The changing electoral demographics of Malaysian politics has caused all sorts of problems for our ethnic politicians.

In the past, the mere mention of the British colonial white bogeyman or the Chinese orang asing yellow bogeyman, any ethnic politician worth his salt could guarantee a united Malay voting block, and absolute power for himself.

Nowadays the majority ethnic group does not get scared so easily. Increasingly they are making distinctions between rich and poor amongst their own community, between authoritarian rule and democracy, political expediency and justice, transparency and accountability, feudal privilege, patronage and wholesale corruption, and do not consider race nor special privileges to be the sole criteria for determining voting preferences.

One of the more pressing problems therefore for our BN ethnic leadership is where to find scapegoats, and sway ethnic voting preferences in its favour.

Now that non-bumi votes might be important in the coming elections, there have been noticeable attempts to revive the spirit of muhibbah and even attempts at resurrecting the late Tunku.

Thankfully for the ethnic Chinese minority, the yellow peril bogeyman so useful for swaying ethnic voting preferences in the ethnic majority group, appears to have been temporarily retired by our local BN political strategists for the coming elections.

The new official bogeyman appears to be the irrepressibly evil, sexually deviant, violent American white male imperialists. Luckily for us Malaysians, most educated whites in America and Europe do not take our political oratory seriously. Their educated classes are discerning enough to know that our national leaders' startling invective against the West is directed largely towards a domestic Malaysian, and overseas Islamic audience.

After all, what better way to polish both ethno-nationalist and Islamist credentials, and kill two birds with one stone so to speak than to launch a withering diatribe against the evil West. After all, they don't get to vote here.

Whilst our Barisan Nasional politicians can probably still tell the difference between the objective truth and their own self-serving rhetoric, white Europeans and Americans might not be so certain about the ability of PAS politicians to make such distinctions in their fiery condemnations of the West.

The low point in BN's attempts to find a new threat and enemy of our culture, language, security and morals of this country must be the 'lelaki lembut' initiative. I cannot think of many groups in Malaysian society more marginalised than the lelaki lembut community. In terms of voting power, they cannot amount to much. In other words, they are the perfect "super-duper-soft" target for our political strategists.

Even the most intellectually-challenged Malaysian will have concluded by now that our BN leaders will only be scoring another own goal if ever they were to make corruption the official No 1 enemy of our nation. Corruption. Not the whites. Not the yellows. Not the blacks. Not the lelaki lembut. But corruption.

Unfortunately, it is hard for very rich politicians, cronies and relatives to wean themselves off easy money from lucrative monopolies, state rents, and exclusive licences. It is clearly much easier to blame marginalised demonised minority others for the progressive moral and social decay of this nation than for our politicians to reform themselves.

Nevertheless, I am convinced the focus will quickly shift from the lelaki lembut community to another marginalised, demonised, and unpopular minority group.

I note the present scare-mongering tactics of the BN to consist largely of fining people for holding hands or kissing in public only to retract the fine later. I therefore believe the "reform the lelaki lembut" initiative to pass just as quickly.

My personal interpretation of these BN-led "threaten then relent" initiatives is that it serves to remind marginalised Malaysian minority groups of what would happen under a PAS administration if ever PAS were to come into power.

It is a brilliant if under-handed way to persuade minority groups to vote BN instead of PAS. I must admit I do admire our BN political strategists for their subtle and effective if amoral and devious machinations.