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The BN crosses the Rubicon with this General Election

THE NATIONAL FRONT (BN) is home and dry in last week's general election, returned to office with half a dozen more seats than the old parliament had, affirmed the electoral legitimacy of its new leader, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, shaking off at the same time any influence his predecessor, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, had had on him in his first five months as prime minister. He literally decimated the opposition in the new parliament, reclaimed the Malay heartland, sidelined the Islamist opposition, took the looming political battle over Islamic supremacy in Malaysia out of parliamentary overview while shutting out non-Malay involvement in it. He shook the opposition PAS to the bone, routing it in Trengganu, badly dented its control of Kelantan; reduced the multiracial National Justice Party (KeADILan) into a crisis from which it could take years to recover; with the Democratic Action Party (DAP) its main opposition in parliament and a PAS all but voiceless, that on first sight justifies the euphoric sentiment of the Malaysian and foreign press and market sentiment.

If he had this result five years earlier, his victory would have been the sweeter. Not this year. The Election Commission, in its eagerness to see the BN in power, went out of its way to break the law and its electoral operating rules, amongst others, to extend the voting hours in Selangor by two hours when it seemed certain the BN and the PAS-led opposition were neck-to-neck. It encouraged phantom voters all over the country but especially in the four Malay states - Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan, Trengganu - where PAS was at its strongest - whilst overseeing a flawed voting system. In many individual polling stations, more votes were cast than there were voters. There was, at the end of the day, a deliberate plan for what happened. It was centrally administered, so the local BN, mostly UMNO, leaders did no know of it. They were often as surprised at the result as PAS and KeADILan. It was clear to Pak Lah that without it, he would have been sidelined without further ado. His legitimacy, as prime minister and UMNO president depended on it. So did past BN and UMNO leaders. This kind of nonsense took place even then, but so seamlessly that few could complain or knew about it. In the 1999 campaign, one prominent Malaysian arrived in Sabah with two large dried fish, a gift for the UMNO leader, which escaped customs or other inspection because he went through the VIP channel: it was split open later to reveal the thousands of false identity cards for use in that general election.

The EC was happy to be the BN's hand maiden. It failed for no reason than that all institutions in the Mahathir epoch had: the systematic denigration of all it stood for. It is around now only to ensure the BN's continued victory with an eagerness for the electoral gymnastics of the kind that African leaders like Zimbabwe's Mr Robert Mugabe is more at home with. The EC chairman, Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman is blase at what he wrought: amongst others, the opposition denied the full electoral rolls until nomination day. They had to work with a deliberately flawed and incomplete rolls the EC had given them earlier. This made their campaign all the more difficult, but when this was brought to the EC's attention, it suggested, they ought to spread their message in ceremahs, not house-to-house campaigns for which they would have no time anyway! Tan Sri Abdul Rashid insisted he had done no wrong with the mess he presided, promising to resign if the finger is pointed directly at him. He is blamed by both the BN and the opposition. There are calls for a royal commission, fresh elections especially in Selangor, to revamp the EC. It is too late for that. The rubicon is crossed. Malaysian politics moves irrevocably to another plane, in common with third world societies than the first, where leaders would allow general elections only when they are guaranteed victory.

For this election polarised the electorate so dramatically that this would widen, not narrow, in the coming years. The ground anger in the Malay states is real. In any election, one can more or less predict the result even before the voting is over. In the four Malay states, it was PAS, not the BN, that was perceived to be leading, that even the local BN was as surprised as the opposition at what happened. More people went out to vote in these states than ever before. As the former PAS MP, Mr Mohamed Sabu, told me last night: "I accept my defeat but not the flawed electoral process which caused it." What should worry Pak Lah is that this residual anger is widespread amongst the Malays in the four states, and in states like Pahang and Selangor where the EC had wrought its electoral magic. The belief that the people's choice is not heard is real, the despondency is real, the anger is real, the mood to defy is real, which even the police seem to realise: when the opposition leaders gathered outside the National Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) office yesterday, the fully armed police watched the more than 2,000 crowd from a respectable distance. It knew how volatile it was. Last night, more than 10,000 gathered at the PAS headquarters in Taman Melawar, Gombak, to watch the life telecast of the former Trengganu mentri besar, Dato' Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, talking to his supporters - one estimate put the crowd there at 50,000 - at his mosque in Rusila, outside of Kuala Trengganu.

This Malay divide is all but irreconciliable. The BN would have to become more Islamic, and more repressive, to show the world how democratic it is. If hope is lost in the electoral system - and make no mistake, it is all but lost in an important segment of Malay society - other non-electoral and illegal methods would be serious options in this political battle for political power. More serious is the void fuelled by different perceptions of the Islamic state, the battle for which will now be fought with the non-Malays ignored. The DAP's hatred for the Islamic state is well known, but it would not get the time of day if it tries to debate that in parliament. The main difference in the UMNO and PAS version of an Islamic state is the speed with which it would be a reality, not on the substance of what it is: UMNO promises to install PAS's theocratic state in stages while PAS wants it implemented immediately. In other words, the BN coalition which UMNO leads accept the totality of an Islamic state but differ only on how it would be applied. It is not much of a choice. All this election decided is that the Malaysian future is an Islamic one, perhaps as early as 2020, brought in not by discussion and negotiations with the multiracial Malaysia but as a political tit for tat for the Malay ground.

[A lightly edited version of this article appeared in my Chiaroscuro column in malaysiakini on Saturday, 27 March 2004]

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