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The UMNO fight for the Malay ground runs into heavy weather

THE KEPONG FLYOVER DISASTER, the Kelantan avian influenza, the UMNO elections, the cabinet at cross purposes, corruption and political and administration decay out in the open and all but uncontrollable, point to one inevitable fact: the dysfunctional National Front (BN) administration of the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, which wallows in its irrelevance, despite its dramatic electoral successes – the General Elections and Pak Lah's election as UMNO president.

In every issue that hits the public eye, there is no clear answer or policy, only discordant voices which suggest decisions taken on the run and, often, when reporters or others ask about it.

It is not all Pak Lah's fault. The rot began much earlier, well before the Mahathir administration, when this view took root that since it has the absolute majority in parliament and the state assemblies, and the Opposition not worth bothering about, the BN and especially UMNO had the unfettered right to be lord of all they survey.

This and the co-opting of the largely Malay civil service into the BN's dominant Malay political agenda rendered the civil and political administration to the whim and fancies of the ruling elite, the UMNO leaders. The citizen had no recourse, not with the prevailing threat of the Internal Security Act and the law when subjects the government does not like discussed are.

In time, not only parliament, but the BN which nominally formed the administration, also became a rubber stamp. Parliament was ignored, the BN subborned in a brilliant political strategy of UMNO regarding its coalition partners not through the communities they represented but its leaders, who held on to office even after they were disavowed by their communities but not by the prime minister of the day.

When there is no public debate, often disallowed by the authorities except under strict conditions which does not allow public response, and the government ill disposed to explain its actions, except when it could gain politically, it gave birth to complacency and arrogance in BN and UMNO.

It could have survived if its policies were framed in a rigorous intellectual and political thought and overview. But the general Malay distaste for that rode rough shod over any move towards it. The two great intellectual politicians, bar none, found their political passage blocked because of it: Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie, the former home and foreign minister, and the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

Tan Sri Ghazali, now 82, is a civil servant turned politicians, who when history is written would return to the greatness he deserves as Malaya's, and Malaysia's, intellectual mid-wife. Dato' Seri Anwar, as we know, is in jail, convicted for criminal offences framed to destroy him politically and personally for daring to challenge the political status quo.

Both fell foul because the UMNO feudal leader, as prime minister, demanded nothing less than absolute fealty to the point that no criticism or doubts of his often ill-thought policies and law were foisted on the Malaysian citizen. When UMNO faced its major crisis in the mid-1980s, which led to the dissolution of UMNO and an UMNO Hadhari formed in its place, Dato' Seri Anwar was all for it but he at the time intellectually argued for the new UMNO. As Tan Sri Ghazali, out of office, told me, the big mistake of declaring UMNO illegal was to destroy a mass political movement for a political party.

That in itself was not wrong. But it had to be carefully nurtured and shepherded. This was while Dato' Seri Anwar rose in UMNO. But it collapsed when he was sacked in 1998 as Malaysian deputy prime minister and UMNO deputy president, arrested, humiliated and later jailed. The new UMNO lost further ground for it challenged yet another unbreakable principle of Malay feudal rule: that the leader does not ever humiliate his chieftains.

The two deviations from the norm – the changed role of UMNO and the humiliation of an UMNO chief – has dominated Malay and Malaysian politics ever since. The Malay did not regard UMNO as its political and cultural leader any more. It only holds the political but not the cultural leadership. That is why UMNO is at sixes and sevens.

The former prime minister, Tun (as he later became) Mahathir Mohamed, could stop UMNO from disintegrating, but his successor, Pak Lah, could not. The 2004 general elections, which the BN won, is, in the Malay mind, flawed; the cries of foul play and corruption is rooted in anecdotal, and often, in legal, evidence. It was returned in 90 per cent of the constituencies in parliament, it seized Trengganu from the opposition PAS, but the legitimacy Pak Lah desired eluded him. He has one more chance: to have his men returned in the UMNO elections next month.

But that is now doubted. Corruption and deliberate political and administrative ploys to ensure Pak Lah favourites to be returned as vice-presidents and supreme councillors is now the talk of delegates. The UMNO delegates, striking while the iron is hot, is not about to be denied their bribes as the candidates for vice-presidents and supreme councillors rate their chances not on their popularity but by how much they can afford to spend on the delegates. Sums of RM500 and RM150 per vote, with one prepared to offer RM1,000 a vote yet to enter the fray, amongst nine candidates is an open secret. The list of UMNO delegates, with their personal details, is the hottest 'surat layang' around: this is used to make private arrangements for their vote.

It is in this charged political atmosphere the Kuala Berang byelection in Trengganu, caused when the BN state assemblyman, Mr Komaruddin AbdulRahman, died unexpectedly. UMNO is all out to retain the seat, even sending 30,000 volunteers to canvass for 9,500 voters. Pak Lah has ordered that UMNO retains the seat. He needs this win, if only to hold his faltering ground. It is a sign of his nervousness that he cannot achieve the total control his predecessor, Dr Mahathir, had.

But that would be only one light in a sea of darkness. The Kepong flyover is the first few of the hurried public works scandals of the past two decades, built on privatisation schemes in which the contractor, not the government, decided what they would cost and charge. No thought was given to the ability of the citizen and public to pay for it. The shoddy work, of which the Kepong flyover, condemned only two years after construction, is overshadowed by the infighting between the works minister, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, and his cabinet colleagure, the transport minister, Dato' Seri Chan Kong Choy, which is strange since the cabinet had by then agreed on what to do.

Pak Lah had promised to consider, and re-negotiate, the privatisation agreements that favours the concessionaire. This affects Dato' Seri Samy Vellu more than any other cabinet minister. The political winds suggest that he is asked to explain, and the reality grows by the day that he would be forced out of the cabinet. He probably would not, for the BN leaders agree, without any basis, that they decide who shall represent their parties in the cabinet.

When Singapore banned Malaysian chickens, after avian influenza was found in chickens in Kelantan, the prime minister's department told Bernama to issue a press advisory in its name not to report it, only to insist later, it did not. Bernama apologised. But not after all newspapers had written about it.

But if he is not, Pak Lah faces another crisis at the UMNO general assembly next month, where one likely subject for discussion is why the UMNO-led BN government denies a PAS-led Malay state government its contractual right to oil royalties, while bending over backwards so its Chinese cronies are given carte blance to make money in grossly uneven contracts in their favour. One comes to mind: the contract that the YTL group signed with Tenaga Nasional Berhad to provide electrical power at eight cents over TNB's own price and whether TNB needed it or not, and to whom TNB now owes a not inconsiderable sum.

[This is my column for the PAS organ, Harakah, and which is published today, 21 August 2004]

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