away with them. As the feverish pitch of the campaign escalates to a maniacal crescendo, the participants are driven by one battle dictum only: victory at all costs!

With the public space saturated with all sorts of election messages, you cannot help but wonder: what makes voters vote as they do, for one party rather than another? How do they make up their mind? What is the one particular issue that concerns them the most?

Well, in those constituencies where there has always been close contest between BN and the opposition parties, both sides would have built up a base of hard-core supporters. These die-hard members and supporters will vote for their party, come what may.

Victory in these marginal seats usually depends on swinging the fence-sitters. The percentage of these undecided voters may be as small as 5 to 10 % in many areas across the country. All the resources of the contesting parties would then be directed towards this narrow band of king-makers.

(Extrapolating this situation nationwide, a number of closely contested seats will also determine whether the ruling alliance will maintain their two-third majority in parliament. With our first-past-the-post system, it would seem that the balance of power in the country lies, not in the hands of active committed party supporters, but in the whims and fancies of the fence-sitters!)

Base shifts over time

In any constituency, the first thing to do is to solidify your traditional base. Fielding an unpopular or unsuitable candidate will weaken this traditional base of support, while long years of dispensing reward and punishment will widen the circle of hard-core voters.

This political base is not cast in stone. It shifts over time. The DAP has been a victim of this major shift over the last 15 years or so, to the advantage of MCA and Gerakan. Likewise, PAS has been a beneficiary of a similar shift, to the detriment of Umno.

Obviously, this balance of support between the contesting parties is often subverted through successive redrawing of constituencies by the Election Commission, and you do not need me to tell you who will benefit the most from these delineation exercises.

The second prong of campaign attack is then focused on weakening the opponent's supporters. This is quite easily done by negative campaigning, through the use of personal attack, engineered defections, demonisation, rumour-mongering, intimidation, and out-right lies.

The idea is that, if you cannot turn your opponent's supporters outright, at least create a shadow of doubt in their heads. A seasoned campaign strategist will tell you that, as long as you keep throwing stones into the muddied waters of the publicity warfare, one will eventually hit home and gain you precious votes.

By this time, you will realise that in Malaysian elections, the people do not determine the issues; they have election issues thrust upon them.

Years ago, some more radical members of the Chinese community tried to put forth their own issues, in the form of a series of Suqui (pronounced Soo Chew), listing the more forward looking aspirations of the Chinese voters.

Issue pre-determined

During the heat of the election campaign then, the former prime minister seemed to have received these appeals for a more egalitarian and democratic Malaysia. But after the ruling parties had scored a huge victory as usual, the now retired homo major turned around and accused the Suqui people as chauvinists, communists, and extremists.

The message was clear. Only professional politicians know what is best for the people. Voters should leave the business of determining election issues to the experts. Their only business is to cast their votes, preferably for the status quo, based on what the ruling elites allow them to know.

As usual, the issue this time around has been pre-determined. On the government side, voters are urged to give the new prime minister a big mandate, to continue what he has started in his 4 months in office.

Exactly what the new prime minister will do once he gets a fresh mandate is not clear, beyond some vague general statement about working with him in eradicating corruption, and continuing development to benefit the poor. He knows he needs no detail policy statements, since Malaysians have gotten used long ago to giving a big blank cheque to their top leader based on blind trust.

The opposition parties will display their usual ware about denying the BN their two-third majority in parliament. PAS is a little unique. They promise their voters a place in heaven. According to that logic, I will go to hell of course, because I have never voted for PAS.

But after nomination days, these broad lines of presentation alone are not sufficient. One-liners cannot win elections, because the hearts and minds of the people are very complex.

Long gone are the days, when political parties thought they could hang a party symbol on the neck of a cow, and win an election. Voters are getting more demanding and more sophisticated nowadays. They want a wakil rakyat who can give them service.

All politicians would swear to serve King and Country upon the name of their mother of course. The trouble in Malaysia is that the people do not seem to have any consensus on what YBs are supposed to do to serve the people.

Asian values

In theory, members of parliament and the state legislative assemblies are supposed to vet government expenditure, deliberate on national political problems, and examine as well as vote on legislations.

Unfortunately, our Asian values have changed all that. Asians do not like the confrontational model of Westminster, because we believe in giving and saving face. We also like a strong government to ensure our survival and happiness. That is why the ruling parties have always been returned to power with overwhelming majorities.

Therefore, the federal parliament and the state legislative assemblies have become rubber-stamps for a very presidential prime minister. All the long hours of boring debate have become superfluous, because the outcome of all the votes will be determined before hand by party whips. Bi-partisan projects are out of the question.

Even supporters of opposition candidates talk about sending somebody to the parliament merely to "make noise", or "bark like a watchdog". Can you find more fatalistic images of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition than these tired metaphors?

The partial media are even more fatalistic. Reports of legislative proceedings are sketchy and superficial at best, and given much less prominence than stories on rape or collapse of highways.

After a few decades of exiling the legislative function of government to the fringes of national life, the masses at large are neither interested nor knowledgeable in the really important work of their elected representatives.

That is why, once the election fever is over on polling day, the YBs will become distant, irrelevant, and unimportant to the average voters in the constituency, almost like a bad dream you have had the night before from eating too much. That is why a recent survey found that something like half of the voters do not know the name of their elected representative.

It's about serving voters

Unfortunately for the poor YBs, they must get re-elected; that is the purpose of political participation for politicians after all.

So, over the last few decades, the idea of serving King and Country has been reinvented. Serving public and national interest has been trivialised into serving individual voters during non-election years.

Honourable YBs will not hesitate to look at longkang and garbage dumps, and are the first to appear at the scene of a fire. They fill forms for the people, to apply for all sorts of things. They attend funerals, weddings, child-births etc as the guest of honour. Most of all, they have to run errands on behalf of their constituents, in applying for development projects and such other things.

(The gentleman who defeated me in 1995 had to attend up to 4 dinners every night, every day of the week. Another BN YB told me privately he was eating his way to his grave! Yet another BN YB from a rural constituency confided that he had donated well over a hundred coffins in his long tenure.)

In short, the role of the elected representative has been re-engineered to become errand boy, petition writer, god-father, public servant, confessor priest, jack-of all trades, and Father-Christmas all rolled into one. In short, a Michael Chong!

This is the kind of characters who will be touted as the ideal candidates in many urban and rural constituencies. You will be surprised at the proportion of voters who will support precisely this sort of candidates.

Those more enlightened souls among you may ask: what about the candidate's quality of political leadership, his stand on burning political and moral questions of the day, his ability to debate and vote without fear or favour, and his vision for the people and nation as a whole?

Well, sadly, that kind of questions will await voters of many generations from now, probably after a change of government.