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The Penang MCA duo: The BN shows how to lose power

The National Front (BN) is, as my friend Shamsul Akmar of the New Straits Times writes today (14 December 2002), greater than the sum of its parts. It was once. Not now. If it is, the crisis of the past fortnight would not be. UMNO holds BN in his iron grip, and not let law and procedure stand in its way. If it decides on a course of action, it would not relent until it gets it. One man in Sungei Buloh prison can attest to that. So, when two MCA state assemblymen abstained on an opposition-initiated motion in the Penang state assembly, UMNO decided to make an example of them in high dudgeon and by ignoring constitutional niceties. What UMNO wants, UMNO gets. The UMNO supreme council wants the duo expelled. Nothing less would do. UMNO also wants the MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik's head, for setting the two state assemblymen up to abstain in an elaborate but sure-to-fail plan so it would provide the next chief minister of Penang. UMNO, MCA, Gerakan all lost their cool. The two state assemblymen must be sacked. It does not matter if everyone in this sorry episode failed to do their bit. And nine state assemblymen were not even present, as they should have been if the issue was as important as is now made out.

The BN once was greater than the sum of its parts. It would be hardpressed to argue that now. UMNO so dominates it that the component parties dare not even argue or negotiate behind closed doors what their communities want for fear of offending UMNO and its president. The action against Mr Lim Boo Chang and Tan Cheng Liang is done in anger, the niceties not followed. They have not been asked to show cause, nor told of the charges against them are, except what they know of from the press, and the highly charged emotion with which what they did or not is discussed. What complicates it is the direct involvement of the MCA president and his men. The BN (and UMNO) deputy president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, fired the first salvo. With no intent that it should be within the law and the constitution. First the trial, then the execution is how UMNO and BN look upon perceived dissent amongst its member parties. It showed, not as my friend argues, BN to be less than the sum of its parts.

So the two MCA state assemblymen are made to account for they are, in law, allowed to. If there is a conspiracy involving the MCA president and his men, that is nullified when the BN itself ignored the rules governing their action. When every party in this affair -- MCA, UMNO, Gerakan, BN, the whip -- broke the rules, how could all of them, collectively and individually, now insist that the two were at fault? It is this lackadaisical bending of the rules to suit the moment that has brought not only BN, but the various institutions of government to its knees. The judiciary is shortchanged so it delivers judgement that has no relevance to law and practice; the banks provide loans in the hundreds of millions of ringgit to men of straw after a phone call from a highly connected man who called in return for a share of the loot; ambassadors are sent out to foreign countries not for their competence but for their shortcomings; military officers are appointed to the highest offices despite proven incompetence and other failings that once would have automatically disqualified him.

The non-Malay parties went along, over the years, for the ride. Their leaders were more intent on staying on long before they ceased to represent their communities, enriching themselves than their communities, and which enabled UMNO leaders to act as they pleased. Every non-Malay party has leaders who have stayed on for a decade and more -- the record is the 24 years the MIC president has been president, which he now wants extended to 30; and followed by the UMNO president at 22 years -- The make-belief that the community needs them is the excuse. Dissent is ruthlessly weeded out. The party constitutions are gerrymandered so no one could oppose them in party elections. Anyone who threatens their control is deliberately and ruthlessly weeded out. Having got rid of all opposition, they then reveal themselves as saviours. Dr Ling Liong Sik's problems emerge as he insists he is the saviour of the Chinese community. He believes as such he should not ever be challenged. It is this refusal to allow free elections that lands him in the trouble he now is in. Like the UMNO President, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, the BN component party leaders insist they should not, once elected, ever be challenged.

The non-Malay BN party leaders, unable to be elected from urban constituencies, can only be elected from rural and semi-rural constituencies, where the Malays are in the majority or dominant. Every MCA, Gerakan and MIC leader is elected likewise. The danger now is the split within the Malay community when UMNO self-immolated by dismissing its deputy president by playing fast and loose with the rules. The Malay rose in anger, and UMNO now has to fight for that constituency as it never had to. As the Pendang and Anak Bukit byelections in Kedah showed, that is now certain. If UMNO candidates in the general elections are unsure of their hold on the electorate, how could they help the non-Malay leader? So, the issue suddenly is not what the two MCA state assemblymen did, but if BN could survive, as UMNO, MIC, MCA, Gerakan and other component parties, if unity is decided upon capriciously and at the whim and fancy of the moment?

One can, and should, dismiss the Penang chief minister, Tan Sri Koh Tsu Koon's bafflement at why the two MCA state assemblymen abstained when their constituencies were unaffected by the Penang Outer Ring Road project, and why several MCA state assemblymen voted against, with the BN, when their constituencies were. That he is baffled shows how out of touch he is with parliamentary democracy and with Penang itself. He assumes a state assemblyman only represents his constituency and has no right to decide on what is in the best interests of the state. He argues, like Dr Mahathir, that the interests of the state must be decided by the BN. It does not matter then if the people are upset and unhappy with it. The BN should never, under any circumstances, be seen to be challenged by the people which elected it to power. If the BN is to be a force in the politics of this country in Dr Mahathir's magical year of 2020 when, we are told, Malaysia would be an industrialised country, and reacts to internal problems as in the matter of the Penang MCA duo, it lives in a fool's paradise.

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