The politics of booze and kampua mee

Coupled with lurid details of Anwar Ibrahim’s purportedly unlawful sexual preferences to illustrate the perforations in Pakatan Rakyat’s facade, Barisan Nasional seems to think it’s got it made for the country’s 11th and hopefully final, by-election.

It is sad and frankly quite pathetic to see that we have regressed to using such petty frivolities as means to win a by-election in a reasonably mature democracy.

It started with booze in Hulu Selangor and moved on to a local noodle dish called ‘Kampua Mee’ in Sibu.

Coupled with lurid details of Anwar Ibrahim’s purportedly unlawful sexual preferences to illustrate the perforations in Pakatan Rakyat’s facade, Barisan Nasional seems to think it’s got it made for the country’s 11th and hopefully final, by-election.

It is sad and frankly quite pathetic to see that we have regressed to using such petty frivolities as means to win a by-election in a reasonably mature democracy.

How much inroad did the BN really make when it called PKR’s Datuk Zaid Ibrahim an alcoholic during the April 25 Hulu Selangor by-election?

Does a person’s preference for a few swigs off a bottle truly mirror his ability to serve a constituency?

While alcohol was used as campaign fodder to stave off the Muslim voters’ confidence in the PR, today, the BN has chosen another little gimmick to protect its five term-held Sibu fort — the township’s signature Foochow kampua mee dish.

A huge billboard erected by the SUPP camp at the Brooke roundabout in Sibu shows a picture of the noodle dish with a little caption in Chinese characters.


DAP candidate Wong having Kampua mee with his family. - Picture by Jack Ooi
The message they seek to disseminate is simple, albeit a tad dubious: Kampua Mee will not taste the same if one changes its recipe. Vote for BN to retain its orginal flavour.
In simpler, more explanatory terms, BN has returned to stone-age politics by hoping to instil fear in the Chinese by saying that a vote the DAP is a vote for PAS and a vote for an Islamic state.

This means separate queues for women in the public areas, a blanket ban on the sale of alcohol and of course, no pork meat in Kampua noodles!

Apparently, a DAP MP in the BN-ruled state of Sarawak (which by the way, is en route state elections in the next few months) would have enough clout to stop restauranteur from serving pork in their kampua mee or in any dish, for that matter.

SUPP Sibu’s publicity director Daniel Ngieng made a feeble attempt to defend this campaign gimmick by saying the noodle analogy was to illustrate DAP’s agenda of “change”.

DAP’s “change”, he said, meant a change in the Chinese community’s favourite kampua mee since the party’s affiliation with Islamist PAS would not allow pork in the noodles.

It is hard to tell if the BN machinery truly believes that stooping to such an elementary level would help it recapture Chinese support.

When the voters for DAP face the ballot boxes on polling day, will their minds paint pictures of winged bowls of kampua mee, fluttering away and out of their reach?

Or perhaps BN just prefers the anaesthesia of ignorance to numb the painful truth that try as they might, holding the “Islamic state” threat like a guillotine above the heads of the Chinese is a sorry sign of only one thing — desperation. -MT