MGG Pillai Commentary View

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The BN's unexpected landslide mandate comes with it a flawed EC and a host of problems

THE NATIONAL FRONT WON an unexpected landslide victory in yesterday's (21 March 2004), the best since it as the Alliance won 51 of 52 constituencies for the Federal Legislative Assembly in 1955. It is a result that defies statistical probability and logic. It swept the Malay states, routed PAS in Trengganu, a cliff hanger in Kelantan, where the votes are still being recounted, decimated the National Justice Party, KeADILan, and made its president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, unbeatable in his own right. The only KeADILan MP is its president, Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail. PAS saw its hopes dashed so thoroughly that it would be awhile before it recovers. The only opposition of any note comes from the Democratic Action Party (DAP). But this BN victory also calls into question the Election Commission's impartiality and ability to conduct elections. It stepped in in Selangor when as polls were about to close it was clear the BN and the Opposition were running neck to neck. Without warning, it extended the voting by two hours, breaking its own rules and without consulting the candidates. It was during this time that BN bussed in a surge of voters that turned the tide. Pak Lah's brilliant mandate comes with it deep-seated questions of fairness of the election process.

This is an election devoid of issues, campaigning and interest. No one seemed interested in it except in pockets. The rash of posters were seen near polling stations. The candidates were not seen, and voters often did not sight the candidates during the eight day campaign. The EC did not give the Opposition parties the final voter list until the morning of nomination, when it was finalised. The confusion at the polling stations happened throughout the country. Ballot papers went to the wrong constituency polling stations, candidates were not properly identified, the EC election rule book was readily breached when polls were suspended and then postponed. By normal standards, when mishaps like this occur, the poll should be suspended. The returning officer and the polling clerks did not check the ballot paper to see if it was in order: the mistakes came to the fore only when the candidates protested, often hours after the poll had begun. The EC chairman, Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman, apologised, and the EC secretary-general complained it had only eight days to get the ballot papers ready, as if that would erase the memory that all was not right in this election. Besides, is it not the EC which decided on the dates, and it knew fully well that was enough? Unless he now tells us he was given the dates, which questions its impartiality the more. How could names disappear from the voting list when the candidate comes with the EC computer printout details only to find it is not on the official list? I saw two instances while I awaited my turn to vote in Brickfields.

Be that as it may, what does this general election mean? The moderate Malay element - represented by KeADILan - is wiped out. The Malay who does not want a Malay state is left high and dry since PAS and UMNO now push for an Islamic state, nothing less, with the only difference between them is in what form it would manifest itself. With PAS in the outhouse, the pressure from its religious constituency on its Western-educated moderates, would rise in tandem and, like the moderate Malay, sidelined. This represents a large slice of Malay intellectual and moderate leadership which would be irrelevant as the two Islamic parties fight for the holy grail. The BN government is frightened of a Malay Opposition, from PAS or KeADILan, and would rather have the DAP. But the DAP will be ignored in the larger Islamic battle, and therefore parliament will revert to the rubber stamp it has been in recent years. The Chinese has decided it wants the DAP to keep the BN government on its toes but within a narrow selfish focus. It eschews the PAS brand of Islam, but think the BN version is all right.

But the BN would have to be more Islamic to keep pace with a PAS that would now organise in silence. It does not matter now if it is PAS or UMNO Islam, but our future politics is Islamic. In this political struggle, the middle ground is irrelevant and mute. BN politics would be to ensure the Malay moderate is silenced for ever. It is not a good omen. This election is therefore a watershed. The battle lines are drawn in which BN Islam will have to side with the United States and others to rout any who believes in an Islam antithetical ot its view. The grounds for a conflict is clearly drawn. How it would pan out would only be known in the years ahead. One thing is clear: The BN must up the ante to meet PAS, and in this clash, the Malay moderate and the non-Malay is surely and clearly sidelined. It is, and I am not stretching the point, the end of multiracial politics as we have known it in the past 50 years. One hopes Pak Lah could sustain the multiracial polity, but he could not, when push comes to shove. He would not admit it, but this is the practical effect of the BN's landslide victory yesterday.

How did the BN create the stunning electoral upset? The collusion with the EC, and the mass media to campaign, is too simplistic an answer. There is more. The frequent calls on television to vote for the BN had, I now begin to be certain, a hidden message - to come and vote for BN. The advertisements were put together by international advertising agencies, as a news item in the New Straits Times a few days before the polling confirmed. This hidden message is called subliminal advertising, when in a thousand frames of film, one would carry the intended message. The eye cannot catch it but the brain would, and when repeated often, make the viewer what is expected of him. In Spain in the 1950s a practical test was done in two neighbouring cinemas, one selling Coca Cola and the other Pepsi Cola. The subliminal message in the first was to exhort the viewers to drink Pepsi, and in the other, Coke. During the intermission, the viewers of one ran to the other to get their drink they had been programmed to accept. It was banned after that. But such restrictions do not apply in Malaysia. One would know soon enough if this was one of the methods used.

PAS and its autocratic leader, Dato' Seri Haji Hadi Awang, had much to do with the debacle. His last minute threat, about two days before the polling, to deny women, Muslim and non-Muslim, got the women against PAS. His erratic refusal to listen to the ground and his advisers made it worse. In the rest of the country, the Trengganuisation of PAS is resented. This combined with the harder fight the Opposition faced brought its role to a crisis. I have always insisted that the Tuan Guru was wrong to take over the presidency of PAS, since traditionally he comes from the West Coast and a man who placed Islam in the Malay contest. It is a strategic error, as became known in the party elections when the Trengganu leader, Dato' Mustapha Ali, lost to an ulema from the West Coast for the deputy presidency. It comes back to the Malay view of Islam: important in his cultural makeup, but not as a sole raison d'etre of his existence.

For Pak Lah, his victory would hold only if he moves to put UMNO in order. He would not get another chance. He does not wield the axe as his predecessor would to forestall rebellion. The warlords are still out there with their own agendas. He could well be smug with this belief that nothing could go wrong. So Tun Mahathir believed, only to be forced into a corner by his deputy. Pak Lah is faced with an equally ambitious deputy, hovering over him like Banquo's Ghost, ready to pounce. The fight for the UMNO ground has just begun, and this time, Pak Lah is alone, especially after his annointment as UMNO president in June.

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