MAY 9 — PAS gets a lot of flak for being out of touch. It’s not like the party is unaware of the jibes.

However, middle-class Netflix-watching Malaysia tends to be just as obtuse about national politics.

A planted faux pas during the Kuala Kubu Baru by-election, seat N06 of the Selangor state assembly, illustrates this tremendously well.

Around Nomination Day (April 27), PAS Info Chief Ahmad Fadhli Shaari inquired about DAP candidate Pang Sock Tao’s academic qualifications.

Pang duly obliged. Her certificates were posted online. If her fans in Taman Tun Ismail or Sunway thought her straight As in both UPSR and SPM was about to stillborn Bersatu-Perikatan Nasional candidate Khairul Azhari Saut’s campaign, they are in for a rude awakening.

Grades do not decide elections in Malaysia.

If they did, Lee Kuan Yew would have become the second prime minister in a still unified Malaysia in 1974. Both he and Abdul Rahman attended Cambridge but resided at opposite ends of the academic ladder. Lee was leaps and bounds ahead of Malaysia’s first prime minister and was already polishing his Malay in private classes to overwhelm Umno in public debate. Beat them at their own game.

History took a different turn.

A crude trip down our electoral history is littered with people who wrote theses losing to blue-collar nobodies.

Ahmad Fadhli understands elections are won by vote counting, you don’t need a UPSR certificate to cross that hurdle.

He is equally informed that politicians do not ask questions if they do not already have the answer. It’s theatre. They knew the answer before asking, they needed a segue to state the actual postulation.

To reveal she was always in Chinese schools, primary to secondary. She is to them a Chinese educationist. More importantly, the voters in KKB know now.

DAP wanted the election to be about young, bright and service-oriented versus older, climbers of Malay politics.

That has been squashed by Fadhli’s ploy.

PAS with little effort turned the contest to a different frame, one of identity politics, which their coalition PN thrives in.

This is now a race between a Chinese educationist who is a collegiate debater in the Chinese language and a local boy from Felda who is very decidedly Malay. With neither candidate holding a persuasive backstory, voters are forced into identity politics.

DAP and Pakatan may find a silver lining from past contests.

Only ethnic Chinese have won the seat since its formation 50 years ago. However, there is a caveat. BN has only put Chinese candidates before, through MCA, which explains why only a Chinese has won before.

It’s different now.

Khairul Azhari is a test case of how well identity politics provides PN in a mixed seat. Find success here and then many other mixed seats along the Semenanjung west coast become competitive.

In KKB, Malays are almost half the roll, and Chinese need to be totalled with Indians to match them.

So, look at that. Ahmad Fadhli knows his politics after all.

This is not to say, the Malaysian experiment to appeal to citizenry before race is dead. It is growing steadily.

Today, a substantial number of Malaysians are willing to cross their own race lines to vote who they believe is the better candidate. However, they want the candidate to be Malaysian enough. More Tian Chua and less Nga Kor Ming. For Kuala Kubu Baru Malays to pick a Chinese over a Malay requires them to identify with the candidate. Chinese educationists are the worst type of candidates in these situations.

Why is it so difficult to shed the Chinese educationist label?

For the answer, DAP-Pakatan need only turn to the person next to them in their camp, Umno-BN. No one party has done more to demonise Chinese educationists as antithetical to the formation of Bangsa Malaysia as much as Umno. Which is brilliant irony, since polling is on Umno’s 78th anniversary, May 11.

Umno gets a consolation prize that their sowing race as central part of Malaysian life has not completely been trashed by progressives, in the case of defeat. Even if it is a black-eye for the Unity Government.

DAP-lah

The country is in flux.

Malaysia’s Chinese population, from a quarter of the country a short while ago, continues to slide downwards. In a couple of national elections, at present projections, it will be below a fifth of the population.

From 1 in 3 Malaysians being Chinese at independence, to less than one in five soon.

DAP, the party birthed from Singapore Lee’s party exit from Malaysia, realises change is necessary to survive.

Therefore, the party built on Chinese chauvinism for base support has bent backwards to prepare for a future of a decidedly Malay-majority Malaysia.

Their HQ building might as well unfurl a giant hiring banner. "Secular Malay leaders wanted. Experience unnecessary as training provided. Seats waiting.”

Yet, while they shore up a new Malay spine for the party, they are presently short of Malay qualities. Certainly, in how DAP leaders speak in the national language.

Which is why DAP’s multicultural poster children Syahredzan Johan (Bangi MP) and Young Syefura "Rara” Othman (Bentong MP) are camped in Kuala Kubu Baru. To make up for Pang, National Publicity Chief Teo Nie Ching and the majority of the party, the Chinese educated and conditioned politicians.

They are expected to raise the party’s Malay credentials.

The candidate, can she carry a bit of this perspective load?

DAP Secretary-General Anthony Loke was spot on when he said Pang is a debater and can answer all questions. In writing of course.

Because the moment Pang starts to speak, her unease in Malay is on full display. Which is why her minders are watching carefully to protect her. Look at her YouTube videos in Malay and then in Chinese. Enough said.

DAP might edge past Bersatu in Kuala Kubu Baru, but barely. Moving forward, since there is a general election in three and a half years, other than getting more Malay candidates, they may endeavour to up their non-Malay candidates’ spoken Malay.

They have dialects here

Remodelling oneself is not a crime in politics, it's an upgrade.

DAP can do worse than train its politicians to sound less estranged to Malay.

They are really good in Malay, look at the BM score in SPM, if they wrote in their Malay.

Systematic classes and training to be brilliant in Malay is so easy to organise.

To be trained is not a new phenomenon.

It’s less than a two-hour drive from London to Bleinheim Palace where Winston Churchill was born. But since London-born Gary Oldman lived across the pond in Los Angeles for decades, he decided to get an accents coach to help him play Churchill in Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour. The Englishman had to relearn how to speak like an Englishman.

There are a slew of foreign actors who train themselves to sound American to blaze North American cinema screens. Hopkins to Kidman, Tom Holland to Daisy Ridley.

Comfort in language is often psychological.

Henry Kissinger fled Germany in the 1930s and shaped America’s foreign policy for the next half century. The late National Security adviser never lost his German accent, it was a weapon used by his opponents to discredit his opinions. Yet, Kissinger’s brother Walter, two years younger, shed his German accent. Kissinger spoke almost begrudgingly about this.

Closer to our time and geography, the columnist knows two Singapore MPs who had great success as debaters in the European circuit who have amended since in the last 20 years to sound more like Singaporean blokes belonging in HDB flats. That’s the prerequisite over there.

DAP is notorious for being tone deaf but to its credit is always open to improving itself.

If across their stable they up proficiency to native level and increase their Malay cultural knowledge, the party can draw votes from across the divide on its own, rather than wait on PKR, Amanah and recently Umno to bring them votes from Malays.

Just like Oldman — who won the Oscar best actor award for this Churchill film — DAP can turn this honest desire to improve to wins.

Train their leaders to sock it to the haters.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.