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Why is UMNO frightened of KeADILan?

UMNO LEADERS NEGOTIATE WITH individual KeADILan leaders, not the party, to jump ship. It is now in the open. The UMNO vice-president, Tan Sri Mohamed Taib, asked the KeADILan youth chief, Mr Ezam Mohamed Noor, publicly, to join UMNO. He cannot do that. KeADILan leaders returning to UMNO is too important for Tan Sri Mohamed to decide alone. So, did UMNO ask its leaders to wean KeADILan leaders from their leader, that hated man who gives UMNO a bad name by just being in prison to which UMNO leaders had consigned him? Or, more important, did Tan Sri Mohamed ask for special dispensation to invite Mr Ezam in? Mr Ezam, in political talks throughout the country, alleged his Special Branch interrogators were interested from him only if he would join UMNO. He replied to it in the contempt it deserved. So he was charged and jailed for an offence under the Official Secrets Act. When all else fails, convict.

That is how UMNO establishes its dominance on its rivals. It failed with Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. It failed with Mr Ezam. In other words, both were convicted for refusing to buckle under. When all else fails, jail him for any offence, is how political interrogations are viewed. UMNO needs Mr Ezam more than he needs UMNO: in 1999, he reduced a 14,000-majority in the Shah Alam parliamentary constituency to 1,500. If he or KeADILan were to stand again there, UMNO could well lose. This is so in several key Malay-majority parliamentary constituencies throughout the country. It needs Dato' Seri Anwar more. But how - and who - would dare approach him? Does UMNO seriously think he would, indeed could, rejoin UMNO? That UMNO can make and destroy people at will?

I now hear similar courting of KeADILan leaders by UMNO bigwigs. Dato' Mokhzani Mahathir, an UMNO Youth leader and the son of one Mahathir Mohamed, who once had a medical practice in Alor Star, has suggested to one KeADILan leader his political future is assured in UMNO. As no doubt is of the UMNO youth leader he suggested as mentri besar of Selangor, Dato' Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo. Every mentri besar is talking to likely KeADILan defectors. Dr Khir is in the game too. He recently invited the KeADILan activist, who goes by the name of Raja Kommando, a member of the Selangor royalty and a retired commando in the Malaysian armed forces. He was seen about a fortnight ago entering Dr Khir's private lift in the Shah Alam government complex. Other moves are made in other states. There is a pattern in these contacts which suggests official sanction. I do not yet know if any has taken the bait.

The question is why. What good is it to UMNO? UMNO is at the edge of destruction for its role in destroying the KeADILan eminence grise and once UMNO's deputy president and Malaysia's deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. UMNO could hold the ramparts for five years but cannot for much longer. For UMNO to survive, Dato' Seri Anwar must be out of jail with a free pardon and allowed to return to active political life. It is not I who say this but an UMNO leader of high standing with a clear mind to call a spade a spade. He says UMNO is in such shambles that Malaysians would not know, let along remember, what UMNO is in 2020, the year when, so we are led to believe, Malaysia would be mistaken for Japan or Germany.

The autocratic leadership of the Prime Minister, in UMNO and Malaysia, lasted a decade too long. UMNO's future now is in doubt. The desperate move to wean those who left UMNO amidst the Anwar Ibrahim affair is too late and too half-hearted. If anything, Dr Mahathir leaves UMNO in worse shape than when he inherited it. In the five years since he was incarcerated, the former deputy prime minister repackaged himself as a Malaysian Mandela. He succeeded beyond belief. He is now a more important icon far larger in Malay perspective and history than his nemesis, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed.

UMNO ignored its cultural roots to destroy a tribal leader. At the time time, it was not unexpected. It is Dr Mahathir's intellectual belief that Malays could not "progress" if they clung to their cultural roots. He set about to destroy that, first by removing the sultans from their traditional source of power. He failed. Then he challenged Malay culture mores to destroy Dato' Seri Anwar. He failed. On every score. Today, no UMNO leader could defy his ruler and survive. You need only to ask the Sultan of Selangor's former brother-in-law, Tan Sri Mohamed Taib. He is now reduced to a politician in search of a living. And no UMNO could survive if he were to damn Dato' Seri Anwar in public. The Prime Minister included.

For UMNO to survive, as even UMNO accepts, this cultural wrong must be put right. This week, the courts would decide if Dato' Seri Anwar would be allowed bail pending his appeals. In normal cases, it would have been automatic. His was not normal: he had to be destroyed, at political direction, at any cost. But in political assassinations of this kind, Dr Mahathir should have wrapped it all up in weeks, if not months. That he could not. And Dato' Seri Anwar rose in political strength, and ensured a belief amongst Malaysians, not just his supporters, that he not only deserved better but suffers for them. Today, Dr Mahathir cannot even subborn the courts to do his deeds. This sense that a higher calling of culture and ideals suffuses, and the belief that they dispense justice, amongst the judges as never in a decade and a half. In other words, UMNO rushes hither and thither for cover. The desertion from its ranks have begun.

So this attempt to wean KeADILan leaders into UMNO's midst is a devious and ill-thought attempt to ban the ever-crumbling barricades. It would fail as deliberately as Kuala Lumpur's much-vaunted anti-flood schemes. The UMNO moves frightens its own members, who fear their own political perch would be taken over by the more active KeADILan members. Many in high office, once close to the man, joined the charge to destroy him, now fear for their future. They misunderstand and misread the man. Having lost all, in his most anguished moments in prison, he has risen above his circumstance for a higher ideal. He suffers for his place in history, and would not descend to what an UMNO leader would intuitively: destroy those who harmed him. His ideal is now Gandhi and Mandela, not Dr Mahathir or Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. This frightens UMNO even more. Which is why KeADILan must be destroyed.

There is another. When UMNO, amidst the Anwar affair, found its Malay support declining, it took its battle to the PAS heartland, and declared itself Islamic and Malaysia an Islamic state. It was taken in the usual off-the-cuff manner, without discussions and on a whim, and it annoys the Malays as much as the non-Malays. UMNO now fights for the Malay not on its cultural strengths but on a presumed Islamic future.

KeADILan stayed where it was. With its merger with the Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM), it is the only political party that conforms closest to UMNO's founding ideals of a party that looks after all Malaysians devoid of colour, race or creed. It puts UMNO in a bad light. It cannot challenge PAS on religion and it now cannot KeADILan on a cultural polity in which religion does not dominate and is an important segment. There is more support for KeADILan than is admitted. PAS and now UMNO assumes wrongly that if a man goes to mosque regularly, he accepts an Islamic state. Yes, he belives in it - in the future, How do you resolve that contradiction if Dr Mahathir invites Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail to join UMNO? Were it that simple.

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