March 30, 2026
KUALA LUMPUR – EVERY morning at 11am, a farmer feeds his flock of turkeys. A “scientist” among the fowl observes the feeding trend for one year and concludes that, “The Law of the Universe states that food arrives every morning at 11am”.
The turkey scientist’s empirical evidence is that the law is predictable and holds true every single day.
However, on the fourth Thursday in November, Thanksgiving Day, when the farmer arrives at 11am as usual, instead of bringing food, he brings a knife and slaughters the entire flock.
The moral of the story is beware false patterns. Just because we observe a law that holds for a period of time, it doesn’t mean it is an absolute truth of the universe.
The other moral is observation vs reality: We might simply be “turkeys” observing a pattern that exists only because a higher power (or “Farmer”) has allowed it to exist for a specific period.
You might recognise this from Chinese sci-fi author Liu Cixin’s Hugo Award-winning book, The Three-Body Problem. I’ve been watching a 30-episode China-produced series based on the book, which explores a universe where one disillusioned scientist’s secret message to the cosmos triggers a global scientific crisis and an alien invasion.
Liu’s “Farmer Hypothesis” is a disturbing metaphor that illustrates the limitations of scientific observation and the fragility of what we perceive as “laws of nature”.
As I see the world through a political lens, I immediately thought of the Farmer Hypothesis in relation to Malaysian politics. The theory first held that Barisan Nasional was an immovable constant of the universe; a “Law of Physics” in Malaysian politics that could not be defeated.
Most political analysts and politicians believed it was statistically and structurally impossible for the coalition to fall in the 14th General Election (GE14) in 2018. They relied on decades of empirical data – 13 consecutive victories – since 1957 to prove that the farmer would always bring the feed.
Even Opposition leaders at the time told me that it would take at least another two to three elections to bring down Barisan – meaning it would be 2028 before they could gain power. In fact, I ran into a top Pakatan Harapan leader while in Sabah in 2018 and he said his coalition only hoped to secure enough seats to form a formidable Opposition, not actually defeat Barisan.
However, the grand old coalition was ultimately slaughtered on Thanksgiving Day.
GE14 proved to be the 11am appointment during which the rules of the game fundamentally changed. Just as the turkey’s scientific observation failed to account for the farmer’s true intentions, the political establishment failed to see that the patterns of the past were not a guarantee of the future. The “Law of Barisan Invincibility” wasn’t a law at all – it was simply a streak that ended the moment the butcher’s knife of voter sentiment finally swung.
The voters are the Farmer. In GE14, they decided they had had enough of Barisan.
Another Farmer Hypothesis is that almost all Chinese voters support DAP and its coalition, Pakatan Rakyat/Pakatan Harapan.
In GE13 in 2013, Pakatan received 80% of the community’s votes. It was called the Chinese tsunami, or “Apa lagi Cina mahu?” (What else do the Chinese want?) In GE14 in 2018, 95% of Chinese voters voted for Pakatan. The rejection of Barisan was almost absolute. In GE15 (2022), it was also about 95%.
But the Farmer Hypothesis doesn’t hold in Sarawak and Sabah.
Take Sarawak: In the 2021 state elections, the ruling GPS coalition secured a crushing supermajority of 76 out of 82 state seats, leaving the DAP with just two seats – a drastic fall from the seven they held previously. Then the pattern flipped during GE15 in 2022, when the DAP recovered to win five parliamentary seats in the state.
The volatility is even more pronounced in Sabah. In the 2020 Sabah polls, DAP was at a high point, winning six state seats. However, by the 2025 polls, they were reduced to eight eggs. In Malaysian political parlance, egg (telur) refers to zero, signifying a total wipeout.
In Borneo, the Farmer doesn’t just change the feeding habit; he often changes the entire landscape before the turkey can even finish its breakfast.
In the peninsula, the DAP remains a solid force, appearing to command near-absolute backing from the Chinese community. However, there are growing signs that the Farmer – ie, Chinese voters – might be preparing to discard the turkey.
After GE15 in 2022, a palpable sense of disillusionment has taken root. Many Chinese voters feel that the DAP – once the fearless lion of the Opposition – has become a quiet passenger in the unity government. They point to the perceived slow pace of institutional reforms, the lack of progress on the recognition of the Unified Examination Certificate, and the party’s relative silence on controversial policies to avoid upsetting its new Malay-community-based partners.
In the latest political controversy involving alleged “corporate Mafia” and NexG Berhad, the DAP has remained uncharacteristically quiet. If it was still in the Opposition it would have been a loud, clucking turkey, relentlessly demanding to know the identity of “Mr R” and the PKR MP to whom businessman Victor Chin claims he paid RM9.5mil in “service fees” (which many view as protection money).
Instead, as a senior partner with 40 parliamentary seats in the Madani government, DAP has largely retreated into a cautious silence. Even as former PKR deputy president Datuk Seri Rafizi Ramli takes to social media to reveal identities and supposed links to party leaders (all officially denied), DAP’s “reformist” voice is conspicuously missing.
To the voters – the Farmer – this silence looks less like strategic patience and more like a turkey that has grown too fat and comfortable on the government’s feed to notice that the knife is being sharpened for GE16.
DAP’s wipeout in the 2025 Sabah polls sent a shockwave across the South China Sea. It serves as a stark warning to the party’s leadership: the Chinese vote is no longer a “fixed deposit” (a Law of Nature).
The conventional argument for why the Chinese in the peninsula will not desert the DAP is the lack of a viable alternative – the turkey farm’s fence is Perikatan Nasional. The community, which once supported PAS when they were fellow turkeys under the Pakatan banner, has no desire to see a PAS-led Green Wave take federal power.
But the universe of the Three-Body Problem is defined by the sudden appearance of unexpected “Third Bodies”. New options are emerging that could disrupt the DAP’s monopoly:
> Parti Warisan: Having effectively defeated DAP in its strongholds in the 2025 Sabah polls, Warisan has proven it can peel away urban Chinese voters who are tired of peninsular-centric compromises. If Warisan president Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal successfully exports his Sabah Formula to urban parliamentary seats in the peninsula, the DAP’s fixed deposit might evaporate.
> Team Rafizi: A faction has formed within PKR. Rafizi, acting more like an internal whistleblower than a party loyalist, has the support of about 10 PKR MPs in key urban seats. This group has begun to position itself as the government’s conscience, loudly tackling scandals such as the NexG/corporate Mafia case, while the DAP leadership remains silent.
The risk for the party is clear. By staying silent to protect the Madani government, the fat turkey may find itself on the Thanksgiving menu alongside its PKR partner when GE16 arrives.