MGG Pillai Commentary View

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Could the Opposition make headway in the coming general election?

AS THE GENERAL ELECTION APPROACHES, the internal frictions and fissures within the governing National Front (BN) coalition and the Opposition surface to cast doubts on how they would fare. One need not be held before the end of 2004 but it would be folly for the BN to stay the course. The early rumours of an election in December is now officially ruled out. The BN government decides when it would be held. It can in theory call for one at any time. But it cannot. It needs to get ready first. So when government leaders ask their coalition partners to ready themselves for the general election, they alert the Opposition. The coalition partners themselves know how unprepared they are, and panic. No one but the ruling clique knows the truth, and into this vacuum fear and dread sets in. So serious is this that the BN president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, had to deny it for no reason than his own side would not be shell-shocked by the rumours.

Political parties, as a rule, have a shrewd idea as it approaches when it would be held. Only the date is uncertain. The party in power, however disorganised, has an edge. The more so in Malaysia. The National Front (BN) would be returned to office as surely as it had been since the first general election in 1955. It is only the majority - and if it would lose control to more seats than Kelantan and Trengganu to PAS. The Opposition, on the other hand, remains unable to come together in a hostile political climate, the BN's doubts and accusations regularly drummed into the electorate which now begins the believe the electoral disinformation. Its attempt to form a coalition has all but failed. The Opposition is as split as the ruling coalition, and it cannot paper over the cracks because it has nothing to offer.

Whether general elections would be held in December or in the coming months is what passes for political debate in Malaysia. This is regularly talked of in the mainstream media. But propaganda if not skilfully handled can and do backfire. The BN and UMNO is as unnerved by talk of general election as the Opposition. Meanwhile, both wither from within. The confident predictions of BN is as questionable as the Opposition's plans to capture two or more states. As I see it, the BN can hold its ground and be returned with the two-thirds majority it seeks in the centre, but it would lose ground, and could lose its two-thirds majority in one or two states. The Opposition has a tougher task ahead. The linchpin party is PAS, the best organised and funded, but it is now sufficed in doubt.

The Islamic State Document, which is no more than a statement of intent, is released for two reasons: to assure the religious leaders within that it has its future focussed on an Islamic state, and to assure the non-Malays that all is well. But it is now a political hot potato. The BN and UMNO realises how dangerous it is for its political health, and attacks it relentlessly. That attack, when regularly repeated in the mainstream media, is enough to frighten the non-Malay who equate Islamic law with amputation of limbs and public beheadings, this fear of a return to eighth century punishments for everyday offences. Far more serious is the problems within. PAS shifted ground after the untimely death of its president, Dato' Fadhil Noor. Its president had until then been from the West Coast, one who presented its moderate and intellectual face. When the deputy president, Dato' Seri Hadi Awang, succeed him, a generation of moderation inherent in what it stood for is hijacked.

There are two reasons for this. One is the alienation of the Malay cultural ground for UMNO after the Anwar Ibrahim affair. This either stayed on the sidelines or joined PAS. As they filled its ranks, PAS got at what some referred to as the UMNOisation of PAS. The religious wing felt threatened. When the Trengganu PAS leader, Dato' Musapha Ali, failed in his bid to be the party's deputy president in the recent party congress, the religious leaders moved in for the kill. There is now within PAS as a serious a row between the two groups on who should prevail as in UMNO. It is probably too late in the day to reverse the trend in time for a united front at the general election. There is no issue that could reverse it, not even Dato' Seri Anwar's continued imprisonment. He remains a threat to the BN, but it is for the BN to use it: if he were, for instance, to be released a few days before polling, the Opposition could well say goodbye to any chances of a breakthrough.

But PAS cannot fight the battle alone. It needs the Opposition parties. The infighting amongst and within them is so serious that their electoral strength is dissipated that it would be a wonder if they hold on to what they had after the 1999 general election. The DAP, for instance, is in bad shape. Its leaders had, like in many a BN party, believed that their words were enough to hold it together. It had not realised that the electoral and political slogans of the 1970s is ill-suited for the 21st century. It did not understand that politics is the art of the possible. And that one can sup with the devil with one's reputation intact if it is for a larger common good. PAS, when it returned to office in Trengganu, appointed DAP members to those posts that under a BN administration went to the MCA. Amidst the furore of PAS and the Islamic state, and especially after the release of the Islamic State Document, the DAP ordered its representatives in Trengganu to resign from their state-appointed posts. It was a big mistake. Not only they did not, many left the party instead. It challenged the DAP view - in one sense - of the ISD. In this matter, they decided they would rather trust PAS than their own party.

Several high profile resignations followed. The party leaders have remained silent. But it cannot for long. The BN has effectively marginalised it, and today it can hope for no more than a dozen seats in Parliament. It did not understand that it ought to have changed its tactics when the BN, by a number of legislations, made nonsense of its raising issues the BN did not want to address. The Official Secrets Act, for instance, was amended to stop the DAP from raising issues the BN would rather not. The jailing of the KeADILan leader, Mr Ezam Noor, sent shivers down the Opposition spines of the dangers of revealing anything the government considers an official secret. In other words, the DAP is caught in a bind. That with an aging leadership, and devoid of new blood, has brought the DAP to the edge of extinction. Can it reverse its fortunes? Yes, but not after a thorough cleansing of itself from within. The DAP as it stands cannot survive for long. But are its leaders prepared to undertake the massive surgery to prevent it from haemorrhaging, But its usefulness to an Opposition coalition is in doubt. Especially since it refused to be identified with PAS in one.

This brings us to the other side of the Opposition triangle: the Parti KeDILan Rakyat. It had a new lease of life with its merger with the principled Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM), but the merger has not gone down well. It provided a little of the administration and political focus it lacked for a role beyond the release from prison of its eminence grise, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. It is till perceived in the minds of many a Malaysia that it has no role beyond his release. That is not so, of course, but there is little practical evidence of that for the Malaysian to be confident about. What is its strength is that it has been a multiracial party from the start, and that is now buttressed by the presence of PRM, and it is this multiracial image it has to build on. Its success here has upset the DAP, and the frequent disputes if it could admit a sacked DAP member into its ranks underlines two sides of the problem: one is prepared to admit anyone who wants to join, while the other would not allow any one it sacked to join another opposition but not if it joins a BN party.

There is as yet no Opposition coalition. The political parties are all inward looking, confused and unwilling to bend, for a coalition which necessarily must be on a common minimum programme. There is no meeting of minds amongst the leaders, and so long as this stand of mind exists, the Opposition must go to the polls with its hands and legs tied. A few leaders in each meet often to see how this impasse could be settled. But they meet with no proof what they suggest would even be considered by the individual parties. The Opposition, unfortunately, is as fractured as the individual races are in this Malaysian society we work hard to create.

[I wrote this for my column in the latest issue of Seruan Keadilan, the official organ of the National Justice Party, which is published today, 09 November 2003]

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