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A Surgery That Could Have Protected UMNO From Seismic Shocks

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, visited the former TV3 television newscaster, Miss Ras Adiba Radzi, paralysed from the waist down after a car accident, and, hey presto, she gets more public donations than she needs for an orthopaedic operation in Australia. She needed RM300,000, no one cared for her until this visit, and within days, RM90,000 more was collected. Even TV3, on the brink of bankruptcy, ignored her plight until then and somehow found RM80,000.

But the surgery she undergoes cost a third here than in Australia. Local orthopaedic surgeons claim they were not consulted over sending Miss Ras Adiba to Australia. Malaysia, which the health minister, Dato' Chua Jui Meng, proudly assured Parliament, amidst a crisis over another orthopaedic surgery, have excellent orthopaedic surgeons that the world could be proud of, and there was no need for surgery overseas.

Miss Ras Adiba got the money she needed only after Dr Mahathir visited her. Malaysians, especially the rich and the powerful, donate freely if they could make more money as a result, or if they do not want to annoy the Prime Minister. This time, it was both. But when another Malaysian with a more severe back problem the government helped cause asked to go overseas for surgery to prevent him permanently confined to a wheelchair, the same Dr Mahathir would have none of it. The surgical procedure proposed was not available here. The surgeon could come here at his expense.

The government did not care if that cost five times the RM100,000 it would in Germany. Under no circumstances would he be allowed to leave the country. The operation was not done. The man is in a wheel chair now, perhaps for the rest of his life, cannot stand up without a neck brace, is in continual intense pain. That man is the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, now in jail in Sungei Buloh what now turns out to be trumped up charges of sodomy and corruption.

If Dr Mahathir showed Dato' Seri Anwar one tenth the concern he showed Miss Ras Adiba, and allowed him the operation in Germany, UMNO could with ease wrested the Pendang parliamentary and Anak Bukit parliamentary constituencies in the bye-elections this month. The two seats have been UMNO's since 1955, the Anwar fallout in 1998 led to the PAS president, Dato' Fadhil Noor, seizing it in the 1999 general elections. UMNO wrested Pendang but not Anak Bukit, but despite confident predictions the alienated Malays return to the UMNO fold, it is in shell shock.

The UMNO supreme council last week decided the Malay still distrusts UMNO, with Penang and Anak Bukit showing how serious it is. UMNO lulled itself to believe it could retain both seats. UMNO intelligence had UMNO retaining not Pendang but Anak Bukit. Which is why the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, came for the counting at Anak Bukit. He was decidely uncomfortable when the results were announced. As it happened, it won Pendang.

UMNO's public response to it is apposite to what it knows. The Anwar affair, despite the Prime Minister's confident assertions, is not only a serious impediment to UMNO's future, but it more than any other issue caused UMNO its near-permanent black eye in Kedah. In fact, it went one step further. The Malay anger and frustration at UMNO and the government now encompasses more than Dato' Seri Anwar but with him as the eminence grise. In other words, Anwar's travails have become part of the anti-UMNO campaign amongst the Malay community. The Prime Minister's and UMNO's self-serving remarks it is not brushes off more efficiently than water off a duck's back.

UMNO and the National Front (BN) it leads are in tenterhooks. It is in shock over the likelihood another byelection this year in Kedah. It realises in shock that in the Pendang and Anak Bukit results are spread evenly over the state in the coming general elections, it would lose the state to PAS, that Dr Mahathir, who must stand if elections are held before he retires, could even be defeated in his Kubang Pasu constituency. If his opponent is a fisherman or farmer, it would force him into retirement even quicker than his UMNO would want him to.

UMNO and Dr Mahathir would not be in this state if he had not humiliated his sacked and jailed deputy prime minister, if he had allowed him, at his expense, surgery overseas, if he had shown a little humanity to a man in obvious pain. In the light of Pendang and Anak Bukit, Dr Mahathir and the government he heads cannot allow Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim out of jail. UMNO leaders, certainly not Dato' Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, would not allow him into UMNO. He would not, if he loses every appeal against conviction and sentence, ask for a royal pardon. Without it, he would be barried from public office for five years. If he is released, it has to be without conditions.

Releasing him to restricted residence is a dangerous option. If he defies it, as he well could, and goes about the country, daring the police to arrest him, his tormentors are in deeper trouble. They would not want another high profile trial. If he should, on his release, go about the country, making no speeches but only let himself be seen, he would not as Nelson Mandela in South Africa or Mahatma Gandhi in India but as a synthesis of both. That could well throw UMNO out of office for ever.

All UMNO need have done was to suspend him for five years, instead of sacking and humiliating him. That would have destroyed his political career for good. Instead they allowed him to challenge them. UMNO and Dr Mahathir no doubt would ponder why they humiliated Dato' Seri Anwar, and how unassailable they would have been if only he was allowed to have his operation in Germany while still keeping him in jail. God Speed to Miss Ras Adiba and hope she returns to active life. But it would not save UMNO and Dr Mahathir from political perdition. Only Anwar Ibrahim's better health and freedom possibly could. Though now not even that.

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