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Chiaroscuro: No Smoke Without Fire

I contributed this piece for my Chiaroscuro column at malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com) today, 19 March 01

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19 March 01

malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com)

No Smoke Without Fire

CHIAROSCURO
MGG Pillai

3:02pm, Mon: In mid-August 1998, rumours of bad blood between the prime minister and his deputy spread like wildfire. However, the newspapers ignored the rumours, nor even to suggest all was not well between the two.

The prime minister, irritated when confronted with it, asked famously: "Do I have to kiss him in public to show nothing is wrong?" Yet, two weeks later, on Sept 2, Anwar Ibrahim was summarily sacked from Umno of which he was then deputy president, and the government, in a test of will that had lasted months.

Malaysians hear of major Malaysian developments first from the rumour mill. It would be denied, the anger often rising in tandem with how true it is. Then the denouement: it is confirmed. And said with a straight face. It does not matter if it is one of policy, changes in the cabinet, or a new legislation.

Is the MCA president and deputy president at loggerheads? The denials came swift and furious, before the rumours were confirmed. It is a rule of thumb that a rumour denied must be true. Politicians and cabinet ministers stall the rumours until they can no longer be.

Now the rumours have the prime minister and his finance minister at loggerheads so bad that the two men do not see each other when once they did several times a day. But officially, it is still a rumour.

So, in the Kampung Medan communal clashes, the rumours abounded more than official statements. Even the newspapers did not accept the official claim that what happened was not racial. It was soon referring to racial clashes.

Since the government insists on revealing the race of those involved, Malays and Indians, how can it insist that it is not racially inspired? The newspapers? account would not have been readable if one did not flesh its reports.

Confusion confounded

The Star, in a commentary, says the foreign press write fiction, not what happens. It is a fact of life that when an event happens in an off-beaten area of Petaling Jaya, even the fellows in a distant state capital assume the town itself is on fire. What then in a foreign country.

It is the job of reporters to tell its readers, at home and abroad, what happened as succinctly as possible and in context. The reader in Argentina knows not or cares where Kampung Medan or Old Klang Road is, but he would like to be told it is in Malaysia and in Kuala Lumpur. And the story is written for him to read.

I lived a year in Boston in the mid-1970s, and the only news I had of Malaysia that whole year in the three local papers I read was of a few people being arrested under the Internal Security Act. It is to this kind of editors and magazines, uninterested of the world outside, to whom foreign reportage tries to educate. It is how it would continue, so long as the world outside cares not the local impulses surrounding Kampung Medan.

This is forgotten. Not just by newspapers here, but also by officials. Wisma Putra briefed some ambassadors about the communal clash. It confused more than elucidate. One ambassador said he was more confused about what happened than after reading the local newspapers.

What do you think these ambassadors would report home about these events? He would say the official version is so confused and disjointed that government officials fumble and flounder, strengthening the growing belief that not only the prime minister but the government is in trouble. It is this version that eventually would trickle down to the investors, not a Reuters or AP report.

The Star, said its reporters, checked the official version of the number dead with physical checks at hospitals, and found it to be correct. Now, is that fact or fiction? Especially when no Malaysian newspaper worth its salt would second guess the government, especially when told that its version is the truth. If it did, and discovered the official version to be wrong, would it point that out? No. Would it amend the official figures? God forbid, no!

Strangely, at times like these, the foreign press is reviled for its lack of mathematical accuracy. The foreign press reports 10 dead when it should be three - and because of that, what they write generally is fiction. But this campaign, for that is what it is, is to mask severe strains in the administration, and to divert attention away from what caused it and why.

Leaden hand

What happened in Kampung Medan are not isolated incidents. There are several cancerous tumours on the underbelly of relatively prosperous towns. It does not require much for isolated explosions. This cannot be addressed by insisting that rumour-mongers must be detained under the Internal Security Act. Arresting them would not address the larger issues long ignored.

Rumours cannot be stopped. In Malaysia, it is an alternative to news. Not because it is false, but because it is sometimes correct. Otherwise, how do we know through the rumour mill what happens behind closed doors so accurately that it would have been leaked from one of the participants?

When you clamp down on it with a leaden hand, as now, it would explode into myriads of rumours, each more frightening than the last. There is one course the government could have taken, even if it goes against the grain: tell the truth, at least as much of the truth as it can without compromising national security.

Last modified:Monday March 19, 3:09 pm

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my