MGG Pillai Commentary View

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PAS questions Pak Lah's Islamic credentials, which BN labels a personal attack

MALAYSIAN NEWSPAPERS TRY HARD to impress readers they report fairly and evenly. Like every major newspaper in the mainstream around the world, they lean to whoever is in power, assiduously tilt to their masters' voice, while turning in a neat profit for its corporate and political owners and controllers. In Malaysia, every one of them are owned or linked to the National Front (BN), and are, without a murmur, party organs, a sort of mainstream Harakah, when the world is dissected through its prism. By and large, they pull it off, though in recent years, its decidedly political stance is challenged. What caused it is the schism within the Malay community over how the BN government thumped its collective nose at Malay culture and destroyed, against Malay feudal beliefs, one of its chieftains. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, assures us he is a nobody now, history in fact, deserves to be where he is, all of which is dutifully reported in the mainstream media, but not the jailed politician's.

This is certainly so in the urban areas, especially in the high levels of government and the corporate world. Both would like to see him disappear if he could, but in fact it is said in the belief that, like the collective prayers for rain that drought-stricken communities resort, it would become a fact. But let the BN try to convince the voter in the rural areas and even in the dispossessed and slum dwellers of Kuala Lumpur. Now that elections are called, the BN must raise the ante, accusing the Opposition of chicanery and worse, helply spread throughout the country, but often the response is ignored or limited to the dark corners of the newspapers. There is, further, this underlying belief that whatever the Prime Minister says is the gospel, any response to it is to justify the unjustifiable. Similarly, when the tables are turned, the Prime Minister's response gets banner headlines but what caused it tucked in a corner somewhere in the newspapers.

The issue in this election is, more than anything, Pak Lah. He projects an image of a religious scholar, the son and grandson of respected ulamas. Few have thought of him as one in his rise to the top, although no one denies he is both pious and religious. His spin doctors have made him out to what he is not, and it is this that PAS is chipping away. When its president, Dato' Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, questioned and challenged it, the mainstream press said it was a personal attack on the Prime Minister. Politics must be clean, the Opposition should not cast aspersions of the leaders, it must learn to be in politics and abide by the strict tents of the political Queensbury rules. Of course, when the Prime Minister decides to go a personal vendatta and attack a man he wants destroyed, no holds are barred, as when Pak Lah's predecessor was on prime time television in 1998 with a vicious personal attack on his deputy prime minister, accusing him of sodomy, helpfully explain to those who did not know how one masturbates.

When Islam is central to this campaign - the BN would not admit it, but that is how it is viewed in the Malay heartland, and which it lost be default since it was not around to counter the PAS encroachments into its traditional support base - and with the BN leader said to be a religious scholar, the PAS attacks are legitimate. The Tok Guru does not attack Pak Lah personally, but what he stands for as the BN leader. It is the BN which went to bat with PAS on the role of Islam, won the urban battles, defined the debate, and then retired. PAS, which disagreed, went along, if only because its work is made the easier when the Government makes the assertions it could not. After all, it is the BN, not PAS, which unilaterally declared Malaysia an Islamic state, made shariah law important in the states it had control of, and which turned the judicial system upside down to give equal status to civil and shariah law. The BN cannot go back on them, because the Malay Islamic ground would not allow it; indeed, many UMNO and Muslim members would not either.

Pak Lah rests on his record after he became Prime Minister. There is not much to talk of, although he announced several policies, but mainly stuck because of internal opposition, within the cabinet and the civil service. The widespread attack on corruption has ground to a halt, after three high profile arrests. When the candidates are known this week, several accused of rampant corruption, investigated by the Anti-Corruption Agency, but which could go further because the Prime Minsiter of the day would not allow it, would be candidates. The Tok Guru has opened one more issue that Pak Lah must answer. What has upset the BN is that PAS directs its attacks and taunts on its leader, forcing him to justify whatever is claimed about his religosity by his spin doctors. If Islam was not the issue, the Tok Guru would have been justifiably criticised. Not this time. But instead of taking on Tok Guru, the BN and Pak Lah decided to be defensive. Why?

This is the BN's danger. The Tok Guru's remarks have, by now, spread throughout the country, in cassettes and CDs, available for sale in the pasar malams and the shops, and imprinted in the voter's mind, while the BN reacts with a tepid response. The BN is quick to label the Tok Guru's attack 'lies'. Mark Twain once wrote: "Lies have travelled half way around the world before truth puts on its boots." But PAS insists it tells the truth, and the BN insists it is all lies. But should the BN give up a political fight because there is a dispute on which is the truth and which lies?