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156 Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid and Che Hamdan Che Mohd Razali

rhetoric. Anti-PH activists earnestly exploited these statements to paint a
gloomy picture of communal relations that could only deteriorate should a
regime change occur, and so convince Malay-Muslims not to switch their
loyalty to PH (Engku Ahmad Fadzil 2018b). Perhaps more dramatic still,
7
in October 2017, Zamihan landed in hot soup for a speech in a mosque in
Shah Alam, Selangor (a video recording of which went viral online), not only
chiding the Johor sultan for disallowing a Muslim-only launderette in Muar,
Johor, but also, with racially in ammatory tone and vocabulary, labelling
the Chinese in particular as ‘unhygienic’ (Amar Shah 2017). Although the
police detained the unrepentant Zamihan brie y for sedition investigations,
both the BN’s non-Malay component parties and the sultans of Johor and
Selangor censured him, and both states revoked his religious tauliah (teaching
credentials), Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said that he was
still needed for his role in Malaysian security forces’ terrorist deradicalisation
programmes ( e Star 2017b).

From Sniping to Campaign
ese e orts to rally Malay-Muslim sentiment to remain loyal to UMNO
and BN by branding the DAP, and hence PH as a whole, as dangerously
Christian, presaged the incumbent coalition’s approach in its GE14 campaign.
Spearheaded by UMNO, BN’s campaign strategy against PH centred on
portraying the opposition coalition as dominated by DAP. BN strategists
hoped that, with DAP’s image as a supposedly anti-Malay and anti-Islam party
not only already etched in Malay-Muslims’ minds via half a century of state-
controlled propaganda and political indoctrination, but now burnished by
IKSIM’s and other allies’ latest sallies, Malay voters would be dissuaded from
casting protest votes for PH. Campaign messages argued against changing
the regime, insisting that the stakes were too high for the future of Islam,
Malay institutions, and the status of Malay-Muslims in their native country
(Malaysiakini 2017; e Star 2017a). Indeed, having long been backed by the
Chinese working class, the DAP found it hard to shed its image as a ‘Chinese
party’, despite its growing ranks of non-Chinese members and candidates, its
record of contesting and cooperating with Malay and multiethnic parties in
BA and PR, and its newly forged PH-based friendship with PPBM, whose
chairman Dr Mahathir and president Muhyiddin Yassin were once rather
notorious for their Malay- rst rather than Malaysian- rst leanings. In
portraying a less communal image, DAP risked losing votes from among the
Chinese grassroots. In fact, the BN-member Malaysian Chinese Association

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