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Cleansing the Augean Stables

The National Front (BN) government, in office in one form or another since 1955, is, as always, confused about the limits of parliamentary government. Cabinet ministers traditionally resign en bloc when the prime minister who appoints them resigns for good or before general elections are called. They hold office as caretakers during general elections. But not in Malaysia. They use the election campaigning period to announce policies and budget allocations in the midst of campaigning, as political bribery, more active then than in between general elections when they hold office. They do not resign their office, even when a new Prime Minister takes office, and are invariably re-appointed. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, retires at year-end. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is his ordained successor. But UMNO and BN, after 48 years of neglect in office, is in shambles. And neither can do anything about it.

The cabinet and parliamentary deadwood, all but a handful, see no reason why cabinet conventions should be respected when it never has been for decades. The then minister of international trade and industry, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, was the last to resign on principle, after Dr Mahathir defeated him for the UMNO presidency in 1986. As did the justice minister, Dato' Seri Rais Yatim. Dato' Seri Abdullah did not, and was sacked. Before that, the then education minister, Dato' Abdul Rahman Talib, resigned after he lost a libel action brought by an opposition MP, Mr D.R. Seenivasagam in the 1960s. The then prime minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman Putra, dropped him from the cabinet even if the government paid his legal bills.

In the past when UMNO held political and cultural sway on the Malays, its president was untouchable, and he got what he wanted. Over the years, that allowed him to ride roughshod over cabinet and parliamentary conventions. The long years in office atrophied parliamentary system and practice, with the system dismantled as the years went by. The cabinet and parliament are ignored, brought out to perform its constitutional functions only when the Prime Minister decides it must. This turned the cabinet into a highly inefficient municipal council and parliament a super-ineffecient rubber stamp. So much so that when their guidance is needed, neither can function as they constitutionally must.

So Dr Mahathir himself must beg BN cabinet ministers and MPs to step down with him so Dato' Seri Abdullah could have a free hand to decide upon his team. The BN cabinet and MPs have no such intention. They believe it their right, as do BN party leaders, to stay in office until they decide to leave on their own accord. The Cabinet is an excellent place to make money, lots of it, and no minister wants to get off the gravy train. Ministers dropped have been known to cry before Dr Mahathir to remain in office; with two UMNO deputy ministers even crying before him as he chaired a BN supreme council meeting. But if they do not step down, and the older and inefficient MPs step down, it puts both UMNO and the BN on notice. The coming general elections is probably its last chance to put its house in order.

But out of office is often out of sight. Few cabinet ministers can overcome the oblivion that comes with loss of office. One cabinet minister resigned, under pressure, just before the Hari Raya celebrations, in the early years of the Mahathir years. At his open house that year, a handful turned up, unlike in previous years when thousands were the norm. BN cabinet ministers view their office as a life-time occupation, and take their cabinet perks and privileges as their right, and fight tooth-and-nail to retain them. These perks include an cache of ill-gotten gains. Hardly a cabinet minister have escaped investigation by the Anti-Corruption Agency for corrupt practices. Recently, I had lunch with a former cabinet minister, and I had to introduce him to a few UMNO members who came to greet me. And they were shocked he was alive.

That they are corrupt is beyond question. One cabinet minister listed his assets as US$120 million but after two interviews with the CIA revised it to US$200, all acquired in office. He remains in the Cabinet. The MCA president helps his son acquire a RM1.2 billion business empire, which collapsed. Only the Prime Minister can remove them from office, but he would rather not. He maintains an up-to-date and detailed account of ministerial lapses, which gives him a power over them, and have them eat out of his hand. But this cannot ensure an efficient, clean, trustworthy, dependable government.

For all the hype of how well Malaysia does in a world where every other nation is in the doldrums, the frightening reality is of a country headed for economic collapse once the bubble bursts. This country runs on auto-pilot. But it cannot after Dr Mahathir leaves. The new prime minister must take the controls, but he cannot if Dr Mahathir's team is in place. What is frightening he may not be able to, as his cronies and courtiers rush to fill the vaccuum left the departing Prime Minister's discredited baggage of cronies and courtiers.

UMNO and its president-to-be, Dato' Seri Abdullah, is in a quandry. The Malay ground has moved from it and him. To wean it back, he must present a cabinet not a tired list of has-beens but of men and women who can attempt to right the wrongs of the Mahathir years. But he cannot. This tired has-beens can damage UMNO's chances in an election if their strong political machines in the constituences stay on the sidelines. As they would if their patrons are not candidates. Dr Mahathir is too beholden to them to remove them before he leaves. And they pose a powerful threat to Dato' Seri Abdullah. They must be tamed, which neither man can.

UMNO's leadership uncertainties upset the BN coalition as well. Every coalition leader clings to office as UMNO's does. The MIC leader, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, is in office, as party leader and cabinet minister, for 25 years. He wants to make it a round 30 before he leaves. The MIC deadwood leaders are up in arms when an Indian political leader, formerly from MIC, reveals the obvious -- that he must leave. The MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, sends in secret an undated resignation letter and expects Dr Mahathir to decide for him. But Dr Mahathir cannot and would not. So Dr Ling clings to office. Even when a former close business and political ally now accuses him of using his office to enrich himself at the government's expense. But the coalition leaders cling to office as tenaciously as UMNO leaders, and refuse to give way. They have decided their continuance in office is as, if not more, important than the well-being of the communities they represent.

The BN and UMNO today is akin to the Augean Stables. The stables of Augeas, the mythological King of Elis, in Greece, housed his great herd of oxen. They were never cleaned. One of Hercules' twelve labours was to cleanse them, which he did by diverting the course of a river through them. When he completed his tasks, he gained immortality. UMNO, which dominates BN, has as yet no Hercules -- he is neither Pak Lah nor Tengku Razaleigh nor any of the UMNO vice presidents - to clear away the accumulated mass of rubbish or corruption, pysical, moral, religious or legal.

None in UMNO can yet divert the course of the river of justice, fair play and right to cleanse it of its uncontrollable accumulated debris of past neglect, misuse of power, self-serving irrelevance, self-aggrandizement, and all the ills of a government that believes those who elected it are unfit to judge them. The task is all the more harder since the most important of this debris is how it destroyed the one Malay leader in recent times to stake his future on principle than blind obedience. It earned him a jail sentence, but UMNO's future depends first on how it could extricate itself from this, and then on the other pressing issues on its plate.

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