MGG Pillai Commentary View

<< Previous || Next >>

UMNO leaders dissemble as Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim returns to the political centre stage

THE JAILED FORMER DEPUTY Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, returns in triumph to the centre of Malaysian politics. He remains in jail and would remain there awhile. But it is for the governing National Front (BN), and its main party, UMNO, to convince Malaysians that he deserves to be there, the courts justly convicted himvicted by the courts, the judiciary is independent, the Malay perception he is wronged is false. If it cannot, it would be the BN that must fight doubly hard to govern with a two-thirds majority after the polls. For the Prime Minister's claim of an upright and independent judiciary is in tatters: the yardstick for that is how it dispenses with the Anwar appeals. Every day Dato' Seri Anwar is in prison is one more difficulty for BN and UMNO at the polls. The Anwar issue is as potent as an election issue now as it was in 1999. The Malay ground is convinced the jailed politician should not be where he is, that he pays a high price for his bid for power before his due, not for the criminal charges he is convicted of. That UMNO does not act to convince them otherwise makes it more so.

The extraordinary scenes at the Court of Appeal last week, when the three-man coram dismissed his application for bail in scenes of utter chaos but could not induce decorum in the august halls of the Istana Keadilan aka the Palace of Justice, has put paid to justice for Dato' Seri Anwar. The public gallery, Dato' Seri Anwar, and others, openly challenged the coram, which could not make itself heard above the din and the shouting. It is the likes of which no Malaysian court had to contend with in its two centuries of existence. In happier times, when it sent Dato' Seri Anwar to jail on false, unreliable and unproven allegations, it would have found all in court that Wednesday, 21 January 2004, guilty of contempt and jailed them. All it could do was to walk out in a huff, and refuse to read the judgement in open court. It is yet another unmistakable sign that the National Front (BN) must convince Malaysians it did right to destroy and humiliate its former deputy prime minister, and deny him the legal courtesies extended to ordinary prisoners, like bail for offences for which he is in jail. Besides, the courts take an extraordinarily long time to decide routine applications from him.

Dato' Seri Anwar has decided his hope now is in the court of public opinion, not of justice. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, realised that with a shock when the Court of Appeal scenes stuck home. He had to defend the judiciary to protect his political life but that only questioned its independence. The former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, had to deny he is Rasputin to Pak Lah. He told the New Straits Times: "When I said I would retire, I meant it." Yet even senior UMNO members, in the Cabinet and in the higher ranks of the UMNO supreme council, would tell you it is not so. It is, after all, Dato' Seri Anwar, more than any other, that forced Dr Mahathir to retire when he did. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, is not Pak Lah's, but Dr Mahathir's, choice. So the cabinet. When Pak Lah appointed the Mahathir cabinet to his first cabinet, it revealed his umbilical cord to the Old Man. This is exploited with effect by the Opposition. The BN and UMNO does not respond as vigorously as it should. And could well lose the battle, if not the war, by default.

The UMNO supreme council believes - at least it did before the Court of Appeal hearing - Dato' Seri Anwar is irrelevant, is history, his political reach as solid as ice on a hot stove. He cannot do much from his wheel chair and prison cell. But the supreme council these days is not where you could get honest views: if the nay sayers show their hand, their political careers could come to a sticky end, so they support whatever it is the leaders want. And the leaders want to believe Dato' Seri Anwar is politically dead and gone. One UMNO vice president met an UMNO division leader recently to talk about the Anwar affair; as the talk wore on, his firm belief in Dato' Seri Anwar's guilt wavered to one of doubt and, when it ended, confused. UMNO members once convinced of Dato' Seri Anwar's guilt are now unsure. More now would rather fade away than stand on a BN ticket in the polls.

What changed this perception is the former deputy prime minister's brilliant campaign to clear his name; which the BN and UMNO refused to counter where it matters: on the political ground. In the last month alone, the National Justice Party (KeADILan) has attracted crowds of 12,000 and more in places as far part as Grik and Sungei Patani in Kedah, Kelang and Kuala Selangor in Selangor, and the campaign has just begun. It is due in Pasar Salak, in Perak, tonight (24 January 2004). Even PAS discovers that they could garner crowds in the tens of thousands in the Malay heartland if the humiliation of political destruction of Dato' Seri Anwar is the issue. UMNO knows this. After all, it was the Anwar issue which caused UMNO to desert the political ground. What makes the UMNO position even more difficult is that many Cabinet ministers and party leaders would not be candidates in the coming general elections, cutting off the tenuous links that still exist between UMNO and the constituencies. So, when UMNO leaders now talk of an re-energised ground, it is more to get the troops in line than a political reality. Especially in the Malay heartland. What frightens UMNO is the open challenge to get its leaders to swear on the Quran that what they did in destroying Dato' Seri Anwar is right. It is the more urgent after the Court of Appeal dismissed his application for bail. The BN and UMNO can live in a fool's paradise and insist Dato' Seri Anwar will not affect the course of the coming general election. But the reality is different.

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