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UMNO GA 2003 - VII: UMNO and the Pahang Darul Kasino fallout

THE PAHANG DARUL KASINO CONTROVERSY has sunk deep into the UMNO psyche. But hardly anyone even alluded to it in the controlled debate at the UMNO general assembly. Speaker after speaker raised other issues and how it would have fared worse in the 1999 general elections if the new electoral list, with its more than 600,000 new voters, had been used. The Bukit Tinggi casino, run by the super crony, Tan Sri Vincent Tan, UMNO now accepts, is one election issue in the coming general elections, most likely in the first few months of 2004, which could cause it to lose perhaps 20 seats, and one state government. One prominent UMNO leader was harsher: UMNO and the National Front (BN) must divert attention from that, or face, in his words, 'disaster'. The second finance minister, Dato' Seri Jamaluddin Jarjis, was heard to tell to any who would listen he would react soon to the questions lobbed at him by PAS in Parliament. That might be too late.

It was business as usual otherwise. The Prime Minister crafted his presidential speech at the Bukit Tinggi resort, in the centre of the storm. Why? For all his anger at his second minister of finance and the minister in his office, Tengku Adnan Mansor, was he was the 'dalang' (puppeteer) behind the licence that enabled Tan Sri Vincent Tan to convert the Bukit Tinggi resort into a virtual casino? Why did he throw caution to the winds to so blatantly appear in Bukit Tinggi for the quiet he needs to write his speech? Or is it his way to tell his critics and political enemies that he does not care, he would do what he wants, and they could jump into the lake? Could he not have gone some where else? Or did he decide that it would not matter and the PAS chaps would run out of steam before long?

This contradiction between policy and practice, always present at UMNO general assemblies, was more pronounced this year. No one wanted to bell the cat, and talked of everything else, in the vague Malay way of going for the jugular, which in the end meant, to those not in the know, there was no bell and no cat. In the presidential speech, Dr Mahathir cried wolf yet again, this time more clearly and more pronounced, of what he sees, rightly in my view, of the Anglo-Saxon plans to shackle Malaysia. But few understood what he meant. In any case, matters of foreign policy or plans are well beyond the average UMNO member. The ministry of foreign affairs is not important in the UMNO scheme of things, and it is usually given to a minister who can safely be dropped. When the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, held it, he was not on the strong wicket in UMNO he now is. UMNO in fact devalued Dr Mahathir's thesis by distributing the Malay translation of Henry Ford's rant in the 1920s about the Jews, and republished recently, called 'The International Jew'.

It was Dr Mahathir's swan song. But he spoke as if he is in charge, would be after his stated date of retirement, 31 October 2003. He showed he was the boss. When he should have been more magnanimous and announce the virtual handing over of office to his deputy, he acted as if he had no such intention, although he interspersed his pronouncements with his departure to come. He could not reveal - how could he? - that in the post-Mahathir years, the new leader must have to pay for his misjudgements, in local and international affairs, and he leaves with not only an empty treasury but unrepayable debt as well. A statistic bandied about - and the man who told me knew what he was talking about - was that in the 22 years of Dr Mahathir as prime minister, Malaysia lost, in failed projects, RM300 billion. Look at how that money could have been used for a better life for the ordinary Malaysian - better health care, road transport, more low cost houses instead of a future of rising and unrepayable debt.

One would have thought Dr Mahathir would, in his speeches, would have given a balance sheet of his years in office, point to areas where his successor must concentrate on, and of how he thought Malaysia would develop after him. There was none of that. One fact that runs through his term in office, as UMNO president and Malaysian prime minister, was making an enemy of his deputy: Tan Sri Musa Hitam, Tun Ghafar Baba, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, and now, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. He and Pak Lah are at logger heads now, although there was none of that to be seen at the assembly. There was, behind the scenes, a war behind the scenes between the supporters of each. No UMNO transition has been smooth. What happens now is no different. And made worse by the belief, never articulated but is strongly held nevertheless in his camp, that Pak Lah is not the right choice.

The public got a whiff of that when Dr Mahathir publicly called for Pak Lah to appoint the defence minister and UMNO vice president, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, as his deputy prime minister. Pak Lah prefers the consumer affairs and domestic trade minister and another UMNO vice president, Tan Sri Muhyuddin Yasin, demurred. And that is how it would be. Pak Lah said during the general assembly that he would appoint his deputy when he is Prime Minister. It is the perceived wisdom that should Dato' Seri Najib not be deputy prime minister, his political career is about over. There is, in short, no love lost between Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib.

Dato' Seri Najib has a more serious problem in his Pekan parliamentary constituency in Pahang. The controversy over the Bukit Tinggi casino, the political fallout from it, the discovery that Tan Sri Vincent's Pulau Tioman resort also has a battery of electronic one-armed bandits more than legally allowed, the Pak Lah camp's ill-disguised hostility, and his silence on the casino controversy, makes him more vulnerable than many a Pahang politician. He should have got into the fray, and distanced him self from all running helter skelter when the casino affair blew into UMNO's face. Now, by his inaction, he is caught in the political trap.

But that would happen when issues are swept under the carpet that when something ought to be done it is too late. The 1999 general election was in one sense a freakish election. The way how Dato' Seri Anwar was sacked as UMNO deputy president and Malaysian deputy prime minister, and his subsequent travails, brought the Malays on to the sidelines in droves. UMNO has made little or not attempt to wean them back, and that, more than the 600,000 new voters is why UMNO and BN is in such dire straits. No one in the UMNO heirarchy is interested. Many prominent UMNO leaders - cabinet ministers, state executive councillors, and others of equal rank and higher - see 1999 as their last election, and are more interested in their own preservation than UMNO's. That is UMNO's dilemma. That is more serious than if the new Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, would be challenged as UMNO president at the UMNO general assembly in 2004.

[This is my column in the latest issue of Harakah, the PAS organ, out 24 June 2003]

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