The use of the PKR logo by the opposition pact may be more than just a “sign of unity.”
It may well be a psychological ploy, subliminally scaled to confuse the veterans into voting PKR.
THE THIRD FORCE
Every other writer has taken to the internet with perspectives on why Dr Mahathir Mohamad chose PKR to represent the opposition pact. Raja Petra Kamarudin has it that the final battle is going to be about “the Malays vs the Chinese proxy,” while I myself have written about “the Malays vs the (Chinese controlled) Malays.” And that’s the gospel truth – no amount of debate can scratch the idea that PKR has effectively been reduced to an Ali Baba concern by the DAP.
What this means, is that both Malaysia Today and The Third Force are resolute with the idea that the DAP is just as determined as Mahathir is to steal the 14th general election (GE14) by splitting the Malay vote. Had this been GE12 or GE13, such a ploy would most certainly have worked in UMNO’s favour. But this time around, Mahathir has got a new message for Malays aged 55 years and above, a message he feels will swing the Malay pendulum right in his direction.
By using the PKR logo, he’s hinting to the veterans that GE14 is all about “Parti Najib” vs “UMNO 2.0,” meaning, the UMNO of today isn’t really UMNO but a dictatorship ‘belonging’ to Prime Minister Dato’ Seri Najib Razak. To convince the veterans that he’s telling the truth, he spent close to a year labelling the current government as a “kleptocratic dictatorship” that sacked anyone who criticised Najib.
That has inspired some veterans to think that PKR is a revival of Mahathir’s UMNO, albeit with a dab of multiculturalism and diversity to it all. But Mahathir knows that mere rhetoric wins the battle not, that at some point, he needed to plant symbols in the minds of the veterans, symbols implying PKR to be “a new UMNO that’s fairly represented just the way Onn Jaafar imagined it.”
So to accomplish that, this is what he did:
