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UMNO shaken by a khalwat arrest

The religious affairs department raided an apartment in Sungei Buloh recently and arrested the wife of an UMNO worthy and five Bosnians watching a blue film. It has thrown UMNO leaders into a frenzy, and every effort made so it would not be open knowledge. The husband, an UMNO MP and former cabinet minister, is said to be fed up and wants to divorce her. With an administration proclaiming its Islamic worldview, this could not come at a worse time. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, is predictably furious, as he was, a few years ago, when this man was caught for the peculiar Islamic offence of "khalwat" -- being in the same house with no one else present with a member of the opposite sex who is not a spouse.

The syariah courts are merciless in prosecuting the Muslim man-in-the-street for khalwat, but not when he is someone high and mighty. If the religious affairs department insists on prosecution, all pressure is borne to bear on them to cease and desist. The one former minister against whom khalwat, "zina" (adultery) and sex with a minor charges were laid now sues all and sundry who dares even suggest he is guilty of them. A senior UMNO leader, now in the cabinet, was caught, in a raid during an UMNO gathering in Port Dickson, with a lady not his wife. Nothing happened. His political career continues to flourish and looks set to go higher. One cabinet minister came to politics when he had to resign from the civil service when, in a foreign country, he raped the wife of a senior official of that country. An UMNO vice president married in southern Thailand for which ordinary mortals could be charged in the syariah court. In the states, it is more prevalent. There is hardly an UMNO mentri besar in the peninsula whose keeping of mistresses is an open secret. There is one block of apartments in Kuala Lumpur where several ladies are lodged, kept by high-flying UMNO politicians from the states. One Malaysian high commissioner was recalled recently when the wife of a locally-recruited Malaysian alleged he had raped her.

Sexual peccadillos are part of the political scene in every country. It has come out into the open when the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, decided to destroy his chosen successor, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, with a trumped up charge of sodomy in 1998. That act put UMNO in a tailspin. Not only that. The Puteri UMNO is accused of being a lesbian by the same author who declared Dato' Seri Anwar a sodomist. But nothing happens to her. She ignores the charges, at the Prime Minister's advice, and nothing happens. It seems clear that nothing happens to anyone in the Prime Minister's "camp". So the arrest for khalwat of this senior MP's wife could not have been by accident. Before they were married, they had had a run-in with the religious affairs department. It would appear, in the circumstances of the case, a deliberate move to detain her and embarrass her husband. Or it could be a way to force him out of Parliament.

When Malaysian society now demands a high standard of political conduct in a climate where the man-in-the-street now demands his right to question, more such incidents will come to light. It makes nonsense of the government's Islamic values if it acts capriciously when incidents are brought to light. But this is only aspect of the government's problems. Every cabinet minister, especially when he has been in office for a few years, has wealth beyond his capacity to enjoy. You can take any BN cabinet minister, mentri besar or state executive councillor, and you would find him to be enriched in office what he could not earn before. Wealth of RM100 million and more, acquired in office, is commonplace. One more than doubled his estimated wealth after three interviews by the anti-corruption authorities. When the right to wealth is considered to be a perk of office, nothing would happen.

The present government runs on autopilot. No one is in charge. All say what they want, do what they please, and is caught out only when the Great Man decides he must be. With BN in shambles, and many in Parliament and government accepting the inevitable, it is all man for himself, grabbing as much as they can make before the BN is forced out of office. This would not happen tomorrow or next year or even after the next election. But when the government is caught in its own lies, and behaves as a bankrupt reinventing himself as one wih money to come, more of this dislocation would assert itself. The government therefore cannot interfere for they need all the support it can get. So, it does not interfere.

The Great Man is busy jetting about the world to show how well Malaysia does in a climate of diminished responsibility and declining morals amongst the high and mighty. When something like this MP's wife's arrest turns up, it puts the government on the spot. But it hopes it would go away. As it would not. The government is in trouble no matter what it does: if the religious affairs department does not prosecute, it is an open confrontation with those who want Islamic values imposed with no ifs and buts; if it does, it throws mud on the moral values of UMNO and BN. This is nothing new. This is how every BN crisis turns out. Look at the fiasco of the two Penang MCA state assemblymen.

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