MGG Pillai Commentary View

<< Previous || Next >>

Pak Sheikh has an Open House

TRADITION DECREES THAT MALAY homes invite neighbours, friends and others on festive and religious occasions. So it was until politicians and politics took over. The Malay traditions of my youth, half a century ago, is far different from the Malay traditions of our politicians and politics today. In those days, enmities and grudges were forgotten for the occasion, friends and enemies met in amity, with no one taking notes of who came and who did not. nor wonder why. In the two kampungs I lived in and grew up – Wadi Hana and Dato' Onn, in Johore Bahru – one saw mortal enemies of years embrace each other to celebrate. Today, that is all but impossible. This Malay tradition has taken root in Malaysia's multiracial communities, but who visits whom is constrained by the demands of politics and politicians.

I reflect on this every time I attend an Open House, be it Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Buddhist. It is not what it was, it is not what it ought be, what is how degraded it has become. You would not see UMNO politicians in PAS open houses, UMNO leaders in DAP houses, IPF invited to MIC houses, DAP leaders in MCA houses, and vice-versa. When you do see someone who, in our political apartheid, should not be, we are aghast to wonder why. Has he quarrelled with his political masters? Is he about to switch political allegiances? Why? The political, social, cultural, religious divisions tear our country apart as surely as it does Malta, where even the Roman Catholicism of its citizens is asunder by politics. Open Houses in Malaysia do not narrow the divide but widen it.

Nowhere was this so baldly reflected than in the two Open Houses of the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. That he is released causes sleepless nights for many a senior UMNO leader. UMNO has decided he should never sully its doors ever again. But he nevertheless spreads terror and mayhem in equal proportions in UMNO. He had his Open House at his home in Cherok Tok Kun in Permatang Pauh the same day as the prime minister and UMNO president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, in neighbouring Kepala Batas, called on him first, and set political tongues wagging, frightening UMNO politicians, with political explanations to suggest both a new political alliance to destroy the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, to a pre-emptive political takeover of UMNO in a Machiavellian bid to tip Pak Lah over. The simple explanation – that he did the neighbourly thing as custom demands, and to thank him in person for his release – was too blase to be taken seriously. A week after the event, Pak Lah had to insist that it was a friendly, not a political, call and nothing of consequence was discussed.

It was enough to nettle the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak. Was Pak Lah planning to isolate him with the help of Pak Sheikh, as Dato' Seri Anwar is known by his supporters? It frightened him enough to reveal, in an unguarded moment, in an interview with the Sun newspaper, that he fears not Pak Sheikh, as the UMNO scuttlebutt reveals. But if he is as confident, he would have kept quiet. That he has to say it is if proof he is not. If he wanted to show his unconcern, he should have turned up at Pak Sheikh's open house, and let Pak Lah worry about its implications. But it was a safe bet he would not. For underlying it all is his role in the political and cultural destruction of Pak Sheikh, who has not forgiven him as he has not several present and past UMNO leaders. Pak Sheikh's return to the political arena puts UMNO and its leaders on edge.

So his open house in Kuala Lumpur was in one sense a political homecoming. He re-establishes, after six years in prison, his political credentials as a political heavyweight; that he has no need for UMNO; that he would and could rise with the Opposition; that if he should ever be prime minister, it would be at the head of an Opposition coalition not of an UMNO-led coalition. He is a politician through and through. One should imagine he is as much a threat to PAS as he is to UMNO, but what saves him is that he has a vision for Malaysia that is sorely lacking in the two main Malay political parties. He has usurped UMNO's original vision of a Malay dominant Malaysia in which Islam has a pre-eminent role. UMNO deserted that for an Islamicised Malaysia, and it differs with PAS only on the form. Pak Sheikh entered politics to introduce more Islamic credentials to a multiracial Malaysia but now finds himself paradoxically reversing his roles: how to moderate the rush to an Islamic state with a return to the political formula of multiracialism that brought Malaysia its independence of Britain in 1955.

It was, in one sense, a gathering of the faithful. Anyone who was anybody in the Opposition was there. The chameleon business men were there in numbers, their support dependent on what business they get. The gathering was predictable. And it had the atmosphere of a fun fair, with microphones blaring out what should have been kept silent. The food was aplenty. The crowds there to partake of the feast as much to see the political man of the moment. He had to prove a point, and he did it well. He welcomed each guest individually, his eyes glittering when he met an old friend. He tired easily as one would if forced to do what he must not after a major operation. He had his Open House in two sessions: the morning for his special friends, the diplomatic community and others; the afternoons for the public. But it made no difference: it was one large hustle and bustle all the same.

The political tectonic shift that came with his release destabilises Malaysian politics. He has become, by default, the reference point, in government and opposition, on how politics and politicians conduct itself. He showed that to the hilt on Sunday. UMNO cannot sleep easy. The mainstream newspapers did not report it as it should have, though radio and television, with an eye to the rural areas, had to. They also had to hedge their bets. What unsettles the political establishment is that he makes sense when he opens his mouth, as UMNO leaders certainly do not: he has precise solutions when his opponents, bankrupt of ideas, offer hope when it knows all is lost. He revealed a vision in his pronouncements, a verve, a confidence sorely missing from his political opponents in UMNO. What his open house proved is that he cannot be written off – yet.

Amongst those were who defied the BN whip to attend. It was in one sense a politically correct crowd. It revealed how polarised Malaysia's politics has become. And how even his Open House is scarred by the political and cultural divisions within his Malay community. The few apolitical and other well-wishers there were more concerned about the political and cultural scarring within this country which steadily caused this country to desert its multiracialism for a theocratic future. There is nothing in common between the vision of Tengku Abdul Rahman and his fourth political descendant, Pak Lah. One was happiest when Malaysians of all faiths and creeds enjoyed themselves when the Tengku was about to Pak Lah's pride at being called an ulema. That reveals itself in every Open House, government and opposition.

UMNO's predicament came with neglect of the political, social and cultural institutions in its care. To rescue them, it had to find a new way to attract the Malays back into its fold, and found it in Islamisation. In one sense, this is the more dangerous than PAS's brand of Islamisation. What PAS does is what it always said it would; what UMNO does is to best PAS and applies Islamisation cynically as a political exercise. PAS understands this only too well, and its prescriptions for the non-Muslim is, shorn of its political overtones, more acceptable. What concerns the non-Malay is that he has lost the choice of the multiracial future he had fought for, and that his multi-racial future is now framed in Islam. Pak Sheikh now offers a third way. What frightens PAS and UMNO is that even Malays begin to see the truth of this view. His open house revealed this discord dramatically. And pointed to a savour: Pak Sheikh!

[This is my column in the latest issue of Harakah, the PAS organ, published today, 23 November 2004.]

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