2 telling cases of cognitive dissonance

 

From Terence Netto

This past week we have seen a couple of instances of cognitive dissonance which occur when people say diametrically opposed things about the same matter.

These days the most obvious example of this affliction is when people purport to look at the evidence and say they don’t believe there has been climate change, a stance that can drive climate alarmists berserk.

Well, at least this much can be said about climatological evidence: it’s abstruse and so parsing it can be difficult.

But what about matters that are much less obscure and upon which firm conclusions can be drawn?

Why should cognitive dissonance occur on a matter such as Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah’s announcement that, at 84 years age and 11 terms as an MP, he will give GE15 the miss?

You see, Ku Li, as he is familiarly known, has his strong supporters who can be counted on to prevail upon him to stay on.

After all, didn’t Ku Li recently describe himself as an “agent of necessity” in his struggle to revive the Umno of 1946, which he argues is the true Umno, not the “Umno Baru” he says Dr Mahathir Mohamad foisted in 1988?

An “agent of necessity” has to hover around if he hopes to bring to an end a masquerade that he holds is the cause of the grand old party’s advanced state of decay, with two of its top leaders indicted for massive forms of corruption.

But Ku Li did say he will retire as MP for Gua Musang. His interviewer has this announcement on videotape.

Unless, of course, Ku Li does a Lingam-like – “It looks like me, it sounds like me, but it is not me” – repudiation, it can safely be taken that the Kelantanese prince told the Free Malaysia Today reporter who interviewed him that he wants out of GE15.

True, politicians are licensed to juggle with ambiguity. About grave and weighty matters, that resort is understandable; on lesser ones, being ambiguous suggest a lack of seriousness.

Following his quit disclosure to FMT, Ku Li must have been besieged by his supporters who prevailed upon him to back away from his announcement. Though he didn’t publicly renounce it, he told friends they could say he was misconstrued.

His intention to quit is not a grave matter, but trying to revive the Umno of 1946 is one. If you are an “agent of necessity” for its restoration, it hardly needs stressing you have to be a person of resolution.

Anwar Ibrahim is a politician of aspiration more than resolution. Earlier this week, he announced that a formal proposal has been submitted for a merger between the party he leads, PKR, with Amanah, a component of the Pakatan Harapan coalition Anwar heads.

Barely had the proposal wended its way into the public domain than the deputy president of Amanah, Salahuddin Ayub, piped up to deny it had even been raised in Pakatan Harapan leadership circles.

Amanah split off from PAS in 2015, a move initiated by the professionals who joined PAS in numbers in the wake of Anwar’s brutal decapitation in government and Umno in late 1998.

They were a group, tertiary-qualified in the secular disciplines, who wanted to modernise a conservative party and make it and Islam appealing to non-Muslims.

They had a sympathetic patron in Nik Aziz Nik Mat, the PAS spiritual leader of high integrity and broad appeal. When Nik Aziz died in early 2014, this professional cohort were denounced as fifth columnists by the conservatives and wiped out in party polls the following year.

They left to set up Amanah.

It was a good move and so was it to ally with the opposition coalition which had PKR and DAP as components. But Amanah has yet to succeed in their mission to be an Islamist party of non-sectarian bent (non-Muslims can join) and broad appeal.

It just might be that the dogmatic aspects of the religion limit the latitude it allows for liberalisation. Amanah has not exactly covered itself in glory over the Nur Sajat and Timah whisky issues. Islamist literalism places decided limits on liberal interpretation.

It wasn’t a surprise that the most Islamist of its top leaders, Salahuddin, was the one to scotch the story that Amanah is considering merging with PKR. It was also no surprise that someone like Anwar, with his penchant for papering over serious differences to emphasise similarities, was the one who made the implausible proposition of a merger even before it apparently had been internally vetted.

Cognitive dissonance is a serious problem in a political arena where religion plays a dominant role. It’s a muddled idea to allow such dominance. In politics, muddled ideas can lead to sorry consequences. - FMT

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.

✍ Credit given to the original owner of this post : ☕ Malaysians Must Know the TRUTH

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