MGG Pillai Commentary View

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Fighting ghosts and shadows in a skewed campaign

THE UMNO CODE OF ethics makes no bones about it: candidates for office shall not campaign, bribe, co-erce, print visiting cards to distribute to branches, divisions and delegates. If they breach it, they can be disqualified and sacked from the party. No one is exempt. But the acting party president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and the deputy president ad interim, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, are guilty of breaching it every day of the week.

The UMNO supreme council, you will recall, had ordained that the two Dato' Seris should be the only candidates nominated for president and deputy president when elections are held in September. Let us ignore for a moment it did not, even if they said it did. Under the code, once that is made public, all mention of it must cease. Neither men nor their backers should highlight it, and let the natural course of elections take its course.

They would -- could? -- not leave well enough alone. The supreme council decision is revealed ever more creatively day by day. After the first announcement, any further discussion of it is verboten. But Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib must pile the pressure on.

Three weeks ago, Pak Lah had the UMNO state liaison chiefs -- the mentris besar and chief ministers in every state but Kelantan whose representative is the now discredited but Pak Lah favourite, Dato' Mustapa Mohamed -- call on him and be told that their divisions must not nominate any but Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib for the two top posts. Not to be outdone, Dato' Seri Najib drives the point home to warn delegates that Pak Lah and no one else must be nominated for the presidency.

He suddenly realises his ground is cut from under his feet by the Pak Lah camp, that the infighting between his and Pak Lah's supporters is more serious than the doctrinal differences UMNO has with PAS over Islam. Besides, he realises that should Tengku Razaleigh be in the race, he could still have a future in the government that may not not be his in a Pak Lah administration. It may not save him from breaching the the code of ethics, but it gives him a line that could in extremis save him from sinking.

The Sabah UMNO liaison chief, Dato' Musa Aman, promptly got his state committee to pass a resolution to demand that the UMNO code of ethics be damned but all divisions should only nominate Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib for the two top posts. Other states have followed suit.

The newspapers UMNO and the National Front parties owns and controls but run by Pak Lah loyalists and those afraid of their wrath highlight these breaches of the code of ethics in excruciating detail, and damn anyone who might even think of challenging the two top positions.

Meanwhile, pressure is applied on two prominent UMNO leaders with an independent voice and who clearly disagreed, in their statements past, with the Pak Lah manouevre, to retract their positions and now demand instead that the two top posts are unchallenged.

If the UMNO supreme council resolution is genuine, it follows that anyone who challenges it would be suspended and sacked. A recent precedent is the sacking of the Kelantan UMNO leader, Dato' Ibrahim Ali. The rules are clear. If Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah is to challenge Pak Lah -- as it is certain he is -- a report should be made to the party disciplinary committee, which should suspend or sack him from the party or both.

Instead, the Pak Lah camp is nervous, and tries ever the harder to breach the code of ethics to force him out. He uses his position as Prime Minister and as the controller ad interim of UMNO to force likely deserters into submission. He is the man Michel de Montaigne had in mind in his epigram: "He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak."

He is rattled beyond belief. Tengku Razaleigh must obtain nominations from 58 divisions - - 30 per cent of UMNO's 191 divisions -- to challenge him. As of now, that is uncertain. Yet the guns are trained on him, breaching yet another link in the code of ethics: no campaigning for or against a candidate. What frightens Pak Lah though is that when divisional meetings are held, all nominations must be submitted in secret on pieces of paper.

If two nominations are received for an individual for a post, his name is on the ballot. The chairman of the meeting then cannot say the top two posts should not be contested. The UMNO general assembly in its wisdom had put the hurdle of nominations from 30 per cent of the divisions for president, 15 per cent for deputy president, eight per cent for the vice presidents, two per cent for the supreme council. It did not mandate that the two top posts should be uncontested. The supreme council demand could even be ultra vires the UMNO constitution.

All it needs to put Pak Lah in a fix is for two divisional heads to lodge a report with the disciplinary committee about these breaches of the code of ethics, and the fat is on the fire. Neither can assume this would not be done. Some of those who have changed their views to change their views to back Pak Lah complain of harrassment and pressure to back Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib.

There is enough evidence in the mainstream newspapers of this, which Pak Lah would be hard put to justify. As it is, he has annoyed too many in UMNO with his insistence that he must be saved even if UMNO is not. He surrounds himself with a nepotic cabal led by his son-in-law, Mr Khairy Jamaluddin, which in turn, so civil servants and UMNO politicians believe, makes him putty in its hands.

A widely held belief is that his campaign is too clever by half. Had he kept his cool, Tengku Razaleigh would not have challenged him. He came into the race reluctantly. Every time I asked him about it, he refused to even consider it. His time is past. He would not get the support. He is, as the New Straits Times pictured him, yesterday's man.

But all this changed when Pak Lah made mistakes galore, and with each one, the pressure on the Tengku became more intense until he could not resist it any more. The rumours and news spread, but when important UMNO leaders, including several in the Pak Lah camp and public supporters of the prime minister, told him their support is conditional on him announcing his candidacy, he made his intentions known.

But if this tentative step so frightens Pak Lah, what if he gets the 58 nominations? Or if for a variety or procedural reasons so many divisional nominations are invalid and neither is nominated, and the general assembly would have to call for fresh nominations? Or if the UMNO disciplinary committee decides against Pak Lah? Or even if it accepts he is right to do what he did? Could UMNO withstand the convulsions that follow from that?

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com
20040705