‘America copied us’: Malaysian politicians try to ride on blue wave after Democrats’ midterms win

KUALA LUMPUR - In the wake of the Democrats’ sweep of Congress at the US midterm elections, Malaysian politicians lost no time in drawing favourable comparisons to their own advantage.“We started the blue wave in Negeri Sembilan. America copied us,” Malaysia’s Opposition Leader Hamzah Zainudin said in jest on Nov 5.The term “blue wave” has been used by local media to describe the strong performance of the Barisan Nasional (BN) and Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalitions at the Negeri Sembilan state election on Aug 1.“They used (the midterms) as a way to rebuke the government, that what it was doing was not benefiting the people,” Hamzah, president of the Wawasan party under PN, told a press conference.“If that was a tsunami, then God willing, the wave in Negeri Sembilan will be carried into Melaka... and become another major wave across the country.”The US Democratic Party’s victory in both chambers of Congress - the Senate and House of Representatives - at the Nov 3 midterm elections has also been hailed by US media as a “blue tsunami”.The metaphor is a familiar one in Malaysia: at the 2013 General Election (GE), when Chinese voters switched their support to the Opposition, it was dubbed the “Chinese tsunami”; when PAS made inroads into new territory at the 2022 GE and 2023 state polls, it was described as the “green wave”.Many netizens in Malaysia also drew parallels between the US midterm results and Malaysian politics.On the Democrats’ winning control of Republican stronghold Texas, a Threads user wrote, citing the Chinese-majority Democratic Action Party: “It’s like DAP securing the majority of seats in Kelantan.”Even Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim could not resist making a reference to the US midterms.He said the victory of Abdul El-Sayed of the Democrats in Michigan, the first Muslim to be elected to the Senate, was an example of the growing openness towards racial and religious diversity in the US.“They understand democracy and reject racism. Those who defeated President Donald Trump’s Republican Party in the US are people who oppose racism,” said Anwar, whose PH coalition has been campaigning for a secular, pluralistic Malaysia, at a rally in Melaka on Nov 5.Meanwhile, in a statement on the same day, Democratic Action Party adviser Lim Guan Eng said the Republicans’ defeat was a result of its leaders not helping voters share in the trickle-down benefits of the country’s economic expansion.This is similar to what Malaysia is facing in its two-tier economy, where growth is uneven and skewed towards a few sectors, he added.Political analysts who spoke to The Straits Times, however, were largely unimpressed by the efforts to draw parallels between the US midterms and Malaysia politics. One even called it “bizarre”.The comparison goes only as far as colour, noted Dr Syaza Shukri, who teaches politics at the International Islamic University Malaysia.“It has little to do with the ideology of the Democratic Party,” she said. Many Malaysians “do not know or understand that the reason the Democrats are able to get votes across the demography is because of their progressive agenda”, she added.“None of the main coalitions (in Malaysia) capture what these progressives are fighting for,” she said.DAP adviser Lim Guan Eng said Malaysia’s government should learn from the US Republican Party’s midterm elections defeat, or face their own defeat at the next GE. PHOTO: ST FILEDr Meredith Weiss, political scientist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, described Hamzah’s reference to a US-style blue wave as “bizarre”.She pointed out that BN politicians are the incumbents in Melaka - at the US midterms, the incumbents were voted out.The Malaysian leaders “are simply making the case for an interesting election and trying to gin up interest” for Melaka, she added.Meanwhile, Syaza said what was of interest for many Malaysians was El-Sayed’s win. While the Muslim Senator-elect is part of a minority group in the US, unlike in Malaysia, where Muslims make up the majority of the population, this does not matter to politicians in Malaysia, she noted.“The most important (for Malaysian politicians) is to stress that Muslims can win in America,” she said.It is not just analysts, but netizens have also pointed out the flawed comparisons by politicians in Malaysia.Threads user Hana Belle, for example, asked Malaysian conservatives why they were celebrating the victory of the blue camp, or Democrats.She said: “(You) are the Republicans here.”Sign up for our weekly Asian Insider Malaysia Edition newsletter to make sense of the big stories in Malaysia.