MGG Pillai Commentary View

<< Previous || Next >>

If low cost homes and concern for the poor are not enough, would RM1,000 a vote do?

THE MENTRI BESAR OF Selangor, Dato' Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo, booked a RM79,000 flat in Salak Tinggi ten years ago. He was not in politics then: if he was, he would not hve looked at a flat ten times costlier. He was a dentist then, clawing his way, with not much hope, up the greasy pole of politics. His fortunes changed, if you recall, when his friend, from the bin Mahathir clan suggested to the patriarch he is a good man to be Selangor Mentri Besar. But we are running ahead of the story. The flat remains unbuilt, the developer has gone bust, or as Dr Khir coyly puts it in the bureaucratic English beloved of politicians and bureaucrats, "the company closed down because of financial difficulties".

But he is frustrated each time he passes the site. He is not the only one. His elder sister also bought a flat on his advice and she is angry about it. He turns that now to his political advantage. He is the candidate for the UMNO supreme council next month. He is not allowed to campaign though he can by example, especially if he is mentri besar. And the example comes thick and fluffy, with a heavy dose of crocodile tears: "I hope those who have been victims," he said, after his state executive council meeting yesterday, 26 August 2004, "will take note that I feel their pain and frustrations too." I hope they do, if only to remind themselves of yet another broken promise.

What is more, "this bitter experience" made him look into the housing needs of his people. The state is about to solve its endemic problem of squatters. He wants every family to own a home. That is an order. The state will help. "That's why the state has made the developers build adequate low-cost homes," he said. He has said enough, he hopes, to lull the Selangor UMNO delegates, and others elsewhere who look upon his ranting as proof of his commitments to the poor. For a man who became the state mentri besar still grieving over a house for which he paid money which he cannot recover, he has done precious little.

So far, he has shown no interest in resolving the state's housing woes. He has become an extremely wealthy man. No mentri besar, especially if he is from UMNO, however poor he may have been in his previous life, ever left office without riches beyond greed. There is an invisible cloak that makes it impossible for him to retire poor. He understands the problems of the poor and the squatters as I understand nuclear physics. It is a good try. But when he had a chance, when Kampung Medan in his state smouldered, and do what he now threatens to do, he failed. Go to Kampung Medan, and nothing has changed. The low cost houses after the riots are nowhere to be seen, the place is as the slum it was then.

The Holy Grail for the National Front and UMNO politicians is to be elected – to the branch, division, supreme council, state assembly, parliament; and if not, appointed to local councils, government bodies, sinecures in government-controlled institutions, the senate, political offices as dogsbodies of the politically rich and the powerful. For an election comes with status beyond his wildest dreams. That is the aim. To achieve it, one must be prepared to promise more than heaven on earth. It is not required that the promises be kept. Usually, they are not. Once the election is over, all is forgotten. Anyone who questions or challenges it will not get the time of day.

But Dr Khir does only what every supreme council candidate does to ensure he is elected. He goes further. He pays for the vote too – RM500 or RM1,000, as much as he can get away with. He cannot pay the multiple millions to be elected if all he can afford is a RM79,000 apartment. But he is lucky in one aspect: since he cannot go out and canvas for his vote, he cannot be questioned too. When he talks without meaning it of wanting every family to own a home, there is none to ask him to explain or, a few years later, ask what had been achieved. It is safe to assume nothing would be. After all, the UMNO election would by then be over and, when the next comes around, there would other "instant concerns" to fool the delegates.

One gets the uncomfortable feeling that the UMNO leaders know the ground are more aggressive now than ever, and anyone who appears before them would be asked to prove themselves. BN and UMNO politicians have been cushioned and cosseted from the vagaries of political lives; all that is needed is to be in office to be protected from unnecessary questioning from members. The rules are made tighter to make this all but impossible and, if you want to be UMNO president or deputy president, it is all but impossible unless one has more money than one wants to spend - or rich beyond greed as a state chief minister or federal cabinet leader or even a businessman.

But the alternative it suggests only makes it worse. If a candidate does not have money to throw to be elected, it does not matter if he is known or unknown, he must be on the defensive. You have to be an unusually principled man like Dato' Shahrir Samad, to refuse to pay; he stands on his merits, take it or leave it. He could do that for it does not concern him if he is elected or not; if he is not, it is UMNO that would be the poorer. Dr Khir, on the other hand, is the archetypal UMNO leader who believes all problems can be assuaged with money.

On the other hand, Dr Khir's sudden concern for squatters and the homeless is to look to, for him, a worrisome sign: a breed of delegates that ignores or accepts the cash handouts and vote according to their conscience. It does not appear, on the surface, to be a big group, but one does not know. As one delegate told me: "I shall accept whatever is offered; it is not cheap to attend the UMNO general assembly; but for all that I shall vote as my conscience dictates." But it is the UMNO leaders who helped this trend along. When they make promises and do not keep it, why should the delegates?

Something is brewing. After pages of nothing but UMNO nomination news, the mainstream newspapers do not mention it anymore. It does appear there is a boycott, whether it is official or not does not matter; no attempt is now made to report on the run-up to the UMNO general assembly next month. Suddenly, the readers are left in the dark about the UMNO general elections. Part of it is of course the "dumbing down" of news in the New Straits Times and the Star, both of which seems to have taken a leaf from the Sun, which relies on Bernama news for its news, and then makes sure it is kept at that level. (But it does not provide what the Sun does best: articles and commentaries that give that newspaper its unique voice.)

All is kept quiet, for any unnecessary or unwarranted crisis in the run-up to the UMNO general assembly could redound on its soon-to-be-anointed president, the prime minister Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. He has yet to be anointed in his own right, although he brought BN home to victory as never before, and will be UMNO president by preventing anyone to challenge him. But he is regarded by many, especially in UMNO, as a caretaker. Try as he can, he cannot shift that image. Perhaps the UMNO general assembly could ensure it. But that is if nothing is upset between now and then. So it is dollops of cash and concern for the underdog, with more crocodile tears than it knows what to do with. Welcome to the world of UMNO elections!

[This appears in Malaysia Today (www.malaysia-today.net) of 27 August 2004]

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