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Is Pak Lah in control of UMNO?

THE MALAYSIAN DEPUTY PRIME minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, insisted last Tuesday, 25 May 2004, the UMNO supreme council had decided the previous night the party president and deputy president had been elected unopposed. One can understand why he made it. The National Front (BN) had had its best ever results in the March general elections, but in circumstances that suggest massive fraud to which the Election Commission actively bent the rules. It was to affirm Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as Prime Minister in his own right, and allow him to be his own man, not an appendage of his predecessor, Tun Mahathir Mohamed. It did not. So a new plan is hatched to ensure he would be UMNO president come what may. The UMNO secretary-general, Tan Sri Khalil Yaakob, read a statement he did not sign, though it was issued in his name. Dato' Seri Najib explained what it meant and why. The mainstream newspapers reported it parrot-like on the front pages in banner headlines. But the UMNO supreme council did not unanimously decide the UMNO president and deputy president be returned uncontested. In fact, it did not even discuss or raise it. Tan Sri Khalil and Dato' Seri Najib lied. Why?

They should have known the UMNO supreme council is so bitterly divided that it would not have allowed it if it was raised. They should tell us why they lied. Or if they insist they told the truth, the supreme council members should state clearly they do not want the party's two top posts to be uncontested. Pak Lah, on his return from his China trip, must clear the air. He chaired the meeting. So he knows what happened. The two men, one of whom would be governor of Malacca later this week, must be chastised for their lies. Pak Lah must distance himself from them. Their lies have incensed several supreme council members that at least two are keen now to stand for president and deputy president. Why did not the party elders tell the pair that their lies defied the party constitution and the Registrar of Societies. The party presidency is vacant. The deputy president, Pak Lah, is acting president. One of the three vice-presidents, Dato' Seri Najib, acts as deputy president. If the purported supreme council decision is followed, Pak Lah would be returned unopposed as deputy president. The presidency will remain vacant, unless it had rejected the resignation of Dr Mahathir, and plan for him to be returned to office. That surely is not the intention.

Pak Lah deserves his chance to be UMNO president. But he got off to a bad start. He has had to face one crisis after another, which could have been deflected with good advice, that if he does not pick himself up smartly between now and the UMNO elections in September, he could face an opponent then who could well defeat him easily. He contradicts himself so regularly that one does not know where stands on any issue. The former de facto law minister, Dato' Seri Rais Yatim, was demoted in the cabinet reshuffle after the elections for saying the ACA has indentified 18 high profile individuals for prosecution. Pak Lah said the corruption was in 18 sectors, not individuals. On Friday, 28 May, the ACA director-general, Dato' Zulkipli Mat Noor, said the files of 18 high-profile individuals had been referred to the Attorney-General's Chambers for possible prosecution. Pak Lah wanted the results of the investigations made public. Dato' Zulkipli does not agree, and would not comment. It was known then that at least one high profile cabinet minister and his wife are amongst the 18. But he would not say if the list includes mentris besar and chief ministers.

But the ACA is not serious about its task. It is directly under the Prime Minister, and he must agree before any minister or BN politician is charged in court. He approves only when he wants to destroy a minister. The most famous example is Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy prime minister. The ACA helps with its incompetence. Dato' Zulkipli says it received 10,000 reports in the past three years, and decided most were frivolous. He said it so casually and off handedly that no one noticed what that meant. The ACA cleared ten reports a day, when one a month would have been a superhuman effort, for the past three years! It is short staffed, subject to political pressure, had not had a major case in court that would suggest at least it means business. Instead those who appear in court are the postmen, the police-man, the clerk, but none of the 'big fish'. Since Pak Lah made a song and dance of his determination to root out corruption, he must come and take charge of this quickly, or it would redound on him.

Unfortunately for him, he must wish for a miracle to offset a challenge in September. The messy but indirect involvement of his son in the rogue Islamic nuclear chain is made worse by the arrest under the ISA of a man, for whom his son's company built a factory to make centrifuge parts, is one he must sort out. The man, Mr B.S.A. Taher, was cleared of all wrong doing three months ago, but over the weekend is detained for two years without trial. Pak Lah now says he is a threat to national security. This raises more questions than answers. Why is his son and his company left untouched? An innocent link in the clandestine nuclear weapons trial does not excuse him from detention. If drugs are found in a room shared by four or five people, it does not matter who put it there of it anyone knew of it, but they are presumed of it. That it was there is enough to have them all hanged. Or if one drives a friend's car, and drugs are found in it, one is sentenced to death. When national security is involved, the threshhold of innocence is lower. Innocence is no defence. Besides his company built a company in Shah Alam to make the centrifuge parts. One does not go into that kind of capital expenditure without an idea of what the end product is or what it is for. That is the presumption. It is for him to prove it is not.

This is why Pak Lah must clear the mess created in his name. For ranged against him are important UMNO leaders, in his cabinet and in the states, and others who support Dato' Seri Anwar, and factional UMNO leaders. There were power brokers before but in a mass movement, as UMNO was until 1988, they were subsumed by a larger national interest. Now UMNO is a political party, and if the leaders stumble, as when it defied the cultural rules in the sordid Anwar Ibrahim affair, it sunders. That cannot be resolved by insisting that all is well. Because there will come a time when the factions within UMNO will decide enough is enough, and head for a confrontation. It is this that puts Pak Lah's control of UMNO in doubt. He has little time to repair the damage. He can if he puts his mind to it. It is more serious than he imagines. And he is bereft of the experienced hands to help him out of his predicament. That lie adds to his difficulties. The belief that if it did not appear in the newspapers, it did not happen will not now work. With UMNO politicians tensed and highly charged, it needs but a spark to get them on a rampage.

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