JUNE 22 — Dear [Unnamed],

I am very disappointed in the way the Barisan Nasional regime is handling the Bersih 2.0 rally. What in the world are you doing, stating the obvious and calling it an Opposition ploy, “politics all the same” and so on?

Can’t you see that’s what the organisers want you to do? When you mention the glaringly evident and bring in the “partisan” category, you are in principle legitimising any and all future complaints that your policies and programmes have an agenda(!).

You are calling a bluff on a position that is sustained by two paradoxical opposites: internal disavowal and external critique. Come on, you think the Bersih people don’t know it’s “political”? Of course they do! But they keep telling each other and the world that it’s not partisan.

Likewise, if YOU complain that Bersih is more pro-Pakatan than pro-justice, it only strengthens their commitment to maintain that it’s not!

Let me repeat: The trick is NOT that you should publicly expose Bersih as partisan, but to get the members themselves(!!) to admit they have a political agenda.

How do you do this?

First, let the rally proceed without minimal or zero intervention. No, I’m serious. The best way to derail such events is to refuse it the dignity of being objected to.

By all means, do ensure public safety (lest the organisers blame poor public infrastructure for some collapse of some wall or awning). Of course, put some policeman around to keep the peace (lest some Datuk’ss assets are smashed and he sues the government).

And certainly do make one or two bland statements about your commitment to clean and fair elections, but by all means you must put up a show of actually LISTENING to the protesters.

Second, get your most popular (or handsomest) spokesperson — I would personally choose N, M or H themselves, but I’ll leave this to you — to state with a generous and sincere smile that you “fully understand the concerns of Bersih 2.0” and that “the government is doing everything in its power to ensure that the next GE will be fair and square.”

You may even wish to get Puteri Umno (or some other department that breeds less hostility) to set up booths in the street, ostensibly because you care about the well-being of the protesters, peace and harmony are your top priorities, etc.

Trust me, when your people treat with kindness those who would challenge and defy you, the tide turns your way (I can’t remember who said that but Gandhi used this principle for good so don’t waste it).

Third, by all means, change some things. Go through their list of demands, pick one or two items they claim are most important and act on it. Make a public show of either 1) showing that you have always been faithful to their priorities or 2) doing something.

We all know that most likely nothing fundamental will change because for that to happen, we would need to be like Egypt or Libya  — cases whereby the economic, political and social domains had to undergo violent transformation — and the best way to PREVENT this is, ironically, to accede to some specific requests of the protesters.

Remember: Granting particular demands is often the best approach to deny universal recognition. Can’t you recall this is what we did and are doing to the Orang Asli? We give them (slightly) better housing and food and education, thus enabling us to reject as “preposterous” any claims on their behalf to deeper national rights and privileges.

Likewise, remember that Bersih gets part of its power from the mass dissatisfaction with the economy. So get your act together there if you want to remain in power!

At this point, may I say that getting Ibrahim Ali to do your dirty work was a bad move. This is because almost everybody believes it’s a BN ploy and nobody buys his slogans about Perkasa promoting a “Gerak Aman”. This is the problem with “fighting fire with fire” — when you use the enemy’s methods, you are inevitably playing the same game.

Learn from the other boys in power. Starbucks, far from objecting to protests about how their coffee supply-chains create inequality for (already) poor South American farmers, made these very protests part of their corporate image.

Nike, instead of issuing counter-statements against the street culture that challenged their role in nurturing joblessness and poverty, assimilated the “cool” and “street-wise” ambience to capture the dissenting segment itself.

Can’t you see this is what you must do to Bersih? Instead of challenging it, you should absorb it and thus completely neutralise it. Play a different game from the Opposition and you, almost literally, cannot lose.

Finally, if all else fails and if you needed an excuse for the police to move in and clamp everything down, using “violent” Perkasa members to instigate a scuffle is the last thing you should do.

Instead, next time activate your sleepers within Bersih itself. I assure you that many “real” members are already on the verge of moving beyond verbal violence to physical acts of destruction.

No one will suspect you have planted insider men in the movement (or even if they do, proving it will be their burden) and if you get these guys to create violence, it’ll be much harder to convince the public that Bersih is completely “bersih” (innocent) and that the violence isn’t primarily their fault.

Absolutely. Blame the physical violence on the Opposition, on Bersih. (When are you going to learn that water-cannons and sticks are NOTHING compared to making the enemy confront his own ideology and self-deception?)

Wield a different kind of violence, the kind of violence nobody suspects is violent, the kind of violence which appears as its opposite, the kind of violence the masses won’t object to and will, in fact, use violence to defend: The capitalist system itself.

* Alwyn Lau reads The Malaysian Insider.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication. The Malaysian Insider does not endorse the view unless specified.