When National Civics Bureau (BTN) chief Ibrahim Saad declared that Malaysians tended to be more racist in election seasons, he wasn’t saying anything we didn’t already know. Malaysians are used to hearing racial rhetoric being thrown around every four or five years as the leaders of our antiquated race-based parties come down from the mountain to stir up communal sentiments for votes.

But what was startling in Ibrahim’s speech at a recent forum in Shah Alam was his appeal to the public to stop blaming politicians for the spike in racist sentiments around election time. He said it was a politician’s job to seek influence.

While we can agree that not all the blame for racism rests on the shoulders of our politicians, we must object to Ibrahim’s attempt to excuse them. Surely, it is at least part of the BTN’s job to contribute to the wiping out of racism. Unfortunately, Ibrahim seems to have shrugged away that duty by refusing to reprimand politicians for their racist rhetoric.

Because the BN government works on a race-based system, it is of course only natural in the segregational formula created by the British that politicians will pander to the respective communities that their parties are supposed to represent. With each election, the prejudicial feelings we hold back for four or five years come out all at once in outbursts of racist rhetoric. The Malays are lazy and entitled, the Chinese are greedy and uncompromising, and the Indians are all criminals. These accusations are spurred on by the rhetoric from the political podiums.

Cybertroopers for the various parties spend all day hurling accusations at each other, building a toxic environment that sucks everyone down to his basest characteristics. And all of that will be turned to venom that ordinary citizens spew at each other. This is all in accordance with the divide and conquer strategy set out by invaders who have long left us, and whose particular view on nation building was “don’t blame us, blame each other.”

We’re tired of being divided and conquered. We want to be engaged as Malaysians, not as members of ethnic communities. We want politicians to appeal to us through our common goal to grow as a nation, as one people.

Unfortunately, we are engaged on lines of division, not unity. Is it the politicians’ fault that we are racist around election time? Not ultimately, perhaps. But nothing they say or do helps very much in bringing us together, and that is a fatal flaw all parties must fix before GE14.

It has been more than half a century since the British left. It’s high time we left the divide and conquer paradigm and look for a new way of thinking that works for all of us and not just the elite, the wealthy, and the influential. It is time we understood that we are not separate from each other.