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Pak Lah in search of an anchor

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, should be lord of all he surveys: his National Front (BN) coalition is returned to office with 90 per cent of constituencies, unseated one state of two in opposition hands, in the March general elections; he is returned as UMNO president, with a near perfect 99.99 per cent of nominations. Now, in Washington, he charms President Bush and tells him a thing or two about global and Middle East realities.

Any of these should have affirmed him Malaysia's undisputed leader. It has not. The general elections results are uncontestable; his rise to power unchallengeable; his visit to Washington proof of his statesmanship.

But if a foreign government out of the pale, say in the Middle East or Afghanistan or an enemy in the ubiquitous US-UK war on terror, or before the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, were to announce election results as Pak Lah's, it would have been subject to global sanctions, with smug and self-serving editorials, even in the New Straits Times and the Star, of how this electoral atrocity is proof the systems it represents is hell.

Instead, we had is a chorus on the will of the people fulfilled, of UMNO's commitment to democratic principles, the improbable result yet proof of UMNO's maturity. If you dig up the archives, you would find copious examples of despots and dictators mouthing similar sentiments after similar results. And how the "free" leaders of the world condemned them as how the Iraqis who question the US-UK invasion of their country are.

The Singapore's senior minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, finds nothing wrong with Pak Lah's faulty annointment. He sees it as one more way to keep fundamentalist Islam in check in South-east Asia. And so the rest of the world. But in Malaysia itself, the unease within the Malay community, though not the non-Malay, is and should be cause for alarm.

For Pak Lah moved in to drive a wedge through the divided community. His legitimacy within UMNO and the Malay community, as his predecessor, Tun (as he now is) Mahathir Mohamed's, is shaky at best and veer UMNO away from its cultural roots to a high pressure brave new world of reason, logic, media manipulation, cynicism, the highest bidder.

This rise of Pak Lah to the highest degree of power did not affirm his legitimacy so much as to manipulate the political ground and the corporate media for the desired result. There was no election or free choice, although men and women went out to vote in droves. It is, in short, a Malaysian version of the US-UK push into war. It was not war, it was a massacre fanned by an unholy link between a political agenda and a corporate media which looked upon news as a commodity to be shaped and changed at will for the "right" political end.

The result is predictable. The corporate world through its sidekick, the mainstream media, as part of the ruling complex, did not want change. It wanted a government friendly to it and its manipulations. It saw in Pak Lah one who would not delve deeply into how it works. This cynicism is evident since the media became subsidiaries of corporate organisations. The news was no more than what the leader did and said, or want portrayed. Fact is mixed with fiction and often lies with a cynicism that beggars belief.

It is this cynicism that rises in Pak Lah's nine months in office. The 21 March 2004 general election was flawed but the amended election law imposes heavy penalties that await those who challenge it and would as often as not lose. The election is an obstacle course which ties up millions of ringgit in deposit and other statutory expenses. A challenges adds to the expenses. Where once a single judge disposes of election petitions, now there is an appeal, and that adds to the cost. This makes it all but impossible to mount a challenge against the ruling BN. Especially with continuing doubts about judicial integrity. But then this is how governments justify to keep themselves in power.

The BN has all the advantages of surprise. It knows when elections will be called. It can prepare for it months ahead and when all is ready, call a snap election to be completed within a month or less. The opposition is stymied from the start. But it had come to terms with it. When there was danger that more states could fall to the opposition in this general election, the election rules were loaded against it at the last minute, with, to quote one example, the electoral list given to the candidates not what was eventually used.

The government insists this is legitimate, because the law allows it. UMNO says the restrictions against members challenging the leaders is legitimate because the general assembly allows it. This was how Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah was stopped from challenging Pak Lah. In the end, UMNO outdid itself.

In any political party or social organisation, it is well nigh improbable for a challenger to get a single nomination. The UMNO supreme council had ordered all divisions to nominate only Pak Lah and, for deputy president, the deputy prime minister Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak.

When Tengku Razaleigh challenged him, using the same argument Pak Lah used – that the general assembly had not said so – it was made incumbent on division leaders to deliver the nominations for Pak Lah and Najib or face financial or other ruin. In the Gua Musang division, Tengku Razaleigh's fief, Pak Lah's name was not put forward, so Ku Li won it uncontested. There is a reason for this. He wanted to be returned on a clean slate, without a defeat, and so ordered his name not put forward.

So, Pak Lah still struggles for respectability in the Malay world. He makes it more difficult again. He is in Washington on, we are told, an official visit. It is not. He is there as head of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), not as prime minister of Malaysia. The foreign ministry gave the game away when it told reporters that Pak Lah hopes to meet President Bush on his visit. This begs the question: if President Bush invited him, why this worry he would not meet him.

It turned out in the end a damp squib. Nothing of bilateral interest was raised, the talks, such as it is, were on the Middle East and Iraq, which is why they met, and even in the brief press conference after, nothing of bilateral interest was mentioned except for the 9,000 Malaysians studying in the US.

What either had to say of the Middle East was diplomatic doublespeak. That is not how Malaysian newspapers discuss it. It implied an imminent breakthrough, they discussed the gap between the Western and Muslim worlds, and why he was here mentioned in passing. That he left for his official visit in quiet and in a hurry, contrary to how official visits are handled here, is proof there is more to it than meets the eye.

Little changes on his return from Washington, and his brief stops in Europe. It is to impress Malaysians he is more than he is. It probably has. But his public relations has the quality of teflon: nothing ever seems to stick on him. Even in the specifics. The newspapers fall over themselves to insist that, as a result of the UMNO divisional nominations, Pak Lah has firmly put the second generation of UMNO leaders, which none of the past five prime ministers could or did.

But who are the second echelon leaders? Every one of whom are unelected leaders to whom UMNO leaders on the ground rush to support because they know on which side their bread is buttered. This second echelon depend on Pak Lah remaining in office long enough so he could do a Mahathir and appoint one of them, most certainly his son-in-law, Khairy Jamaluddin, as his successor. But cynicism has its limits. And one can plan and calculate in a vaccuum, with disastrous results. And that is Pak Lah's danger.

[This is my Chiaroscuro column in malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com) today, 21 July 2004.]

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