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Incumbents often win and long-standing ruling parties often return to power no matter what their errors were or are. These are electoral realities which repeat in all geographical locations.

Incumbency with all its weaknesses presents one easy choice for people - the retention of the present. As much as we loath the crazy present, the thought of an uncertain future when different people rule delays every people’s investment in change.

And in that assurance the Barisan Nasional government trots along while dragging along a whole dredge of ugly cans. Of ministers breaking rank and breaking physical performances. Of random election chiefs and randomly assembled backbenchers. Of a religious ‘mufti’ who is tribal to the core and a core of development programmes which look good only in a launch souvenir book.

Of a topsy-turvy method of governing a nation to a series of non-responses to key questions which would underline and likely, reveal truths.

All that matters little when she is the devil you have always known. It can be worse, so the people around the campfire utter below their breaths.

I have a cynical answer. How much more horrible can it be? How much damage to a country’s soul can a whole bunch of inexperienced Malaysians do, if you find it in you to vote them in?

At the end of the day, those who support incumbency must ask the other questio -. if I were unerringly supportive of the status quo, what incentive do my heroes have to reinvent themselves, to examine themselves, to provide something different to their electorate?

Human conditioning will insist those not upbraided for wrongs will not change. It is the threat of loss which hangs over any tyrant like a noose. You cannot bargain at the wet market if you are unlikely to walk away from the negotiation.

BN believes that the Malaysian people will not walk away from their selling booth, no matter what they do. That puts the incumbency versus electoral change balance in full-view.

The second part of the complex equation is the question of volatility. Every Barisan stakeholder presents the ‘Escape from New York’ scenario, with every other Malaysian looking like a post-apocalyptic hound, ready to bludgeon each other once the power of BN is removed.

We have to get off this morphine-driven ride. It’s getting old. There is potential for violence anywhere in the world. Keeping the same jail warden is no guarantee of permanent peace. And Malaysians need not live their lives like inmates.

Violence is about potential and scale. The potential is small and the scale smaller still. We have become a nation of car-owners with housing. Throw in an annual budget holiday, than you have the average Malaysian city dweller. Our people, no matter which political party they relate to, by large are risk and harm averse.

Even the ‘keris’- wielding or devoted Umno politician would not last three hours in the hot sun. They will wilt in it as they usually don’t have the stomach for physical challenges. So come this March, go and vote and lap up the experience of democracy.

However, the less you use incumbency and fear of violence as a factor, irrespective of your political leaning, the more likely you are to make the right decision for yourself. Being afraid is not a component of democracy, even if you are a Barisan supporter.

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