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Ask what you need, if you know you cannot get it

If you go by the rantings of the National Front (BN) court jester and buffoon-in-chief, the Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia and the Malaysian Indian Congress had better beware. The president of the forgettable PPP, Dato' M. Kayveas, is on the warpath -- and after their parliamentary and state assembly representation. He wants their parliamentary and state seats. No less. At its 49th annual general meeting on Sunday (06 Oct '02), he made three impossible demands: 21 seats in Parliament and 32 in the state assemblies; compulsory study in schools of Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and English as the first step towards a united Bangsa Malaysia.

If he were prime minister -- that only when the iron tree blossoms -- he would ensure four official languages, instead of one, Malay. For a start, he urges English to return as an official language with Malay. BN should be a single party, instead of 13 confusing, contradicting and often irrelevant componets, the Malays are divided, so the non-Malays must work doubly hard to ensure BN's continued victory. The PPP congress is noted as an event to make people laugh: if not what they say, then who says it. When Dato' Kayveas takes the podium, it is with suitable gravitas and as a non-entity. A man for all seasons, if only he knew how to privatise the seasons, and make them vote PPP, if not BN.

The PPP had excellent credentials at its founding: the Seenivasagam brothers, SP and DR, founded the Perak Progressive Party in Ipoh 49 years ago. It later became the People's Progressive Party, the name helping it on to its latter-day irrelevance. SP and DR were a power in the state and parliament then, their deaths hastened its irrelevance, in which its latter-day president wallows in. Dato' Kayveas cannot forget he is the first PPP deputy minister, there by default because Dr Mahathir decided to punish Dato' Samy Vellu and deny the MIC its due of an extra deputy minister. He was a buffoon in politics, noted more for his promises to provide honours for the usual moola than for political leadership.

Now that he is in the government, he tries, so far without success, to transform himself as the "conshunce of the nashun". What he says is irrelevant and forgettable, but with a gravitas that would make even the consummate Dr Mahathir gape at him in awe. He has the gumption to say what the other BN leaders dare not lest their political careers end ignominously. Dato' Kayveas has no such inhibitions. He does not have a political career to bother about, the tongue does not have a backbone, so he can say what he wants, and get away with it. So successful is he that no one would move if he were to cry "Fire" in a crowded cinema.

A deputy minister via the Senate, he needs to be returned to parliamentary in an election to remain in the administration. He demands 33 state and parliamentary seats, but would be satisfied if it is only one ultra safe parliamentary seat he could be returned, preferably unopposed. In the best traditions of the BN consensus. No one should be challenged. The president of the component party decides who stands where and how, his word is law, and anyone who goes against it, faces the ultimate disgrace of not being invited to dine at the president's table. If you think is not an important perk, ask those, in the MIC, UMNO, MIC, who are marginalised, and how their wives nag them because the perk is withdrawn. This happens to all who enter politics to help themselves. But the sad part, as far as Dato' Kayveas is concerned, is that BN is not disposed now to given him even an extra state assembly seat. Depite the PPP's 350,000 members, and its clout (both by courtesy of Dato' Kayveas's flexible tongue) in drumming support for BN in an election.

Dato' Kayveas is an accidental politician who believes, as the years go by and he gets used to the deference accorded to deputy ministers in all they do, he should ride roughshod into the mainstream, and states his case that he a mere deputy minister is worth more than a Lim Kheng Yaik and a S. Samy Vellu. A super-efficient one instead of a laggard two. The laggard two, on the other hand, instead of slapping down this presumptiousness, goes into a sulk. They should have put him in the corner where he must be consigned, but they have lost the art of the counter-attack.

They were good at it once. Dato' Lim Kheng Yaik came into prominence with his principled attack on the MCA president, Tun Tan Siew Sin, was expelled from the MCA and forced to resign from the cabinet. But he joined the Gerakan and survived. Ditto Dato' Samy Vellu. But one in office, especially after they reached their two decades in officie, they believe, as Dato' Kayveas in his intense contemplation of his navel, they have a life long vested interest in remaining in the Cabinet. That is what this storm in a thimble is all about: two cabinet ministers and a cabinet minister-to-be-by-the-grace-of-God quarrelling over who is the better door mat.

And for the life of him, Dato' Kayveas cannot understand why he is not yet a cabinet minister. After all, in his estimation, the PPP is a far more important party in Malaysia than either the MIC or the Gerakan: he claims it is more Indian than the MIC and more multiracial than the Gerakan. He has a point here: it is not how you do or how strong you are that matter; it is how you tell the others about you. Style is more important than substance. He has learned the Bolehland tricks of getting ahead but he has much to learn before he can sit at the feet of the two masters he want destroyed.

Unfortunately, this is what politics is all about in Malaysia. No one discusses issues, nor engage in debate or discussions. The BN sets the tone, and all in government and opposition follow. Cabinet and government ministers speak without thought, so they know they are important and the people know they are irrelevant. Since Dato' Kayveas is only a deputy minister, he must try doubly hard to show his irrelevance in the national agenda. So takes the high road of a buffoon masquerading as an elder statesman. If he were Malay and in UMNO, he would be an admirable BN prime minister. He knows how to exercise his tongue with irrelevant often unworkable statements of intent and policy, and he raises the ante so he will be noticed.

His desire to join Bolehland's brightest and the best rises with each stupid, irrelevant, unworkable idea he makes. His speech at the 49th annual general meeting of the PPP exemplified it. What he said did not matter. But his tongue got the exercise it wanted. Soon it would be flexible enough to be the man he wants to be. The only problem is: if he gets a parliamentary seat to contest, could he win; if he does not, his political career stops even before it started. If he does not, he self-destructs, with a little help from the Constituion, in a few years, when his second, and final, three-year-term as senator expires. One can understand his anxiety but no greater service can he provide Malaysia than making sure his political career ending then.

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