MGG Pillai Commentary View

<< Previous || Next >>

Pak Lah names an interim Cabinet amidst a Malay minority in parliament

ON FIRST SIGHT, THE new cabinet Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi named does look like a dog's breakfast: it is too unwieldy, it is the Mahathir cabinet with a few new faces of his men, apart from the deputy prime minister, it is, collectively, as loyal as a poodle, one that would not ignore his master's voice. He had had to drop a few coalition politicians close to him - the MCA vice president, Dato' Chua Jui Meng, for one, the MIC deputy president, Dato' S. Subramaniam, thrown to the wolves because their party president insisted. In the circumstances, after his heady electoral win and the need to keep his political team intact, he is in, he could not have done better. He needs to strengthen himself within the cabinet against the still smouldering animus between him and his deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, wriggle out of, and distance himself from, the crushing embrace of his predecessor, Tun Mahathir Mohamed. He is, in one sense, in greater danger than if his electoral victory was not as oppressive. At best, this is an interim cabinet that, for his own sake, he must prune and drastically change after the UMNO elections. At it stands now, he is now unlikely to be challenged for the UMNO presidency.

The man who should worry is Dato' Seri Najib. He is to Pak Lah what Tan Sri Musa Hitak was to Tun Mahathir. Both prime ministers have to keep looking over their shoulders at what their deputy prime ministers are doing. There is no love lost between them, and between their wives. Besides, Johore is out of the loop in this cabinet even if two new UMNO ministers are in this cabinet - Datin Azalina Othman (youth and sports) and Dato' Khaled Nordin (entrepreneur and co-operative development) - but in relatively unimportant ministries. The UMNO vice president, Tan Sri Muhiyuddin Yassin, is in agricultural and agro-based industries, but otherwise out of the power equation. If current thinking becomes real, he would challenge Dato' Seri Najib for the deputy presidency. The other vice-president, Tan Sri Mohamed Taib, is out of Parliament altogether, but he could be expected to stand for the UMNO vice-presidency in June. On the face of it, he has little or no chance. It would have been so if Tun Mahathir was UMNO president. But Pak Lah has yet to find his ground, he has to take matters slowly, making haste slowly, and move in little steps. His cabinet is one manifestation of that. It is for one reason and one only: to secure his position to make himself unbeatable in June. It is also important for Pak Lah that few warlords succeed in the UMNO elections.

His hold on UMNO would depend how he manages after the June elections. He must order branch and divisional elections soon to prepare for that. He could not therefore shake up his cabinet sharply that key UMNO bigwigs could stay away or oppose him. He is seen in UMNO as a weak leader. The party warlords flex their muscles. Which is why he re-appointed as mentris besar those he would rather not have. What complicated his plans was his electoral victory. He cannot now take chances. Which is why, for instance, he has eight ministers without portfolios in the prime minister's department; cut the portfolios of ministers he did not like - the MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu and the MCA president, Dato' Seri Ong Ka Ting, for istance - and dropped those he could with impunity - Tengku Adnan Mansor, for one. He did not bring into the cabinet those UMNO thought should be - Dato' Shahrir Samad, for instance - but then he cannot afford, at least now, strong men in his cabinet. He has brought back into the cabinet refugees from the old Semangat '46 party of Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, and all beholden to him.

On the face of it, there is no inspired appointment in this cabinet. He wants, like Tun Mahathir, a cabinet of loyalists, would brook no opposition, within the feudal framework he becomes accustomed to. He has opened himself to attack in the states where he appointed several mentris besar at odds with the palace - Dato' Seri Shahidan Kassim in Perlis, Dato' Seri Adnan Yaakob in Pahang, Dato' Seri Mohamed Ali Rastam in Malacca, amongst others - and this could cause needless problems later on. But all told, in the circumstances, he has done well. He needs time to get used to the new circumstances, which while it entrenches the BN, and UMNO, hold on politics, he must fashion a policy to explain why, for the first time since the first elections in 1955, the Malays are for the first time in a minority in the new parliament. In this single-minded desire to frustrate the Islamist and multiracial Malay opposition with the help of the Chinese, the UMNO president allowed Malay representation in parliament to be less than 50 per cent. It made the mistake in Sabah and Sarawak when it assumed that anyone with a name that looked Malay - the chief minister of Sabah, Dato' Seri Musa Aman, the chief minister of Sarawak, Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud, or the former Sabah chief minister, Dato' Seri Salleh Said Keruak, call themselves bumiputras, not Malay, indeed are not Malay but of Indian and Melanau blood. With PAS all but decimated in parliament, the majority of Malays in parliament would come from UMNO, and that is less than one hundred in a house of 219. Pak Lah is in more pressure than he realises. Which is why the coalition partners who forced him to chose could well pay dearly for their impudence.

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