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The exquisitely fine art of selecting, and back-stabbing, BN candidates

THE SELANGOR MENTRI BESAR, Dato' Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo, will have no National Front (BN) candidate if the Anti-Corruption Agency finds his or her background murky. The candidates are not selected yet, but the ACA, superbly efficient when it wants to or political duty calls, have found them all to be clean as a whistle. No one has asked how a political party could ask a supposedly independent government agency to do its dirty work in front of a general election. Does this mean that if the ACA does it for Selangor, it does for all BN controlled states? Is this then the first step to require all candidates, in Parliament and the states, to obtain an ACA clearance before they could contest? But it is also to impress voters of the strict selection process of candidates, but it does not fool the voter. It is a silly move as can be. But selecting candidates is a nightmare for the BN president and Malaysian prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. He is heir to a flawed system which he cannot change, that those who should be out must be in for his political safety. The public anger at some of the candidates is real. So subterfuges like this to show all is well. Expected to be candidates are several whose rightful place is the Sungei Buloh prison, but if that were so, the BN edifice collapse.

For Pak Lah's most intractible task is to draw up the list of candidates. The BN fiction is that he and he alone decides. It is convenient. The BN political party presidents evade would rather let the BN president decide than face wrathful members. Over the years, this firmed his hand so he now can drop non-UMNO candidates at will. Power is secured in his hands so thoroughly, and uses it to the full that there is no nonsense that he is primus inter pares, first amongst equals. There is more. The BN parties submit their lists of candidates for his approval. But he interferes to correct blatant inconsistencies and ommissions. The saga of the People's Progressive Party president, Dato' M. Kayveas' search for a parliamentary seat is typical. He was not given it, but Pak Lah wants him to have it. The question is where. He had worked hard for the new parliamentary constituency of Cameron Highlands. But other parties wanted it too: first, the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, then the Malaysian Indian Congress. He was then offered the overwhelmingly Malay constituency of Bukit Gantang, in Perak. But not after some untypical BN arm-twisting. But it is still unclear where, or if, he would. Now the MIC deputy president, Dato' Seri S. Subramaniam, so say his crest-fallen supporters, is denied his parliamentary constituency. He would probably get it. Pak Lah is not known to desert any closely aligned to him.

Pak Lah is at pains to insist he is in control, the party is united, the traitors would be dealt with severely. Yet, his deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, has two intractible opponents in his Pekan constituency: the PAS-led Opposition and Pak Lah's backers. PAS has prepared five VCDs of 5,000 copies about what is wrong with Dato' Seri Najib, say his advisers, and made with finances from Pak Lah's backers. PAS keeps a stiff upper lip, saying nothing than promising a tough fight. Pak Lah's regards Dato' Seri Najib, despite publicly stating how close they are, as his predecessor, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, of his deputy, Tan Sri Musa Hitam. The leader is nervous about his deputy, and if he would ever upstage him. So he must be sidelined. What better way than to have him defeated at the polls. Every attempt to improve his electoral chances is blocked. He has a way out but he probably would not take it: move to the new Indera Mahkota constituency, carved out of a third of his Pekan constituency and bits taken from surrounding constituencies. He stands a better chance here. He scraped through with 241 votes in 1999, and though the redrawn constituency has two large military barracks, defence minister though he is, he cannot depend on them.

The BN candidate list is fluid. Pak Lah has to wait until the last minute before he can announce them. The BN, and UMNO, is so fractured from within that whoever is chosen has a ready-made opposition in the constituency. Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib frequently call on UMNO members to unite during the campaign. That is easier said than done. There is not one state where this is absent. In Sarawak, it is more serious: the state BN threatened to go it alone, for the Council Negeri elections, if Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud remained BN head and state chief minister. He cut short an overseas holiday to quell the revolt. He failed. To staunch the crisis, the Council Negeri elections is not held. The Kayveas caper tests Pak Lah's political mettle for how that is revolved would measure how successful he is. For, if Pak Lah does not know it, it reveals a weak centre, and the rise of the warlords. Meanwhile, lists are drawn up for candidates in some constituencies. The newspapers mentioned it, but what these problem constituencies do not have is a crisis: the candidate invariable is the man closest to Pak Lah. Meanwhile, Malaysia now attempts opinion polls. They are popular in Britain and the United States. So they must here too. But one must disbelieve them. The pollsters learn as they work, there is no serious attempt to find an acceptable and fair sample of voters, what is acceptable and allowed in the West would not work here, no one, especially a Malay, would tell you what he thinks, many are inaccessible to the urban-based pollsters. The result is not worth bothering about. Perhaps it might in a hundred years. Certainly not now.

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