Malaysian politics is changing at a rapid pace and it appears that the commenters of Malaysiakini haven’t a clue what is going on, so I thought I would try to explain Malaysian politics in a business context so that their ‘innate business acumen’ would better help them to understand. Let’s look at the different parties as though they were business entities with a product to sell to the public.

PAS is a long-established company with an excellent though not terribly ethical sales team. They are relying on the established status of their product to maintain sales. The fact that their product is more a cause of the problems they are trying to resolve seems to have eluded them.

However, society is changing rapidly and their research and development (R&D) team has not kept up with the changes. In addition the company is suffering from negative impressions in their performance in overseas countries. The company’s adherence to outdated values and presumed benefits will ensure it maintains a small but diminishing percent of the market.

Amanah is an offshoot of PAS which is trying to plagiarise some of PAS’s success. Unfortunately their sales team is well below par because they are trying to sell the same message as the parent company, but are not prepared to admit to the extremes of the parent for fear of alienating the buying public.

Their research department is non-existent so their sales team have nothing to sell apart from the message of the parent company to which they are reluctant to commit. They are a fly-by-night company staffed by principles hoping for a quick kill. They will disappear from sight without having made any impact on the buying public.

PKR as a company has had an amazingly successful sales performance thanks to the efforts of one man who was able to sell a better than average product to the buying public. On his removal from office the company fell apart as the directors fought to control the company under the leadership of a very weak chairperson.

The product they sold so successfully, although of poor quality, was much better than the alternatives so that it sold well to a public clamouring for improvement. Unfortunately, on the departure of the sales director, the remaining directors abandoned his product and reduced the R&D team to a skeleton.

Since that time the performance of the directors and infighting within the board, lack of direction from the chairperson and some extremely poor-decision making has led to plummeting sales. Recent abortive attempts by the R&D team have unfortunately not been able to reverse the decline in sales. It is expected that at the next sales survey that the PKR team will see a significant drop in their sales figures.

Unable to maintain the level of buyer enthusiasm

The DAP was another company which colluded with PKR in the heady days when product placement was on a high and they benefitted mightily from the association. Unfortunately, like PKR, they have not been able to maintain the level of buyer enthusiasm which existed at the last sales survey.

Like PKR they, too, abandoned the standards of the coalition, thinking that they could produce a better product. However, their R&D team has let them down badly by not attending more to the needs of the consumer and they are producing a product that is more a figment of the imagination of the sales team than a reflection of public demand.

The sales team, although small, is too consumed with its own ideas of what the buyers’ needs should be. As a result they have gone off on a tangent thinking that they can outsell their main opposition by constantly criticising the opposition’s products while failing to develop and promote their own product.

More recently there have been weaknesses showing up in the sales team as one member loses motivation, to the extent that he has abandoned his sales outlets and the other appears to be selling a product which the DAP is not producing.

The last three companies, Amanah, PKR and DAP have colluded to form a consortium which they believe will be more attractive to the buying public. They hope by fooling the buying public that they can sell enough product to swing the sales figures in their favour. Unfortunately, there appears to be no consensus on what product they should be selling and much division about which products should be sold in which outlets.

In addition the lack of direction of all three companies, there weak leadership, their poor and declining sales figures have left them wide open for a take-over bid.

And this is what has just happened. A past director of the competing company which holds the greater part of the market share has emerged from retirement and made a takeover bid for the consortium companies.

Those companies have been so weak they have been easily absorbed into a new mega company. A mega company which was selling the same product that the consortium companies, but has recently abandoned that product when a new and more saleable product arose.

Now those consortium companies are left in limbo with no product to sell, disillusioned sales teams and a situation where it is too late for their R&D teams to innovate before the next sales survey.

Malaysia now has a situation where there are two almost identically awful mega companies with the same unsuitable and unwanted product, the same tainted Directors, the same incompetent R&D teams, and the same bumbling conmen as their sales teams who are competing to capture the dollars of the buying public.