MGG Pillai Commentary View

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So, the countdown to the polls begin

THE NATIONAL FRONT (BN) PLAYS a cat-and-mouse game with the Opposition when General Election is at hand. It will be this year, next year, this month, next month. We decide when, so why should you be curious about when it should be? It would be held when it would be held. This is to hoowink the Opposition and to catch it unprepared, disorganised, and disarrayed. That worked in the BN's favour in nine general elections - 1959, 1964, 1969, 1974, 1978, 1982, 1986, 1990, 1995 - but not in 1999 and in 2004. Over the years, the Opposition parties have worked around it and build up an organisation that is quite formidable but with the millions of ringgit that must be deposited as election deposits, are hampered by not having enough funds. The BN's fortunes changed in 1998 when it allowed UMNO to dismiss its deputy president from office, jailed and had him convicted in courts that would do many a community of kangaroos proud.

The Anwar Ibrahim affair, in one sense, is the most important political development since the first general election in that this man, humiliated and incarcerated for a political vendetta, caused the Malay political and cultural ground to move to the sidelines, forcing UMNO, the leader in BN, to have to fight for Malay support that it once got as their cultural and political leader. This is played down now: Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim is a nobody, he is a spent force, without him KeADILan, the political party that came out of what the BN thought was his political castration, is history. But he is not. His name is a dirty word in UMNO and BN, the fear is real of what would happen if he is indeed released. UMNO has to fight to retain its cultural and political leadership of the Malay community because of it, for it breached the fundamental relationship between leader and chieftain by humiliating him.

If this man is so unimportant and history, as the BN and UMNO now insist he is, why should his release on bail be challenged so vehemently and in a court action where the judges are in no mood to hear the arguments and instead second guess the Prime Minister's wishes? When I raised it with one UMNO official high in the heirarchy, he repeated the now familiar mantra: Anwar is history, Anwar is irrelevant, Anwar is guilty of all he is charged for. I said I could accept all that if he was convicted and sentenced in a court of law that did not look over its shoulders for political directions. I suggested that since he is history and irrelevant, why not release him. He could do no more wrong, the people have forgotten him. So what is the problem? But he is the problem, he said rather reluctantly. We think he is history, he said, but the people, especially the Malays in the rural areas, still say he is wronged, and he must be released. The government does not bend to such pressures.

How could it when the people of Malaysia have returned it to office with more than two-thirds majority in every general election todate? So how could he be released without the Government losing face. I asked him if BN would release him three or four days into the campaign to turn the tide in its favour ever more dramatically. He would not answer, but it was clear from his facial expression that could well be one final, desperate option if the election would result in a two-thirds majority but which would not allow the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, to keep his job. Should it happen, the Malay vote would almost certainly swing to the BN in the final days of the campaign. One hopes Dato' Seri Anwar has his instincts well-honed, as it has so far, to reject this blatant electoral bribe and insist it be decided after the election. If the decision to release is made, it is only the timing that matters.

The BN had planned this general election since September, thwarted each time by calculated leaks or internal crisis. Since Pak Lah took office in November, at least two dates were seriously discussed, in December and January before the March date is all but firmed. He needs this election to appear before the UMNO general assembly in June with a firm national mandate. It is election year in UMNO too, and his showing at the polls would determine if he would be challenged. The rush to elections now is forced upon him. The Sabah assembly's five year term ends in April. The fractious state of Sabah BN and UMNO prevented early polls there. There were plans for the election there first, so that Pak Lah could come to general elections with one state firmly in its hands. But that had to be discounted when PAS, which controls Kelantan and Trengganu, suggested it would too. The BN is under pressure in Kedah, it remains touch and go there, but the odds of being returned in high. If Kedah goes, the BN would face far more problems elsewhere than it could handle.

But the countdown has begun. The Star has a front page photograph of posters being printed. The New Straits Times has the Sabah Election Commission officials checking and sorting out the administrative paraphernalia for the elections. The newspapers now devote two and more pages on election news. The official hesitance is now replaced with an optimism of how well it would do in the polls. The news is full of individual candidates and constituencies, and how the Opposition would have to worry about the election deposit, so strong is the organisation in those constituencies. The strongest card it has is its long years in power, not how it governed: people are reluctant to throw out a sitting government, however bad, for fear of the unknown under a new government.

Still the subtle changes are missed. This frequent threats of general election caused one effect, to the BN's chagrin: in January, the Opposition parties decided polls were near, and started preparations for it to be held any time by June. The Barisan Alternatif (BA) does not have DAP as a member, but it discusses seats with KeADILan. I fear the DAP has missed the boat. It is reduced to a minor party, and while it could hope for what it now has and a few more, its heydays are over. That it wants to field both Mr Lim Kit Siang and Mr Karpal Singh in Penang - although there are attempts to have Mr Lim stand in one of two Ipoh parliamentary constituencies - is one sign of its genteel decline. The BN parties know the folly of not allowing for change from within, with regular retirements and new blood to keep it at the forefront. The DAP is now learning it the hard way.

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