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The Problem With Tun Daim Zainuddin

The Prime Minister allowed his finance minister, Tun Daim Zainuddin, to go on two months' leave, when he should not have. The Eighth Malaysia Plan, announced yesterday (23 April 01), requires him to be around, yet he was allowed to leave. But Tun Daim goes to office as usual, will attend international conferences, and Parliament, as usual, would not go abroad except when conferences require him to. "I am on leave," he says proudly to reporters. His health is fine. When he is asked why goes on leave at this crucial juncture, he retorts: "Am I not entitled to my leave?". Dato' Seri Mahathir thinks it clever to remark that Tun Daim has come to hear him introduce the Eighth Malaysia Plan.

But it skirts the issue. Why is the finance minister, at such difficult economic times as we now face, allowed to go on leave, and for two months!, when he should be here setting the economy right? If he is on leave, what is he doing in office looking at papers? If he looks at papers, then he should cancel his leave and spare us the "wayang kulit". There is no rift, of course, between Dato' Seri Mahathir and Tun Daim, as there was no rift between Dato' Seri Mahathir and one Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim six days before the latter was unceremoniously booted out of cabinet and into Sungei Buloh prison.

There is more to it than we are told. Dato' Seri Mahathir must come clean and take us into his confidence. The rumour in town, from a source I trust implicitly, is that Tun Daim gave the Prime Minister an undated letter of resignation and a note he was taking two months leave and left. That the two men are not on cordial terms anymore is not new; that Tun Daim openly talks of the unfair advantages the Bin Mahathir clan has is no more a secret; that Tun Daim himself has told diplomats that he does not see the Old Man as often as he once did cannot be denied.

More than that, Tun Daim is asked to account for UMNO assets, which he had full control of, and is strained much by the sharp decline in the stock market. The Prime Minister himself is angry at the Daim-engineered bailout of Tan Sri Tajuddin Ali from MAS, and at the government pension funds role in the failed listing of what he calls a private company, TimeDotCom. This company is in the control of a Daim acolyte, Tan Sri Halim Saad. Tun Daim, in other words, cannot go on leave if he is separated from his books, in the Treasury and in UMNO.

The UMNO ground wants Tun Daim to account, regards him as the Rasputin to Dato' Seri Mahathir. Danamodal and Danaharta are set up, it is widely believed, to rescue the companies the establishment cronies, courtiers, siblings mismanaged. More than that, Tun Daim controls as much as 75 per cent of all counters listed on the KLSE, about half under his control, thanks to the CLOB purchase through a crony. The KLSE does not dance to his tune any more, and news of his leave, and expected resignation, is discounted. More stay away from the stock market, and even the last minute manipulation of the KLCI helps uplift market sentiment.

The Prime Minister distances himself from Tun Daim. He is prepared to sacrifice Tun Daim if he could be saved. He would have to throw richer and more powerful morsels of politicians to the raring angry ground in the hope that he could stave them off. It is probably too late for that. He needs someone resolute and determined than he believes his deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is, and roots his star on to the coatails of the Hermit of Langgak Golf, also known as the Musang from Kelantan, one Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah. They are, it is reported, constantly telephoning each other, sometimes for as long as two hours at a time.

But could Tengku Razaleigh pull off what Dato' Seri Mahathir cannot, and restore UMNO to its pristine glory. I doubt it. But if there is one who possible could, it is the sly Fox from Kelantan. He comes only if Dato' Seri Mahathir himself clears some of the more pressing problems that drag UMNO down. Among them is Tun Daim, the aggressively rich and corrupt mentris besars and cabinet ministers, and other impediments for which the sole blame must rest with the Prime Minister.

The matter is serious enough for him to attempt the task. Hence his call for the filthy rich to be sidelined in UMNO, and other unworkable proposals. For the bottom line for the Prime Minister is to ensure that he is not doubly damned: he split UMNO into two in 1988, turning the national movement into a political party, and splits it again over how he managed the Anwar problem. If he could is, of course, another matter.

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