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The Ninjas and Scholars scramble for Pak Lah's ear

TUN MAHATHIR MOHAMED AND DATO' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, as Prime Ministers, are different as chalk from cheese. One wields power effortlessly with a firmly hidden agenda which the public at large only gets a glimpse only when he inadvertently lowers his guard, a one-man think tank, who knows what he wants and gets it. The other is a populist who thinks on the run, his words flowing faster than this thoughts, a man for all seasons who relies upon his staff and cannot survive without them. Both are competent, neither has an advantage over the other, so long as each knows their limits and not aim to be what they are not. Tun Mahathir governed with an iron hand, believed in his invincibility and righteousness and ran Malaysia into the ground. Pak Lah is left to pick up the pieces. Tun Mahathir clocks in at 7.30 every morning, sees no one for two hours, and often after work, to catch up on his paperwork. Without fail every evening his staff deliver files to his house which usually are cleared by the morrow. Pak Lah is more laid-back. He clocked in at 9.00 on his first day as Prime Minister but has turned up half-an-hour to an hour late ever day since. Tun Mahathir delegates his work. Pak Lah does not. He is said not to clear his files on time. That he looks harrassed does not surprise.

He has not found his level in office yet, for political and practical reasons. His wife's debilitating illness diverts him when it should not. At home or office, half his mind is in the other. In office, a power struggle between his inner private office led by his son-in-law, the Oxbridge-educated Mr Khairi Jamaluddin, - the Scholars - and his civil service office led by his principal private secretary, Dato' Thajudeen Abdul Wahab - the Ninjas, adds to his other worries. Both are ambitious, would not allow the other to steal a march over him, but the infighting between their respective supporters does cast a pall on the Prime Minister's Office. At times this borders on the ridiculous. During a visit to Tokyo, Dato' Thajudeen orderfed Pak Lah's favourite dish, nasi lemak, frightfully expensive in Tokyo as one would imagine. Mr Khairi told his father-in-law not to touch it as his mother-in-law would not want him to. And sometimes, needless embarrassment, as when no one bothered to update his diary and Pak Lah went to another function in Malacca when he should have been at Parliament's farewell dinner for Tun Mahathir.

No one can predict how this would pan out, but Pak Lah, struggling to get a hold on himself amidst the mess Tun Mahathir left him with, does not need this. But the Ninjas and Scholars insist the other must give way. The battlements splinter from within. The Scholars move to control the political and non-civil services forces around Pak Lah and the country, the media, the political secretaries to cabinet ministers, the inner office. The Ninjas control most other levers, confident that when push comes to shove, Pak Lah must turn to them. That this is now a full-fledged open war has as much to do with Pak Lah's temperament. Unlike many a politician, he relies heavily on his family. He is a populist by temperament, with an impressive personal following but not a political machine like the defence minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak's. This gives the Scholars an edge in this fight, but it is too simplistic to write the Ninjas off.

The Scholars are well-meaning and brilliant men and women who could in time be intellectuals in their own right. They are young, inexperienced, immature with a thirty-something view of the world that cannot take them anywhere. They have their hangers on, there for no reason than to fill the gaps to extend control. All are short on experience, skullduggery, deviousness. Its importance in Pak Lah's comfort is his nepotic cabal around him. Besides Mr Khairi, the Scholars include his wife and Pak Lah's daughter, Nori; her brother, Mr Kamaluddin Abdullah; their friends like Mr Karim Raslan, the lawyer and columnist; Ms Tan Siok Choo, the think tanker and former journalist, the daughter of the late MCA president, Tun Tan Siew Sin; Ms Zainah Anwar, another journalist and think tanker whose sister is widow to Mr Kamaluddin's late father-in-law. The hangers on include the Bernama chairman, Dato' Khalimullah Hassan. It is a well-knit group, and those not in the family know where they stand. It gives the individual members an importance they would not otherwise have. If the Scholars had another decade of experience, the Ninjas would have cause to worry.

There is more to the Ninjas than meets the eye. If one does not know whence they came, one would misjudge them. As the Scholars do. They are members of a select group, described by their detractors in the civil service as the Gestapo, the stormtroopers of Malay control. All are from the Biro Tatanegara, the shadowy organisation in the Prime Minister's Department, whose members are in all important Malay organisations, including UMNO, KeADILan, PAS. Most political and private secretaries of cabinet ministers are from BTN. But as many BTN men fighti for Pak Lah as against him; as many lost their shirts backing the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim as waxed fat opposing him. In the early 1970s, Pak Lah, after his stint as secretary to the National Operations Council to run the country after the 1969 racial riots, was appointed director of sports, to defuse the growing Islamic radicalism amongst undergraduates and led by Dato' Seri Anwar, who on his graduation by forming ABIM, the Malaysian Muslim Youth Front.

The BTN was then formed to take over Pak Lah's task, and went into with gusto. It is bonded together, so it is said, by secret oaths and the code of silence. When Pak Lah was promoted cabinet minister in the Prime Minister's Department, he had responsibility for BTN. As Dato' Seri Anwar after him, who welded it into his political fighting machine, with Dr Mahathir's encouragement, and which gave him the confidence to challenge his chief, and in a sense choreographed his downfall. Indeed, Tun Mahathir ordered BTN to ensure Dato' Seri Anwar as his successor. But Dato' Seri Anwar's ambitions frightened him. So, in 1993, Pak Lah was reappointed to the cabinet, after he lost his re-election as an UMNO vice-president, given charge of BTN to neutralise Dato' Seri Anwar. BTN's first head was Dato' Aziz Shamsuddin, who moved on as political secretary to Tun Mahathir in the late 1970s.

It is not surprising then that his principal private secretary is from BTN as are the six other Ninjas. The leader of the pack is Dato' Zulkafli Abdul, once BTN chief, deputy head of Research in the PMD, so widely influential that he is the most important man in Pak Lah's entourage. The others are the BTN chief now, Dato' Nordin Kardai; Dato' Aziz Shamsuddin, whose role in BTN and since was to destroy Dato' Seri Anwar, and now deputy education minister; Mr Shahgul Ahmad, the head of Kemas, another government body to get the Malays beholden to UMNO; Dato' Annuar Zaini, once the former deputy prime minister, Tan Sri Musa Hitam's private secretary; and Dato' Hamdan Sulaiman, private secretary to Tan Sri Sanusi Junid when agriculture minister. There is a sub-group to BTN called the Gagak Hitam (Black Crow) of ex-commandoes formed for no reason than to resolve a local difficulty. It blew apart in acrimony, with its members now making UMNO regret for forming it. BTN's biggest coup was to sideline teachers as UMNO delegates in 1986 when the Mahathir-Tengku Razaleigh fight for control of UMNO was in full swing. UMNO could not control the teachers to back Dr Mahathir; corporate and urban Malays lured by money could and replaced the teachers.

This scramble between the Ninjas and Scholars could turn nasty. The civil service, long under the iron control of Tun Mahathir, now are not prepared to play second fiddle to Pak Lah, who has in his early pronouncements called upon it to eschew corruption and do a honest day's work. It was a telling off from a man who saw a service whose fast-rising member he once was fall into decrepitude. He knows without it he could not deliver. He has asked several senior civil service officers to retire, denied them their almost certain extensions, and attempts to have officers not beholden to Tun Mahathir. But the Ninjas and the civil service thought it an attack on them. It is complicated by this fratricidal mess in his office. He must sort it quickly. Can he?

[This appeared in my column in Seruan Keadilan, the fortnightly organ of the National Justice Party, KeADILan, which is published today, 22 December 2003]

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com