MGG Pillai Commentary View

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The General Election is at hand, along with the usual politically-charged crossovers

THE DATE OF THE GENERAL election is at the absolute discretion of the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. But he cannot announce it without first making sure his National Front (BN) and UMNO are ready. This is when it begins to unravel. Nothing is secret in this city, and soon all political parties are aware of it, and plan for it. In the past, the BN's dominance, especially within the Malay community, was so dominant, that even if the date was known, there was little the Opposition could do to force it off its perch. Those were the days. Today, the BN is assured of its two-thirds majority only if the Chinese community backs it wholeheartedly. The Malay is on the sidelines, after the political destruction and personal humiliation of its former deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. He wants more proof of the BN's political intentions, and on how it intends to right the wrongs he sees implicit in why the former deputy prime minister continues to be in Sungei Buloh prison. The plans as it stand is for Parliament to be dissolve on 01 March and for polling on 20 March.

When the UMNO-led BN made plans for the General Election, it revealed cracks within that the new leader could not prevent. It began with the appointment of the new UMNO divisional heads; a few controversial appointments raised hackles among its members. For Pak Lah, as UMNO president, ignored an opportunity to have a taut UMNO body, and took the dangerous line of focussing the appointments as a way of sidelining two men: the Gua Musang MP, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, and Dato' Seri Anwar. It backfired. It unleashed a response he least expected. The UMNO warlords, long under the thumb of the former President, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, moved away and dictated their own terms. Pak Lah's tenuous hold on UMNO cannot hold if he does not negotiate with the warlords. The first evidence of this was when the Perak mentri besar, Dato' Seri Tajol Rosli Ghazali, announced that all who lost in the election of 1999 are not candidates in 2004. That is the prerogative of the UMNO president. That Pak Lah did not react as Dr Mahathir would have revealed his political nakedness.

The news reports in the mainstream media revealed not a unity of purpose directed from the centre but of centrifugal forces moves away from it. The more the news, the more the headaches discussed in public. Which is why a manufactured public campaign of flogging rapists in public diverted attention. If you want to know what happens in UMNO, the official and mainstream media will not now provide it. You must turn to the alternate media or talk to the UMNO leaders in private and off the record. As if UMNO and BN did not have problems enough, the Anwar appeal for bail at the Court of Appeal last month added another: it was denied, but in circumstances that it could not maintain decorum and order in court. Pak Lah stepped in to assert the independence of the judiciary, when it should have been the chief justice who should have. It politicised the judiciary as nothing else since it decided, at politicial instigation, to convict Dato' Seri Anwar no matter what.

And brought him back into the political centre stage. It proved yet again that this hapless man fought his political destruction and personal humiliation brilliantly and set UMNO, and to a lesser extent the BN, into a one-way path to oblivion. UMNO walks that path only after his arrest in 1998. It cannot yet turn back. It can if it transforms itself into a political party of the Malays by resolving the cultural hurt that caused it to lose support. That means a free pardon for Dato' Seri Anwar, and bringing him, or at least offering to, back to centre stage in UMNO. That it cannot. For there is hardly an UMNO leader in the higher reaches of the party who is not involved in that destruction. A little publicised meeting at the Putra World Trade Centre in late 1998, after the arrest, discussed a manufactured video tape to implicate Dato' Seri Anwar in an act of sodomy. Despite the reservations of some senior UMNO officials, none of whom was Pak Lah or his deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, it was shown to Malaysia's generals and ambassadors, only to be disbelieved.

It was after all UMNO who sacked, without evidence but merely because he misjudged his political clout, Dato' Seri Anwar. UMNO manufactured evidence to convict and destroy him. If it wanted to destroy him, it should just have suspended him for five years. That would have put paid to his political career. He would have out of UMNO politics for ten years. If he wanted a political career then, he would have to resign from UMNO - and that would have reduced him to a cypher. UMNO's mistake was to humiliate him, as Malay cultural mores do not allow, and could not make the allegations against him stick in a court of law. And he brilliantly turned the tables against UMNO. And he is still around, energised from his recent Court of Appeal defeat.

With these larger problems that the UMNO-led BN must first resolve, it takes the easy rather doubtful step of weaning Opposition members to its ranks. The National Justice Party, KeADILan, sacked the secretary of its youth section, Mr Lokman Noor Adam, a former ISA detainee, as a response to suggestions that he had joined UMNO. It was the only decision it could take. If rumours abound about its key officials of desertion and treachery - it does not matter if it is true or false - it must take action. What makes it curious is that it is turned into a political issue in the mainstream newspapers which, as one should not forget, are controlled by groups in the BN and its component parties. UMNO then gets into the act, not to confirm or deny it but to insist it does not 'buy' its opponents. Dato' Seri Najib did not mince his words: UMNO is a part of principle; it does not pay good money for turncoats from other parties; this is, you understand, not the UMNO way; it accepts any who accepts UMNO's struggle and discipline.

Could he then confirm what other UMNO leaders say: that it intends to buy Opposition candidates after the nomination as a cheaper way to win seats? But I stray. In this matter, all he had to say was if Mr Lokman had, or had not, joined UMNO. But he could not. For it is an issue it can milk some two cents worth of publicity. The UMNO secretary-general, Tan Sri Khalil Yaacob is unsure. He must verify it. "Our pratice in UMNO has always been to hold welcoming ceremonies for members of other political parties who have sincerely decided to join us and these events are held from time to time," he said. And sidestepped the issue at hand. He rides the high horse: "Our leaders on the ground have indicated to me of interest by people from other political parties wishing to join UMNO, after having evaluated our policies and track record in serving the people."

There is a desperation in these moves. After having dismissed Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim as a political irrelevancy in 2004, it has to eat its words. He looms large as ever, as an Opposition mascot and as a recurrent nightmare in UMNO and BN. If it wants to do better, it is not enough to have Opposition members crossing over from Kelantan, Trengganu, Perlis and Kedah, and in some parts of Selangor. If this were true, it would have crowed to kingdom come of its success. It has done nothing of that. Five hundred cross-overs a week from Kelantan and Trengganu means this year alone 2,000 have crossed to UMNO, and 24,000 last year, and steadily since 1999. These cross-overs do not come about because there is an election due: if they are dissatisfied, they would at all times and through the years. Yet, try as I might, I cannot find evidence of this brilliant UMNO move to destroy the Opposition political parties by encouraging desertion of their members to it. But unless it can wean over the whole KeADILan leadership, UMNO has lost the battle of the cross-overs. One Anwar Ibrahim firmly in the Opposition is worth more than the worst UMNO and BN can manage to inflict upon the Opposition before the General Election.

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