Politicians often do it. Movie stars, also do it. We all, sometimes do it and perhaps mighty guilty of it.

Because, of the effect it has on our emotions, the impact it creates and the potential it has to cloud our sense of judgement; crying as a political weapon has often been used by politicians to sway opinion or deflect criticisms when pressure piles on them.

Witness the time when former Australian premier Bob Hawke cried over public allegations of his daughter's drug abuse, leading subsequently to favourable perceptions of him, thereafter.

Or, of the time when former British premier, Margaret Thatcher dubbed the Iron Lady, cried as to deflect criticism of her policies and administration.

Whether one believes it or not, the choice of tears is a potent one.

And how much streams down in those visible tiny rivulets, does go a long way to deliver a message.

Effective PR stunt

Apart from the effects it has, in dramatising one's human element the choice of tears when translated on a national stage is also a very effective public relations stunt.

Notwithstanding all these, is the emotional blackmail that the stunt of crying carries. Because it goes to amplify some of our hidden frailties, it makes us instinctively want to align with some emotionally distressed individual, to lend him or her our moral support.

And by doing so, it hinders our sense of rational thought such that our sense of logic is suddenly subordinate to those emotional impulses.

Because much of crying is about human bonding we forget that the humanitarianism we show others actually makes us lose, the logical component to the issue, that originally caused crying in the first place.

In other words, what it does is to deprive us of our just and fair right to see an issue in the perspective we would want, and where and how we deserve it best.
After all, are we not all humans to feel like what Shakespeare said, about the emotions of pain, sorrow and joy when experiencing those moments?

So because of the emotional pain, what we infer from the bard's dictum is the need for sympathy at the exclusion of rationality.

In a more recent episode, the crying by former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad at the opening of the Umno general assembly in 2002, was masterly in how it was able to adroitly translate disaffection arising out of the Anwar Ibrahim saga, to chalk up support for his party.

A reprieve

Therefore, watching Rafidah Aziz go through that pace of crying must surely make many of us want to align and sympathise with her.

That's despite full knowledge that is more wrong than she is actually being wronged over the issue of Approved Permits (AP); and for which regrettably she has yet to make any full accounting.

So what does she do? Go the way of Margaret Thatcher in seeking how many tears she can afford to shed, than to any deploying of logic to rebut criticisms levelled at her.

At any rate, her crying is only a reprieve. It is nothing more than to buy time for what now seems like a truly hapless and indefensible position.

In other words, what she is attempting to do is to secure a battle than to winning the real war, a war whose conditions she created by the unresolved issue of those cars permits.

So with her back to the wall and with her hands wringing as a sign of desperation; she takes to crying to rally support, as if to suggest that sympathy will overrule those watertight and carefully corroborated allegations against her.

It is a trick that most politicians like former US president Bill Clinton, is wont to do.

Hard headed logic

That is in the face of incontrovertible evidence of wrongdoing, they go out and seek solace in the comfort that like human beings, they too have frailties and weaknesses that should be forgiven and not made into an issue.

There is a word for seeking such excuses in legal parlance, and it is called mitigation.

But the difference between a court of law and one of public opinion is that the former always rules by a sense of clear hard headed logic.

In a court of public opinion that often than not is noticeably absent, i.e. a case for presenting logic. And it is probably with that in mind, that Rafidah may have got the cue to cry.

Because, as everybody would know by now, that perhaps it is the only best trick left for Rafidah. If it had worked for Bob Hawke, Thatcher and Clinton, why not her?

It is the art of the political tear. And it is really very effective.

JAYA PRAKASH lectures in journalism in Singapore.