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Ketari III: Elections Commission makes a faux pas

The Elections Commission has fixed polling day for the Ketari byelections on 31 March 2002. None, including those in the government it would have consulted, saw it fit to point out the significance of that date. Not the MCA, not the MIC, not the Gerakan, not the Christians amongst them. Those I consulted in the EC thought I was bonkers, insisting that it alone had the right to fix the polling day. I asked him if he would object if polling day was fixed on Hari Raya Haji? Would the MIC keep quiet if a byelection in Sungei Siput was held on Deepavali? So, why is the Ketari byelection held on Easter Sunday? Why has none in MCA, Gerakan and the National Front seen it? Why did not the tourism and culture minister, Dato' Seri Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadhir, with his policy of celebrating Malaysia as a phantasmagoria of races, cultures, religions and festivals, object? Or is Malaysia's multicultural, multiracial society only for the tourists to celebrate?

Ketari is a Chinese area, so it is fair to assume Christianity, in its numberous shades and sects, is the religion of many. None in the National Front (BN) nor the Opposition has yet harked on it. Why? The BN is the more culpable. Why did they keep quiet? Or did they not know? Or were they afraid to object for fear of what the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, may think of them? Or was it an electoral ploy to tell the Chinese in Ketari it is UMNO and the Malays who determine if they vote and when? I could not believe BN would allow the Elections Commission to make a stupid mistake. I thought it would be corrected. I was wrong. Then I had three e-mails from Bentong residents; one, a staunch Christian and Gerakan supporter, is so angry about it that he would vote DAP. He tells me he is not alone.

Another e-mail says that when I wrote about Dr Mahathir Mohamed's promise to Chinese editors of not closing down Chinese schools, I should have mentioned that Dr Mahathir, faced with a revolt from Chinese education groups in the runup to the 1999 general election, accepted all the demands of the Chinese education groups, only to repudiate it after his victory. He promised, with a loaded gun to his head, to promise what he had no intention to. Would his latest suffer the same fate? How would we know, he asks?

The Gerakan president, Dato' Seri Lim Kheng Yaik, meanwhile, insists all outstanding issues in the constituency but for "one or two" have been resolved, and says the party is ready to nail DAP's lies. What are the issues? He expects the DAP to ask about vision schools, SJK (C) Damansara school, the Islamic state, and the Employees' Provident Fund's (EPF) low returns. That is a start. Could he tell us what his party's view on these issues are. The Gerakan is in the governing National Front (BN). The non-Malay parties in it have no point of view when Dr Mahathir unconstitutionally declared Malaysia an Islamic state. But is up in arms when the DAP has an electoral link with the theocratic PAS. What is sauce for the goose is, in his view, not for the gander. I have tried for months, without luck, to discover the MCA's and the Gerakan's views on what Dr Lim says would be issues in the election. Could he at least tell us what his party's views are, at a press conference or during a ceremah during the campaign?

He is defensive. The MCA is not about to work hard so a Gerakan state assemblyman could be returned. Besides, the MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, has to take the lead in his nemesis, Dato' Lim Ah Lek's fief; one of his key lieutenants is MP for Bentong, of which Ketari is one state constituency. He is on his own. Pahang UMNO Youth has decided discretion is the better part of valour and would concentrate only on the Malay areas, which include Janda Baik and Genting Highlands, far removed from Ketari. The constituency is, to not put a fine point to it, gerrymandered. No one would admit to it. But look at the constituency boundary and you would know what I mean. So, Dr Lim believes attacking the DAP to retain the constituency for the Gerakan is good politics. It is not.

This byelection, and the cynicism with which the BN prepares for it, is a harbinger of the future. UMNO Youth admits it would concentrate only on the Malays. The MCA is caught in turf battles in Bentong, and cannot deliver. The Malay votes is fractured by the divide the fate of jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, caused. More important, it reduced the Gerakan's majority in 1999 by 90 per cent from 1995. The Gerakan is rightly afraid of its shadow to attack the DAP even before nomination. Does it have a policy on Ketari? It had none for two terms, and its state assemblyman, whose death caused this byelection, too ill to do his work. He could not talk because of cancer; yet he was the Gerakan candidate in 1999.

So, it goes into battle with the cards stacked against it. But the odds are its candidate be returned: the BN stacks the cards towards it in every election. The rules are blur and in its favour that it is all but impossible for the opposition to unseat it. It is this cynicism that makes Malaysians look for redress other than at the ballot box. It is not widespread, but the mood is at odds with the government's commitment to electoral representation. The subtle threats would be more apparent in this than at any other. The ground shifts, perhaps for good. So that did not work in Lunas; it did in Indera Kayangan; probably would in Ketari. That is why it is too close to call who would romp home on Easter Sunday. After all, elections in Malaysia are free but not fair.

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