This is the fourth and final part of the Chinese Dilemma series.

WITH all that Merdeka hullabaloo finally done with and out of the way, political parties and politicians can now revert fully to their profession of politicking towards a clear and present probability of an impending general election.

The timing of the general election is not all that important to the ordinary citizens. A durian fruit will fall when it ripens. And so it is with a general election, as inevitable as the seasonal haze from Indonesia, or the flash floods that terrorise Kuala Lumpur after an occasional thunderstorm.

It would seem that only politicians, their party workers, and the media people are so excited about the approaching general election. Sometimes, you get the vague impression that taking part in an election and winning votes and seats is their sole purpose in life, the only meaning of their existence. their mere reason to be.

I, like that five million or so mostly young Malaysians who have yet to register themselves as eligible voters, am not all that worked up over the idea of having to go to the poll again.

Why nearly 20% of the entire population of Malaysia show little interest in qualifying themselves as voters is a subject worthy of insightful study and profitable reflection.

Obviously, it is unfair to blame young Malaysians for being so apathetic towards politics. After all, politicians, especially those in the ruling coalition, have been nothing but apathetic to the political aspiration of Malaysian youths. The entire tenor of our political discourse is depolitisation of the people at large, and certainly the disenfranchisement of the youths in particular.

'The election will change nothing'

But I have another reason for not sharing the enthusiasm of politicians and journalists in another general election. I ask you: who could be excited about a football match, or any sporting competition for that matter, if the outcome is always known beforehand?

Indeed, the election will change nothing. The Umno-dominated BN will continue to form the next federal and state governments, and after the dust and the mirage have died down, it will be business as usual after the poll, including and especially rampant corruption, abuse of power, racial and religious hysteria, and unbridled bigotry in public space.

Whether BN will still be in power in another 50 years' time is a little difficult to predict sensibly. By that time, I will be long dead, so the prospect concerns me little. What seems certain though, is that an alternative government is a very dim possibility in the immediate future.

(In the unlikely event that an opposition coalition might topple the present BN government at the federal level, whether Umno would b ready to surrender power peacefully and gracefully would then be another crucial question. The spectre of social unrest and manufactured bloodshed then would loom large. Fortunately, that remains as a very unlikely scenario for now.)

This prediction of another BN victory in another general lection is not necessarily evidence that the ruling parties have delivered their goods so well that they have won over the hearts and minds of the people. In the less-than-level playing field of Malaysian politics, the election results do not necessarily reflect the general will of the people.

Half a century of electoral gerrymandering and radical tinkling of the election laws have given overwhelming weightage to the Malay heartland in the rural constituencies. Rural farming communities rely heavily on government assistance and patronage for their survival and prosperity, and at this time, when commodity prices are good, they would see no reason for switching their traditional allegiance to Umno. As long as Umno can hold on to their power base in the rural areas, they will have a stranglehold on power at the national centre.

Meanwhile, Umno has also made great inroads into the traditionally Chinese dominated urban areas since the lesson of the1969 general election. Rapid urbanisation and massive rural-urban drift have now changed the demographic structure of Malaysia, especially in the cities and towns.

In vague general terms, the urban centres are less and less Chinese in character, and more Malay and therefore "national" in appearance and essence. There are more and more constituencies in KL, Penang, and Johore, which are heavily mixed, or which enjoy outright Malay majorities.

This tilting of the electoral ground in favour of Umno is not entirely without objective justification.

The politics of race

The birth rates among the Malays have remained high for various reasons. In sharp contrast, the Chinese have undergone a cultural transformation in recent decades, in which large and extended families are now replaced with small nuclear families with fewer children in the household.

Massive migration has also taken its toll. According to one paper presented at a conference organised by the KL Chinese Assembly Hall not so long ago, a million or so Chinese citizens have emigrated overseas during the period between 1957 and 1990. The haemorrhage continues to this day no doubt.

In contrast to the 50s, when the Chinese made up nearly 50% of the population in the Malayan Peninsula, the Chinese now constitute about 25% of the population nationwide.

In our country, there is no other brand of politics than the politics of race. The politics of race is the politics of counting heads, racially. The decline in the share of the Chinese in the national population, even and especially in the traditionally Chinese urban heartland, must be reflected within racial balance of power over a long period of time.

This reality is especially succinct in the power relation between Umno and the Chinese and Chinese-based component parties within the Barisan Nasional coalition.

The power relation was based on the mythical "social contract" sealed between Umno and MCA/MIC at the time of independence, with these parties perceiving themselves as the sole proxies representing their respective communities negotiating towards the tasks of nation-building. Naturally, the communities outside of Peninsula Malaysia, in Sarawak and Sabah, were not parties to this contract, though they were bound by its unspoken terms nevertheless.

Whether the legitimacy of this so-called social contract is valid, especially on the crucial issue of exclusive communal representation by individual political parties, is quite another point, and seldom discussed in Malaysian medium, if at all.

Still, the terms and conditions of the contract, with the core principle of Malay dominance in politics in the national life, has formed the basis of the power sharing formula between the component parties of first the Alliance, and then the Barisan Nasional.

The social contract is supposed to be the result of a political compromise between the political parties representing their communities. As Winston Churchill would tell politicians all over the world from his country's experience in dealing with the Nazi government of WW2 Germany, "You never go to the negotiating table naked."

More Malay seats

Looking back to the day when the original social contract was agreed upon, the MCA might have gone to the negotiating table armed and armoured to the teeth. But by conceding to Umno the all important element of Malay dominance, the MCA had denuded themselves in the process. They may claim that there was no other option on the table at that time, but thy certainly had to live with the logical and phenomenological consequence of their acquiescence for the next half century.

One of these vital consequences is the power to influence and even determine the pattern of constituency delineation.

After every constituency exercise every eight years or so, the absolute number of Chinese majority seats may increase by a wee bit, but the number of Malay majority seats will increase by leaps and bounds.

As of now, the Chinese majority seats number about 25 or so, in comparison to the total of 222 parliamentary constituencies throughout the country.

As any good Umno would have designed it, Umno could one day rule Malaysia, without MCA, though possibly with the help of large blocs of seats from Sabah and Sarawak. Whether MCA would quit membership in the Barisan Nasional or not would be rendered entirely academic. The MCA would then be surrendering the last of their chips on the table.

Within this diminishing electoral territory of 25 seats making up slightly more than 10% of the nation's total, the MCA, the Gerakan, and the DAP engage one another in a do-or-die battle during every election.

What choice is there for the Chinese voters who are trying to fight for their communal rights in the face of Malay dominance? Even if the MCA or the DAP win all the 25 Chinese majority constituencies, so what? The result would not change the reality of diminishing Chinese representation in Parliament, in the Cabinet, and in every important institution in the country. The contest for sole Chinese representation between the MCA and the DAP is a lose-lose situation for their Chinese constituents.

This is the real Chinese dilemma.