MGG Pillai Commentary View

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The Chinese community fetes Pak Lah; when would the Malay and Indian?

MULTIRACIAL MALAYSIA is fast becoming only a slogan to attract tourists than a reality. The National Front (BN) looks upon multiracial political parties with distaste, inviting them if only to deny them to the Opposition. It preaches multiracial politics and amity but its political hold is rooted in its racial divisiveness, so it could appeal to the base chauvinistic and racial instincts of the electorate. Once the principle was accepted at all levels, but as politics took hold, the Opposition organised, and the ruling coalition could not match the simple but effective appeal to a shared future, it reversed itself. Its monolithic dominance of Malaysian politics sowed the seeds of that. The Opposition, unable to face the onslaught, and denied by bureaucratic tediousness and roadblocks to organise into a cohesive Opposition coalition of disparate groups, contested elections as political guerrillas to dent the BN by attrition. It took three decades for that. With PAS dominating the Opposition, and gaining ground in the Malay heartland, it forced UMNO, leading the BN, to a battleground of its choice: Islam.

UMNO blinked. It took the gauntlet, made Islam, not culture or multiracialism, its principle political plank, alienated its coalition partners, could not match PAS's appeal, and had to fall back on its non-Malay and non-Muslim partners, particularly the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), to keep it in power. The watershed was in 1999, when the BN romped home to a two-thirds majority in Parliament with solid Chinese support. The politics within BN changed irrevocably. The Malays were split and remained on the sidelines after the Anwar Ibrahim affair. The shift to Islamic politics has split one Malay group for ever. UMNO's raison d'etre as the defender and leader of the Malays is in doubt. The Chinese stepped in. UMNO must modify its Islamic image, tattered as it is, to reflect this change. The Chinese community dinner for Pak Lah on 20 December at Bukit Jalil stadium underscored this reality. The MCA, which organised it, needs UMNO as badly as UMNO needs it. Its president, Dato' Seri Ong Ka Ting, had to make his peace with Pak Lah, after he unwisely crossed him during the MCA leadership crisis last year.

Twenty thousand turned up for the feast. Rain fell after it began. Newspapers proudly proclaimed how they stayed on to honour Pak Lah in the heavy downpour. Did they have a choice? Where could they run for shelter from the uncovered shelter? To the open air outside? The MCA and its captive press laid themselve bare to reveal its sycophancy to Pak Lah. The multiracial parties like the Gerakan found it politic in this new world to fashion itself a Chinese political party. When Pak Lah, in his speech, called on the Chinese parties to unite it was music to their ears. Multiracial politics is thrown overboard. All that matters is the forthcoming elections. The non-Chinese members in the Gerakan is a needless irrelevance and can be jettisoned at will. Pak Lah thinks it a good idea. The spin doctors in the press suddenly realise that unity is strength. The BN should be united. All help must be given for that.

But the Malaysian government, which BN heads, does not allow the Opposition to unite. When the National Justice Party (KeADILan) merged with the Malaysian People's Party (Parti Rakyat), it would not allow the new party to be called KeADILan. It has put a string of obstacles in its path. It remains in limbo. When the Opposition parties decided to form a coalition, it would not allow it. Indeed, it is hostile to any attempt. It wants the Opposition to stay disunited, for it believes that that would make it impossible for it to form a government. This presumes that what it prescribes is the only solution. As the Anglo-British occupying power in Iraq finds out, the opponents would find other ways to paint them into a corner. The BN is frightened of a Malay-based multiracial party as KeADILan join forces with the multiracial but Chinese-based Democratic Action Party (DAP) and the Islamic based PAS. Each has its own power base, but in this equation it is PAS that would provide the leadership.

Despite the BN's demonisation of PAS, which frightens the non-Malay groups, especially the urban Chinese, gains ground. When the DAP, in an appeal for Chinese support, publicly excoriated PAS's Islamic State Document, and ordered its members PAS appointed to local councils in Trengganu as Chinese representatives, to resign, it had a setback. None would. Many resigned from the DAP instead. In other words, in a tussle within the DAP over the ISD, the Chinese DAP members in Trengganu would rather resign from the party and align themselves with PAS. It remains contentious. The MCA vice president, Dato' Chan Kong Choy, the federal transport minister, urges Chinese to migrate from Kelantan and Trengganu because of PAS's policies in the two states. He treads on dangerous ground. If you extend his argument, he implies the Chinese migrate from Malaysia because of the insufferable policies of the BN government. Would he now lead a movement from within to remove the inequitable policies that make Malaysians want to migrate? Sauce for the goose is, after all, sauce for the gander.

The Chinese support is clear. But it would not come cheap. Pak Lah is vulnerable. The Chinese sycophancy comes with it a quid pro quo. What it is I do not know. But there is. He has obviously granted it. But he must go further. His principal constitutency is the Malay. When would UMNO and the Malay bodies give him a grand dinner as the Chinese did? And the Indian? Could UMNO, in its present disrepair, organise one? Get the same response, without turning it into an entertainment show featuring Siti Nurhulizah and other singers and actors who would draw in the crowds? Cound the Indian? The total reliance on the Chinese narrows the area of political debate and compromise for it is not based on a strategic alliance but sheer vote buying. We see some of that in UMNO. The warlords have crept into UMNO, inevitible when the centre is weak. Now the Chinese warlords join them. As the Indian would. Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, finds his control of MIC slipping, and has a grand plan to unite the three Indian political parties under him. He does so in panic. But one of the three, the People's Progressive Party, like the Gerakan, is multiracial.

How would the Opposition meet this challenge? The anchor is PAS. It is the best organised, knows where it is going, although it has the same internal convulsions as UMNO over its Islamic agenda but in reverse: in UMNO the traditionalists try to push out the Islamists, whereas in PAS, the Islamists do not want the modernist new arrivals to have any role that would alter the party's traditional image. The Opposition coalition cannot yet be formed, because the BN government would not allow it, but for a unified stand in which a single candidate with or without a common minimum programme all can accept. That is enough to unnerve the BN and UMNO. Politics is the art of the possible. If the BN makes its alignments, so would the Opposition. Two figures hold the key how well each would do: the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, and the BN's Gua Musang MP, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah. What happens to both could well determine UMNO's and PAS's future.

[This is my column in the latest issue of Harakah, the PAS organ, out today, 23 December 2003]

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