MGG Pillai Commentary View

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This General Election is about the Islamic state Malaysia ought to be

NOTHING HAPPENS IN MALAYSIA this week. It is election time. It is a time for political parties to lose their reason to promise heaven on earth en route to hell waiting for us around the corner. What do these political parties stand for? We do not know. All the political parties have their manifestos, released either just before or just after nomination day, obliquely referred to in the media, though few have cited it. In short, we do not know what the political parties stand for, except vaguely. As for the specifics, like government bills before the Malaysian parliament, the small print is where the punch is and is glossed over in the rush to make it to the finishing line. The general election, like our laws, are completed at breakneck speed, with no thought for any one to sit down and reflect, and debate on what it means.

This election, like in every past election, is to annoint the National Front (BN) in with a two-thirds majority to Parliament. The crisis occurs when it does not, as in 1969. While parliament is the prize, the battle for control is in the states. The Opposition knows that denying the two-thirds majority in the states puts the BN on the defensive, but the best it can hope is to retain the Kelantan and Trengganu it has, deny the BN the two-thirds majority, and make every constituency a marginal one. But the Opposition knows that to form the government in the state is a double-edged sword: every BN-controlled state is not only on the verge of bankruptcy but also owes hundreds of millions of ringgit, as PAS was to find out when it took charge of Kelantan and Trengganu.

But the BN wants more than a two-thirds majority in Parliament to 'serve the people better'. The spin doctors artlessly transform the shaky political future of the new prime minister into Malaysia's good luck if the Opposition is trounced. The Opposition is confident, say its spokesmen, to challenge the BN's loosening hold on the Malay ground. There is no talk of the Chinese or Indian ground, except the unmentioned fear that the BN is in gross difficulties should that, like the Malay, move to the sidelines. The BN is unable to bring the Malay from the sidelines to support it, and it cannot until it addresses what it would not: its deliberate defiance of Malay cultural tradition from 1998 on. So it lays great store on Chinese support - the Indian vote is marginalised, its support unconditional, and unlikely in a thousand years to create political waves - and strong endorsement from Sabah and Sarawak. In other words, the BN goes into battle in the Malay heartland knowing it could not win as it should but would coast to power nevertheless with non-Malay support. It has the advantage of incumbency, people want order more than anything else, and would change sides only if they are mad enough to want change, for change unsettles.

The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has another difficulty: he must appear at the UMNO general assembly in June with the Malay ground on his side. But he came into office too late in the day to address that before the elections. The battle is fought in Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan, Trengganu, Pahang and Selangor. His main opponent is PAS now and the National Justice Party (KeADILan) possibly in the coming years. PAS only has to show it has gained ground in these states by denying the BN its two-thirds majority, as in Kedah. If it can achieve that, and be returned in 50 per cent more seats in Parliament and the states, it has achieved what it wants for this general election. A problem for the BN, more narrowly, UMNO, is that PAS and KeADILan work hand-in-hand in this general election. In 1999, the BN strategy was to deny every KeADILan candidate but its president, Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, a seat. KeADILan had five seats in the last parliament.

That had one unintended effect. UMNO to meet the growing threat of PAS, after 1999, had to be seen to be more Islamic than its rival for the Malay heartland. With the multiracial parties sidelined, UMNO had to best PAS on its turf. Malaysia is declared an Islamic state, the judicial system gives equal status to civil and syariah law, and now, the prime minister announces, in the election campaign, that Muslim pupils must study the Quran from the first year of school. This, he insists, would not affect the non-Muslim pupils. As usual, this is a gut reaction not thought out properly. It does not matter. PAS would accept it wholeheartedly. The BN and UMNO is pushed further into changing the character of the Malaysian state in a debate, like in Iran in the 1970s, where the other secular and non-Islamic views were battened down. KeADILan, even with its raison d'etre the release of its eminence grise, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, promised that hope. But UMNO wanted nothing more than to see it destroyed, and is now caught in the islamic dilemma.

PAS does not explain its Islamic state plans, nor does UMNO. Each insists its position is the ideal. Whatever its rights and wrongs, it is nevertheless dangerous to change direction as drastically as happens now without properly airing it. That is now all but impossible. The march to an Islamic Malaysia is not for discussion, by default. For a Malay can be less of a Malay but, in these charged circumstances, less of a Muslim. The non-Malay political parties keep quiet. The Malay political parties cannot now opt for a non-Islamic future. They must join the bandwagon. What happened in Kota Bharu when PAS objected to the KeADILan candidate for Parliament because he once espoused socialist views is a far more dangerous sign for Malaysian polity than it is viewed: that in Malaysia, a Malay's past connexions with a non-Islamic ideology will consign him, like the non-Malays, to the sidelines. What use are political manifestos if they cannot be questioned and challenged by the voters in an election campaign? In this election, the BN and PAS addresses the Islamic concerns, in the short time it has, more than any other, with the promise that the position of the non-Malay is unaffected. The BN political parties is happy to accept without proof that UMNO's Islamic state is far better than PAS's Islamic state. But is that what this general election is all about?

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