MGG Pillai Commentary View

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Fly the Jalur Gemilang - and lose your citizenship

HOW DO MALAYSIANS DISCUSS ISSUES of the day? If they discuss it in a group and take a view different from the government's, you could have UMNO Youth storming into the meeting to break it up. If you meet for a regular lunch among friends at the Royal Selangor Club, the Special Branch would soon want to know why you meet and what you discuss? When a retired and much-loved Lord President of Supreme Court met often with four or five friends, all the friends were asked what they were plotting with him. If an opposition political party wants to meet, it has to get a permit from the police, which may or many not be granted, the decision given just before the meeting is due to start. If you have a decidedly critical view of the government, no one wants to listen to you if it means problems with authority. There is in this blessed democracy of ours the prevailing view that if the opposition misbehaves, the rules of democracy will be curtailed. Guided democracy is a bad word, since its progenitor was President Sukarno of Indonesia, but it lives on in disguise and unchallenged in Malaysia.

The only view that matters in Malaysia under the law is that of the National Front (BN) and the government. You cannot challenge it or debate it except in a controlled atmosphere like Parliament or state assembly, where the Speaker would ensure it could not, or in a setting completely under official control. If for any reason the government representatives cannot hold the ground, the ever helpful police is on hand to cut it short. This is what happened when a cabinet minister decided to challenge a PAS MP to a public debate in Trengganu. All was set for it. Both sides looked forward to it. But on the appointed day, the police stepped in and banned the meeting. No reason was given except that it could get out of hand. Why was it stopped? UMNO in Trengganu was nervous about its electoral chances, and felt this debate would cause it to lose ground. The UMNO chief for the state, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, agreed, and his home minister, one Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, banned it.

So, how do Malaysians discuss issues of the day? Let a cabinet minister or someone in government suggest the obvious - usually, in this blessed country of ours, something stupid or outlandish - and the newspapers and opposition Internet sites intensely discuss it within the strict framework the government would like it to for a fortnight or so, and the issue recedes into the black hole of memory. Another manufactured issue comes along, and it is repeated ad nauseum. What is curious about it all is that there is no direct confrontation between the government and the opposition. Each talk at cross purposes, with the opposition response known to the public at large only when someone in government or party decide it must be challenged. The opposition view appears in the official and party-owned mainstream media when they back the official position; or when a cabinet minister or BN official must retort to an opposition view or lose ground.

This does not work well as the government feels it should. Malaysian politics is in ferment. The government is on tenterhooks. It recedes into its shell, as the Malay political ground watches all this from the sidelines. It is in the nature of Malay politics that if one is opposed to the official view, one would rather wait and see from the sidelines than take a strident contrary position, as would the non-Malays. Why this is so is the nature of Malay feudal society, when opposition is treachery and death the usual punishment. The principle of "derhaka" (treachery) is so ingrained that it flows over into every facet of life. The government's fear now is that the Malays would move from the sidelines into the opposition. How the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, was humiliated and destroyed, caused this switch of Malay loyalties: for another facet of this fedual behaviour bans a leader from humiliating a chieftain. That caused the Malay to sit on the sidelines. He would remain there until the outcome is clear.

To regain lost ground, the government manufactures issues for public discussion, so that at least the non-Malays would remain with the BN. So a cabinet minister or a chief minister would raise an issue that could start the discussion. Or someone else. When all else fails, the BN buffoon, the People's Progressive Party (PPP), would raise an irrelevant issue. When there are no issues to discuss, a national event is focussed and highlighted upon. Two such issues are now under way. One is the manufactured mega sale, where it is implied that if a Malaysian does not shop until he drops dead, he is anti-national. The second is this manufactured demand that all should fly the Jalur Gemilang in the month of August. This provides for days of newspaper coverage with the rules made on the fly. In the process, the government lost sight of reality. Fly the flag for the month of August to show your patriotism and nationalism, says the culture and tourism minister in the second week of August. The campaign is in trouble.

How do you rescue it? Create another issue. Who would? No elected member of parliament or state assemblyman would. They have their re-elections to consider. So the PPP is brought in. It could be relied upon to come up with instant fixes that usually redound on the government. Never mind. It is - must be - there when it is needed. Its youth chief says the Election Commission must make voting mandatory and enact laws to revoke the citizenship of any who did not vote in three consecutive elections. He speaks with authority. He does not have a constituency. He could not have one if he were to live a hundred years. But never mind. People, he thundered, did not bother to register nor vote. They must be punished for it. If they do not, their citizenships must be revoked.

But it has run into heavy weather. The UMNO vice president, and one who hopes to be in a post-Mahathir cabinet, Tan Sri Mohamed Taib, believes the PPP suggestion extreme, unwise and harsh. "To even suggest such a measure is not appropriate. Even rapists do not lose their citizenship. This would make it seem that not voting is worse than raping," he retorts. The solution is to coax people to vote. Automatic voter registration is good, but only if all problems are ironed out. He does not say what the problems are. But one alone should stop this idea dead on its tracks: Malays and a much smaller group of non-Malays who are citizens by operation of law cannot be deprived of their citizenship. The others, mostly non-Malays and a small group of Malays from elsewhere, would be the most affected if this suggestion is implemented.

So we have two suggestions from BN: Fly the flag in the month of August to show your patriotism and nationalism, and lose your citizenship if you do not vote in three consecutive elections. In other words, a Malaysian scrupulously could follow the tourist minister's diktat to fly the national flag in August every year and yet be deprived of his citizenship. It does not make sense. Nor would it. But it happens every time the government decides it must show it means business. It decided to clean up the municipal councils, and targetted one, the Ampang Jaya muncipal council, and had to scuttle that soon enough because the corruption alleged fell at the foot of the Selangor UMNO mentri besar and an UMNO state executive councillor. This latest farce is aimed at the non-Malay by threatening to remove his citizenship if he did not vote in three consecutive elections. The import of that has struck home. So the BN backtracks. As it has done whenever it is challenged.

[This is my column in Seruan KeADILan, the official organ of the Parti Keadilan Nasional, in its latest issue, out today, 26 August 2003]

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