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Malaysian Elections 2004: The end justifies the means

WHAT SHOULD FRIGHTEN MALAYSIANS in the wake of the just-concluded general elections is the utter divide within the Malay community in more ways than one: UMNO vs PAS; urban vs rural; culture vs religion; modernity vs fundamentalist pressures; Malays vs the rest. It is a state of mind that could not shift if the National Front (BN), through its leader, finds its harder to return to its cultural fold, and has to prove its hold on to the levers of powers in gerrymandering electorates supplemented by slick Madison Avenue advertising practices and other methods it decries when practiced in other countries. The Opposition, especially PAS, worked on principle to get its message across, but it was swamped with an electoral campaign that left it trailing badly. But the lopsided result in which the BN got 198 seats in parliament, six more than the former Parliament had, and 11 of the 13 states - there was no state assembly elections in Sarawak - does not tell the whole story. In actual votes cast, the Opposition held its ground, especially in the Malay heartland. This elections imparted further the principle and good naturedness does not count, only brute force, deviousness, and the slickness of Madison Avenues, even the use of subliminal advertising is all that matters.

From now on, all general elections would depend not on principle and policy but the ease with which it can convince the voter to vote for it by damning its opponents with horrifying images that would stick in the mind, in other words demonise the opponents so that no matter what it does, it is damned. The BN tried this with particular impact in 1990 when a few days before polling it released a photograph of the then Semangat '46 leader, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, in a Kadazan head dress that had as a design that looked like a cross. It was used to destroy him in the Malay heartland, and from which he never recovered. He had to cave in and rejoin UMNO, where he remains in the wilderness to this day. This time the campaign was slicker, and again into full pressure in the last few days of the campaign. The Opposition could not rebut in time, especially with the mass media subborned to be the BN's publicity machine. It insisted on playing by the rules, and found itself stymied at every turn. In the election, the BN targetted both PAS and the National Justice Party (KeADILan), one the party it wants to best, the other it must destroy to prevent those Malays unwilling to be part of this move to a theocratic state to have a political voice. It did not target the nominally multiracial but Chinese-based Democratic Action Party (DAP), for it found it is easier to deal with a Chinese-based party like the DAP than tangle with PAS or KeADILan in parliament. The BN depended on the Chinese to deliver the votes, since it could not depend on the Malays who continue to stay on the sidelines. In this bargain, it had to allow the DAP to be the opposition. I am not sure if Tun Mahathir Mohamed's campaign in Ipoh Timor against the DAP chairman, Mr Lim Kit Siang, was not deliberate: it was a lightning rod for all wavering Chinese to rush to Mr Lim's aid. And so it turned out.

By the way, the one charge, notably by the MCA, against Mr Lim is that he moved constituencies often. But this is a cast of the pot calling the kettle black. The former MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, was in search for a safe seat, from Penang to Perak to finally Labis in Johore. His successor, Dato' Seri Ong Ka Ting, safe in his Pontian constituency in Johore, but is a refugee from Perak. The defeat of his elder brother, Dato' Ong Ka Chuan, in the Batu Gajah constituency, showed how volatile a Chinese majority constituency is for an MCA leader. MCA and Gerakan leaders need Malay majority constituency to get them home high and dry. In the last parliament, the civil servants on call during parliamentary sessions were highly impressed with the PAS MPs and how they conducted themselves in the chamber. With the civil service generally at odds with the BN government, this was not a good sign, and it had to be cut sharply. How did the BN go about to ensure victory beyond its wildest dreams? Victory was all that mattered, and no price is too high to pay. The end justifies the means. With this mindset is the frightening realisation of what would happen to it should it fall.

Aiding the BN this time is the constituency delineation that takes place every eight years, or after two general elections. The BN romps home in the first election after that. The Election Commission will see to that. It has lost all its neutrality, and, as Zunar cartoon in malaysiakini pointed out only too cruelly, its chairman is most gratified when the BN wins as resoundingly as this year. In this elections, there was another imperative: the new prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, had to win handsomely to be annointed in the more important position of UMNO president in June this year. So in this general elections, the constituency delineation, which made many a Malay constituency now held by the Opposition either solidly pro-BN or marginal, was supplemented by neat skullduggery aided and abetted by the Election Commission. The full scale of the EC's role would eventually be known but suffice it now to know that what it has done, and the BN's total refusal to even consider something wrong had taken place, has one frightening aspect: that this is how elections would be in the years to come. Malaysia cannot turn the clock back. It has crossed the rubicon. It cannot turn back. In future elections, this electoral skullduggery is the worse. PAS's belief that it could gain ground in the second election after a constituency delineation could well be displaced in 2009 or earlier, when the next general election is due.

With this general election, we have descended firmly into the Third World we had spent years to get out of. Democracy and general election are only of use if the ruling party can be returned with impunity with a huge majority. In Malaysia, this comes with a political division that we can do without, in this lurch to an Islamic future, the moderates are sidelined in politics and national life - and, lest we forget, in PAS as in UMNO - and the racial divide is as clear as ever. What we face are the issues we should have, as a nation, argued and reached agreement decades ago. But we failed. For one reason: UMNO was the dominant party, and it was in no mood to compromise. It was the party of independence and it insisted upon the right to decide. When ideological clashes came, for instance in 1967, over the continued use of English as an official and administrative language, it framed the issues that spilled over into the 1969 racial riots, after the elections of that year, and the subsequent Malay coup that sidelined any idea of racial equality.

All these issues would reassert itself within this fratricidal struggle for the Malay heartland between UMNO and PAS on which has a better plan for an Islamic state. That would be much more traumatic for it would be fought against irreconciliable political enemies in which neither is now prepared to give, or take, a quarter. It would be at the heart of the other irreconciliable divisions. For as we approach the 50th year of our independence from Britain in 2007, we as a nation are as fractured and divisive as we could be. One reason for it is that the BN had an external agenda - to paint PAS in the blackest fundamentalist paint it could. This general election is held amidst the ubiquitous war on terror in which the bad guys, as Washington sees it, should not win. They did not. The battle is won. Is the war?

[I wrote this for my column in Harakah, the PAS organ, for its latest issue, out today, 30 March 2004]

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