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The Cabinet begin its campaign for general elections

I wrote this for my column in Harakah (issue 15-31 May 2002), out today.

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15-31 May 2002

Harakah

Column

The Cabinet begins its campaign for general elections

By M.G.G. Pillai

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, says general elections would be in 2004. Which means it would not. It would be in 2003. Or even, though unlikely, this year. Even UMNO disagrees with the Prime Minister, and pushes to prepare for one earlier than 2004. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, set the tone: UMNO, not the National Front (BN), is ready for the polls; it regains what it lost when it sacked and humiliated his predecessor, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, and the Malay community deserted it.

That is all in the past, he avers. BN victories in recent by-elections proves not the power of money but of UMNO getting its act together. Once UMNO members would not want anything to do with the party, felt ashamed to raise the UMNO flag. Not any more. "But today we see many party flags and at an official meeting I attended recently, some 15,000 supporters were present," he says.

That he has to say it, often like a cracked gramophone record, is proof that what he says must be taken with a pinch of salt. UMNO is in dissarray. Dato' Seri Abdullah can attract a crowd of 15,000. He is after all the prime minister-in-waiting. Would the Prime Minister dare to be at a divisional meeting without the tightest of security and those who came thoroughly screened? Could cabinet ministers, MPs and other elected officials go to their constituencies or UMNO divisions and expect a full house?

UMNO believes its role is to be the leader of the Malays, who have no right to question or even have a view contrary to the leaders. This is made worse with the breakdown of institutions -- even in UMNO -- and it is only brute force, control and threats that make its success now possible. Once it had the unremitting support of the people. Now it has to fight every inch for it, and resort to underhand means when it cannot get it.

In the 1999 general elections, UMNO was deeply divided. The Anwar humiliation was less than a year old. The Malay vote was split. The Prime Minister and UMNO did not know if it came or went. It was the non-Malay members of the BN coalition, especially a unified MCA, that pulled UMNO through, with the solid support of Johore, Sabah and Sarawak that brought it to victory. The time, the MCA is terribly split, the Prime Minister's band-aid solution causing even more turmoil amongst the Chinese community.

UMNO is split over who should be next prime minister, if the Prime Minister would contine, if it could go to the polls with Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim still in jail, if Puteri UMNO should be allowed to be led by its leader, Ms Azalina Othman Said. Wanita UMNO is upset at Puteri UMNO's success. Women who would not join Wanita UMNO rush in droves to Puteri UMNO, and it is seen as a threat. Does the unity Dato' Seri Abdullah insists UMNO now has include this villifaction of the Puteri UMNO leader in scurrilous newspaper articles? Those behind it, like the alleged plot to assasinate the Prime Minister, include those in the cabinet and government.

Which is why the magazine which reported on Ms Azalina was not reined in when the allegations first surfaced. It was only when it published photographs of undergraduates at a Malaysian university making love did it suspend it for three months. If it had been anyone else, it would have been banned outright. The magazine, Perdana Sari, is edited by Mr Khalid Jeffri, who specialises in scurrilous books, one of which "50 reasons why Anwar cannot be PM", forced Dato' Seri Anwar to get the police to investigate, and that downed him.

He has written other scurrilous books. It is widely believed he is paid by unknown hands to write his vitriol. This is not unusual. Many a writer earns a living by such means. And they survive because many in UMNO, not knowing how to pull down a popular leader, resort to such tactics. This is how Malay leaders have destroyed their rivals for power, though the methods they used would have rather more gory.

So, as it approaches the next general elections, UMNO has to put its house in order. This time, both MCA and UMNO behave as headless chickens. The MCA cannot depend on UMNO to see its candidates romp home, and nor could UMNO of the MCA. In private conversations, the very men who say UMNO could not be stronger cannot see how. What helps it is the equally dysfunctional opposition. If the Opposition every has any hope of defeating the BN, it must be a coalition of racial parties. But PAS's Islamic agenda horrifies the others, and so one is unlikely.

In the BN, the same pressures apply but UMNO is seen as more moderate in Islamic matters, although in truth it is not. What drives Malaysian politics these days is which brand of Islam is the more preferable -- UMNO's or PAS's. Politics in Malaysia, whatever anyone might say, is the politics of the Malay. It has become more so since UMNO decided it must be committed to an Islamic, not a multiracial, nation.

The multiracial basis of Malaysian politics, once strong, is now eroded beyond repair. Which is why the deputy prime minister is confident of UMNO being ready for the polls. If he had said it as the UMNO deputy president, it would have raised no eyebrows. But he spoke as deputy prime minister of the BN government. So, does he mean what he says or is it a feeble effort to get disbelieving UMNO member back on board?

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