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A secret post-electoral UMNO-PAS pact threatens Pak Lah

THE PRIME MINISTER'S SECRET weapon to capture the PAS-led Kelantan state government in the 21 March 2004 general elections is caught with his pants down. Dato' Mustapha Mohamed, now a minister without portfolio, was returned in the Jeli parliamentary and Air Lanas state constituencies, was to be mentri besar if the National Front (BN) had caused the upset. He also heads the National Economic Consultative Council or MTEN, to use its Malay acronym. During the campaign he ordered MTEN to subsidise his campaign, but without the subtlety and secrecy that once was the hallmark of an UMNO politician.

As it happened, PAS retained Kelantan with a wafer-thin majority. The raft of election petitions could well have brought UMNO into power, given the judicial climate which insists the BN is right even when it is wrong. The courts would put BN and Dato' Mustapha Mohamed in office as the Florida courts put President George W. Bush in office in 2001. But for one niggly detail: the audit trail of how Dato' Mustapha subborned MTEN to campaign for him. PAS passed them on, through intermediaries, to a BN lawyer, Mr Shafiee Abdullah, who passed it on to Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Dato' Mustapha, when confronted, confessed.

Dato' Mustapha is now beholden to Pak Lah, whose plan for survival is to have him be elected the first vice-president at the UMNO general assembly in September and, in a cabinet reshuffle after, first finance minister. Three years later, he would challenge Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak for the UMNO deputy presidency. But Dato' Mustapha does not have a political base in Kelantan. He is aloof and remote, and comes out on the hustings like a dead fish addressing a convention of second-hand car dealers. Another task in Kelantan to stop Tengku Razeleigh Hamzah, his former mentor, from even thinking of challenging Pak Lah for the UMNO presidency in September.

Pak Lah did not file his election expenses after the 1999 general election. His PAS opponent had challenged his candidature on that ground at the nomination centre. It was rejected. He filed an election petition. The government gazette records if a candidate did or did not file his election expenses within the month allowed after the election results are gazetted. Pak Lah is not on that list. Besides, the DAP candidate for the Subang Jaya parliamentary constituency was disqualified because he did not file his election expenses in time in 1995. If he does not file it in time, he is automatically disqualified to stand for elections for five years. By this rule, the DAP candidate had cleared his disqualification. But not Pak Lah. Even his staunch supporters concede he is in serious trouble.

He turned to the one man he implicitly trusts - his 28-year-old son-in-law and the Oxford graduate for all seasons, Mr Khairy Jamaluddin, who called Mr Husam Musa, a state executive councillor and trusted by the Kelantan mentri besar, Dato' Nik Aziz Nik Mat. Over several meetings, they agreed to withdraw all election petitions filed in the state except one, where PAS had lost the Pasir Putel parliamentary constituency but the Election Commission had announced it to be the winner. The UMNO lawyer, Tan Sri Zaki Tun Azmi, flew to Kota Bharu to witness the agreement. A few days later, all the Kelantan petitions were withdrawn, and the Pasir Puteh seat went to BN.

Although the pact referred only to Kelantan, UMNO and PAS decided, in the teeth of opposition from within each, to withdraw all election petitions each filed against the other elsewhere. One PAS candidate in Kedah refused. Later this week, the Trengganu petitions would come before the electoral court; if the petitions are withdrawan, then the deal is on. Pak Lah hopes it would resolve his electoral problems by sorting out Dato' Mustapha's. PAS agreed to it for two reasons: a secret arrangement to get Dato' Mustapha off the hook would throw Kelantan UMNO in dissarray; and it judged accurately that the ultimate aim was for PAS to withdraw its election petition in Kepala Batas. And that would damage Pak Lah's credibility the more. To make it stick, secrecy was vital. Certainly for Pak Lah.

When the online newspaper, malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com) wrote about the UMNO-PAS pact, both parties denied it. There is still no official announcement of it. The UMNO supreme council met on Thursday, 24 June, but Pak Lah did not mention it. He was unusually tetchy when asked about it. This charade is to save him. Kelantan UMNO is furious about being kept in the dark. Its deputy liaison chief, Dato' Zaid Ibrahim, is furious and threatens to resign. But how could he be told when even Dato' Mustapha knew of it only after the fact?

Questions are now raised in UMNO why Pak Lah negotiated with PAS without keeping the supreme council informed. But he does not care. He is in charge. He wants to remain so. His next step is to ensure his son-in-law is UMNO youth deputy chief, his daughter in the Puteri suppreme council if possible as its deputy, returned unopposed. He tried, in the last three UMNO supreme council meetings, to have the UMNO, youth, wanita and puteri chiefs and their deputies returned uncontested. It did not discuss it but it was let out it did. Indeed, at last week's supreme council meeting, seven prominent councillors were absent. The official reason was illness, but they did not want to be tarred with the "unanimous" decision to have the six returned unopposed. There is, in his considered view, much merit in keeping it in the family.

Pak Lah is in a fix. He cannot get along with his deputy prime minister, their wives even more so. He must get rid of him as soon as possible. But he chose the wrong man to succeed him. Dato' Mustapha could well be first vice-president, but his political career is meshed in with a state liaison committee angry with him at what happened. Pak Lah insists on relying too much on his johnny-come-lately son-in-law, and that raises more hackles in the party than he is told. The fawning over-exposure Mr Khairy gets in the Malaysian media, especially the New Straits Times, redounds not on the man but his father-in-law. The UMNO-PAS deal makes it worse. All it needs now for the knife into Pak Lah is for a few UMNO divisions to nominate candidates other than Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib for the two top posts, or that he did not get his way in who is chosen as the new wanita, puteri and youth chief and deputy. He is in far more political danger than he realises.

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