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Some Home Truths Told In Deafening Silence

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, returned on Saturday, 20 July 2002, to the venue of his unscripted resignation for the third annual dinner of the UMNO Overseas Clubs Alumni Organisation (Pertubuhan Alumni Kelab-Kelab UMNO Luar Negara) at the Putra World Trade Centre's (PWTC) Dewan Merdeka. He had harsh words for Kedah UMNO, without naming it, for not pulling its weight during the Pendang and Anak Bukit bye-elections. PAS retained its votes in 1999, its loss and win proof UMNO has yet to regain the Malay vote. This was not what they had come to hear, and so heard it in deafening silence. The BN tactic is to swamp a byelection with more outside help than voters once worked. Not any more. The highhandedness, the promises unkept, work started to impress ending the day after polling no matter who won, the arrogance after impede in getting the vote. The BN works a workable theory to death, and cannot understand why.

The UMNO out-of-towners lived in hotels in Kedah and Perlis, out of touch even with Kedah UMNO folk. UMNO had to win both Pendang and Anak Bukit constituencies to regain its cultural ground. The bye-elections were called when Dato' Fadhil Noor, who held both, died after a heart operation last month. But it shot itself in the foot at every opportunity. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, in overall charge, insisted he should not be blamed if UMNO did not regain the two seats. He did not want his future as prime minister jeopardised by an efficient PAS campaign in the Prime Minister's home state. Dr Mahathir took the unusual step to go on television and radio for voters to support the UMNO candidates. What UMNO leaders said in public about the results, they contradicted in private.

The divide between UMNO and the voters remain as intractible in Kedah and not only there. Dr Mahathir's home is in Anak Bukit, so his state assemblyman is from PAS and has been since 1995. The BN had to be returned in Anak Bukit for the two-thirds majority in the Kedah state assembly it lost in the Lunas bye-election earlier. Wresting Pendang from PAS is a poor substitute. The Kedah voter decided to split his loyalty, give one to UMNO and one to PAS, but made sure UMNO got the wrong one. With a general election looming within a year, BN and UMNO must anticipate, if they proceed as now, of losing the state to PAS and its coalition partners.

UMNO knew it fought against odds. The BN campaign stumbled from the start. PAS wrested Pendang in 1999, Anak Bukit in 1995. The UMNO candidates did not impress, both defeated in 1999, unpopular in their areas, arrogant, and defeated as many predicted then they would. UMNO should have chosen more acceptable candidates. The PAS candidates were a medical doctor and an engineer, and with greater rapport with their voters than the BN candidates.

What once worked does not any more. In the Indera Kayangan byelection in Perlis, Puteri UMNO members took over villages and houses, holding all to ransom by taking away their identity cards until after polling. But this did not work as well in Pendang and Anak Bukit. Now would it in future elections. When BN campaign teams headed for a village, most of which are isolated from one another, PAS supporters rushed to prevent them from coming in. Sometimes, fisticuffs and disturbances occurred. Where Puteri UMNO did get a toehold, or when they went campaigning, PAS sent swarthy young men to do Nature's bidding. And succeeded more than they dared hope.

The Elections Commission deals not with governing and opposition parties, but with political parties, but it does. It declines to answer my question to it: is BN and UMNO, in its view, opposition parties in Kelantan and Trengganu? So it ignored complaints about BN and UMNO exuberance, but not when PAS outwits the UMNO exuberance, and points to to as proof of growing unruliness. The UMNO ground in Kedah did not co-operate with the BN and UMNO machinery. In other bye-elections it was not serious. Here, when the stakes were so high, it was the final straw. PAS did not lose ground in both bye-elections, the minor gains UMNO made it could well not hold in a general elections.

Then this sudden urge of voters in the two constituencies who lived and worked outside to return on polling day to vote and sightseeing. BN and UMNO brings them in buses and, in Pendang and Anak Bukit, planes, for a holiday to coincide with polling day. The hanky panky involved is unmistakeable except to the Elections Commission. How did BN and UMNO know where they lived and worked that they could unerringly bring only voters for a holiday on polling day in a constituency? But they do, with unnerving accuracy every time, and keep voting percentages high. But where voting is not compulsory, it is well nigh impossible for 75 per cent of voters to vote, in urban and rural constituencies. And not in a country where public discussion of issues is verboten, and the normal rights of citizenry denied in the name of security.

The federal government is shut down in a bye-election to reveals yet another: without the agencies of the federal and state governments, the BN and UMNO machinery is moribund. Why is why the deputy prime minister must head every election campaign, and every cabinet minister present to order the release of government funds and instant help his ministry could. So to what UMNO unofficially spends -- a figure of RM40 million is mentioned for Pendang and Anak Bukit -- an equally large sum is apportioned from the use of government facilities. The government plane the ministers fly in are paid out of public funds. Ministers camp out in the constituencies to the detriment of their work.

Dr Mahathir's sweet-sour comment and how it was received reveals another grim reality: Not knowing how to turn the clock back and erase what should not have happened in September 1998, all BN and UMNO could is brazen their way through. But even that is difficult going. BN and UMNO deny it, but their difficulty is doubly worsened by how the former UMNO deputy president and former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, was humiliated. The Prime Minister now rides rode rough shod ofver one of the BN's solemn principles: he wants the Indian Progressive Front and KIMMA, the Malaysian Muslim Indian Congress, into the BN hold, and the MIC cannot, as heretofore, object. The BN and UMNO is in a Macbethian dilemma, steeped in it so far that it is as tedious to move forward as return.

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