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When fantasy is reality, and reality fantasy

WHEN ALL IS SAID and done, the second "Akademi Fantasia", which ended its ten-week run on Saturday, 14 August, made the organisers a lot of money: to vote Malaysians paid 50 sen an SMS, and Bruneians RM2.20.

Fifteen million SMSs – 800,000 came from Brunei – were sent, thrice more than last year. The organisers, Astro, found creative ways of hype and delusion to get more Malaysians to vote.

The media went bonkers and joined in it in breathless prose to make Malaysians forget the crisis in their future as the government continues to insist all is well when it certainly is not.

Getting the citizens to panic or be deluded is an old political trick to divert attention from reality. The United States relies on its old friend, Osama bin Laden, to frighten its citizens to return a bumbling Administration to power.

The sports madness is another, with fights and worse the reality of vicarious celebrations of victory. Even round-the-clock television programmes encourage this inevitable descent into the dream world. All it encourages is to ignore reality.

Akademi Fantasia is Malaysia's way to veer its citizens away from its bumbling administration. It is easy to divert attention. The National Front (BN) government is in tatters because its hold on the Malay community slips away, and knows not how to reverse it.

So shows like Akademi Fantasia, "Malaysian Idol", "Audition" and "Sure Heboh" concerts are all designed to to divert attention.

Malaysia's Islamic religious authorities look askance at them, and they are told to shut up.

The concerts are seen by government politicians as proof of their relevance to the disgruntled youth. It is not, of course, but self-delusion has been, for years, a strong point.

When business and politics mix, religion must take a back seat. Especially when the reality of problems ahead is diverted to the irrelevant reality of who would win the Akademi Fantasia "reality" show.

None of this is discussed in any forum or the media, which sees it as yet another creative way to get more readers, and join the hype and delusion. All that mattered was to divert attention, even if that encouraged excessive entertainment, hedonism and indulgence.

The side effects are cheerfully ignored so that business men could make money and politicians their peace of mind while both descend surely and fairly into the pits.

But another reality crept into this year's Akademi Fantasia. Sabah nationalism asserted itself, and to make a point, organised so the winner would be from the state. It was so successful that two Sabahans reached the finals, one who had been voted out earlier but forced back in by an avalanche of SMs.

When this became known in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian cabinet stepped in and organised its own plan for a Peninsular winner. The cabinet ministers, all from UMNO, focussed on one contestant and whipped up its own vote for him. And he won.

Sabah ministers cry foul but cannot do anything about it. After all, they started it. But they say they should have concentrated on one candidate. Perhaps, but what does it prove? Nothing is achieved, except that politics is alive and well, that interested parties can turn an entertainment irrelevance into a powerful political message.

There are other lessons to be learnt from it. The Akademi Fantasia and the other "infotainment" – a word that so enraged the Malay language gestapo, that it caused a minor controversy of its own; but that, in its own way, showed yet again how irrelevant all this was! – is a glorious time waster that in the end undermines the moral authority of the country and government.

So, who won? Ahmad Zahid Baharuddin or Zahid from the Peninsular; and two runners up from Sabah: Norlinda Nanuwil or Linda; and Mohamed Aizam Mat Saman or Adam. They got their usual goodies, and go about their Warholean 15 minutes of fame, with the press and media falling on their every word. They are touted as role models, although nothing in their background suggest they could be.

Meanwhile, the fantasy world continues. The winners are treated like instant royalty, their words given the same prominent position in the local media as the more irrelevant statements of cabinet ministers. Anyone who could get involved did.

The information minister, Dato' Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadhir, was only too quick to distribute favours and awards: with an eye to the Sabah UMNO votes in next month's UMNO general assembly elections, he promptly awarded Linda 20 episodes of whatever play or sketch she was involved in. The Sabah youth and sports minister, Dato' Masidi Manjun, gleefully described her as a role model, but he clearly did not understand what that meant.

It is instant entertainment, good while it lasts, and disappears from one's view within a day of its ending. As it now already has from Malaysia's media. Yet, the Sabah government cancelled all events at night so Sabahans could view and vote for their favourites. What this means – and this should worry politicians and business men everywhere – is that this mindless entertained can be garnered to score points.

This is justified in the name of people's choice. But is it not curious that the people's choice is denied the people where it matters, but not when it is not. It is an instant reaction to increasing aggressiveness of the people fed up of being marginalised.

We saw that in two remarkable instances: the recent Indian general elections and the Venezuelan referendum. The ordinary voter, fed up of being led by the nose to his own disadvantage, used their vote to throw the BJP-led government out for its political and economic arrogance in India and confirm, in a referendum, a president who put into practice his view that the disadvantaged must have more power and relevance; and in Venezuela, to forestall attempts to withdraw its president, Mr Hugo Chavez.

Descent into fantasia only postpones the inevitable. For it comes with it a political authoritarian agenda that is justified in the shiboleth of the day: Osama bin Laden, declining support, the terrorist threat, financial or fiscal management. This belief that the people can be ignored once elected cannot be erased by Akademi Fantasia of whatever. A time will come when the pent-up emotions would burst open in the ballot box or in the streets.

The BN government faces a crisis which it cannot resolve unless the people come to its aid. It is too proud to ask. The people are not about to offer help, not surprisingly when previous offers in happier times were brusquely rejected. As the crises restricts its options, it must continue to present a brave front. To do that, it must divert attention. The government promotes this fantasia as reality, hoping that the people would take to it as it hopes they would. But the reality is something else. And no one talks of that.

[This is my Chiaroscuro column in malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com) today, 18 August 2004.]

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com