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Is UMNO serious about the corruption in its ranks?

THIS IS THE FIRST UMNO election in which everyone, from the president down to the delegate to the general assembly, is guilty of corruption in one form or another. It is the only common issue. When corruption is as widespread as this, a code of ethics and a disciplinary board to make sure it is followed are as irrelevant as an ice-cube on a hot plate. The board chairman, the former foreign minister Tengku Ahmad Rithaudeen, is clueless on what his duties are. This is to be expected. The ethics code changes with the weather and what is allowed one day is disallowed another.

Tengku Rithaudeen now comes with the brilliant suggestion that the onus is on those accused of corrupt practices to prove their innocence. With this he admits corruption – or in the officially sanitized euphemism, money politics – is rampant in this election, more so in the run-up to the party elections next month. He says there are shortcomings in dealing with complaints of misconduct, the code of ethics are not properly drafted, complaints before it are thrown out for lack of evidence, and, rather late in the day, suggests that flaws ought to be fixed post-haste.

This raises the intriguing doubt if the ethics code was an afterthought, to keep the natives quiet, and show UMNO is as serious as the Anti-Corruption Agency to control corruption. Did I hear a quibble about the ACA's pathetic record of controlling corruption in the government? Let me put it another way. The ACA exists to remind the public the government is serious about controlling corruption when it is not. Similarly, the UMNO ethics code is to remind its members that all is above board when it is not. Each is required as a necessity, to be used against anyone who annoys the leaders and a few powerless and forgettable men and women damned to prove it works.

So the ACA targets a few office boys, clerks, an occasional middling civil servant, policemen, postmen and others of that ilk are charged - as in UMNO, a few branch or division members, and other small fry are penalised. Both ignore the blatant corruption of the leaders, unless they challenge the status quo. Then the full weight of the law falls on them. But there is a slight problem: the ground seethes with rage at this refusal to see what everyone else can. In the past, they kept quiet about it. Not any more. What keeps this UMNO election going is corruption – alright, money politics – pure and simple.

No one wants to bell the cat. If UMNO were serious about it, it would have had a cast-iron ethics code with a disciplinary board which did not look upon rank and decide if an offence is committed. The instances of corruption is so blatant that the UMNO leaders are clueless and powerless on how to deal with it. For, if it were dealt with as required, it would mean an UMNO bereft of its top leaders. The cynicism of the delegates when they ask or demand bribes for their vote is matched by the impotence of the top leaders to stop it. The very people who wallow in it are asked to stop it. They know only too well that if they did, they are out.

Tengku Rithaudeen's proposals therefore make no sense. The UMNO leaders, whose survival depends on corruption, are not about to kill the golden goose. All they could is to make the right noises, ensure the stable doors are shut tight after the horses have bolted, proclaim the horses are inside, but since asking to see them is breaking the law, one should accept its declaration as the Gospel. That is what this idiotic proposal to shift the burden of proof is about. UMNO is caught out with an empty stable and the law needs to be tightened to prevent that being known.

UMNO now have spies to determine if corruption is rampant. The delegates have been warned about this. Once a threat like this would have made the delegates stop and decide if it was worth continuing. Today, this is water off a duck's back, only that the water is a flood that all but drowns the duck. No one believes it. All it means is the money collected or given must now be shared. The UMNO leaders are as strong as the Iraqi government ordering Muqtada Al-Sadr to disarm, or face annihilation, or in position of the drowned duck.

The UMNO disciplinary board tries to turn the tide against all corruption but money politics. It will not wash. Corruption here is as the courts defined it in the Anwar Ibrahim trials – cash and the misuse and abuse of power to get what one wants. That is the definition the ground demands it be, and any short of it is unacceptable. When confusion abounds on what the word means, is it any wonder that corruption is as rampant as it undoubtedly is? Even the UMNO-controlled New Straits Times newspaper mentions how it works. When a candidate greets a delegate, he makes it known to him if he is willing to pay for vote or not: it is either Salaam Ada or Salam Kosong.

Why has Tengku Rithaudeen not commented on this? I have mentioned what several candidates are prepared to pay for a vote, that it costs multiple millions in bribes to be elected to the supreme council, that delegates suborn businessmen and others for their expenses for the four or five days in Kuala Lumpur for the general assembly next month. Since UMNO has spies looking at this trend, they should know of it as well. Since the UMNO disciplinary board is now to put the onus of the accused, why does it not demand of these people to prove their innocence? But should not the question be: Would he dare?

When a presidential whip conditioned UMNO politics, none dared to express officially disapproved thought. When the whip fell into disuse after the new leader took over, the pent-up anger and the sudden exultation of freedom challenged the status quo. It was not helped when the new leader, anxious to be one in his own right, did a few illegal acts to ensure it. But he is caught out. That in essence is why no one wants to talk about the corruption issue in UMNO. If Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, on becoming president next month, decides enough is enough, that what matters is the party, not him, put a few blatant mis-users of office, including a few from his cabinet, in jail, then there is hope.

But few in UMNO think he has the gumption to do it. He is hemmed in from all sides. His capacity to move is restricted by the day. He makes up for that with high-minded statements that mean nothing. The UMNO members see this with a mixture of fear and loathing. They believe the party can still be saved if the Pak Lah broom sweeps it clean. But they doubt if he dares. So the leaders speak in forked tongues, highlight irrelevant and untenable issues, and nothing else changes. A graffiti I saw this morning in the Kuala Lumpur suburb of Brickfields, within sight of KL Sentral, on the wooden wall surrounding a field that once was to house the new Malayan Railway headquarters, with its "1,000 car parks" says it all: "Kalau jumpa UMNO dengan ular, bunoh UMNO dulu" (If you meet UMNO and a snake, kill UMNO first)

[This is first published in Malaysia Today (www.malaysia-today.net) on 25 August 2004]

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