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Deus et machina

TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND MALAYSIANS and others, so we are told, thronged the Putra World Trade Centre in Kuala Lumpur for Aidil Fitri for six hours to greet the prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and his cabinet. In normal years, it would have been the prime minister's show; this year, Pak Lah brought them in as co-hosts.

For a good reason: for the first time this year, and after the fractious Umno elections, talk was in the air of several cabinet ministers being boycotted for the occasion. But it raised another: did 200,000 come by; could a fifth of a million people gather in the confined space where 20,000 at an Umno general assembly leaves no standing room? But reality matters not when spin doctors take over.

The crowds work out at 35,000 an hour, or 10 a second. Let us put it another way: if this crowd were to march in military formation 10 abreast through the PWTC at a second a line, only 36,000 would clear it every hour, or about six hours for the 200,000 to march through. Enough said.

Contrast this with the crowds of the man of the moment, Anwar Ibrahim. A special branch officer among the guests, and no doubt on duty, thought 12,500 were at the open house, and possibly 20,000 the day. Even that is an exaggeration. it was crowded, but there was not the space to accommodate even the official estimates to prove it a failure. The toilet room joke of big is better is now anchored in politics.

The rulers must be shown to be popular at any cost. This is done, in Malaysia, by exaggerating the good deeds of the government and ignoring those of its opponents, with unbelievable crowds in one but not the other. Soon this leads into the world of make-belief.

The National Front and the Umno which leads it are caught in this dilemma, from which escape and hope is well nigh possible. None in power would untangle the Gordian knot it tied. Power corrupts, as Lord Acton said, absolute power corrupting absolutely. The signs have been there for at least two decades, but papered over with the usual mixture of bravado, make-belief, the nay-sayers made traitors, dissent banned.

Anwar’s release threatening

Politics is degraded into a stupor, with politicians nor people believing otherwise. Malaysia has begun a slow, genteel descent into disaster.

A deus et machina could reverse it. It is Latin for "a god let down upon the stage from the machine", the "machine" being part of the stage equipment in ancient Greek theatre; when an unlikely or providential event happens just in time to avert a difficulty or calamity. It has in Malaysia in the form of Anwar Ibrahim.

His release from prison after the courts vitiated his conviction for corruption changed the Malaysian political landscape. The details do not matter. But Umno found his release threatening, and resolved he would never ever be re-admitted; Umno's decline began in earnest after his expulsion and humiliation; it gathers apace after his release. The legal bar to his re-entry into party politics remains, but it does not matter. He is a bigger threat now to the BN coalition and Umno than ever.

While the BN and Umno are mired in internal problems and difficulties, Anwar becomes an alternate and credible voice in the wilderness. What frightens BN, Umno and the established political parties is that even their members begin to believe he should be brought into the centre of politics and debate. He has a plan of action, which he honed in prison and backed it up with his wide reading and rigorous intellectual reasoning. What led him to the prison cell in Sungai Buloh was not for why he was, trumped up or not, but that his views in office differed dramatically from those who saw office and power as the only access to wealth beyond greed. When money meets principle, money always wins the early rounds.

So far, Anwar has played his cards close to his chest, and right. His opponents, and he has aplenty in Umno and out, will not address him head on, but point to his legal difficulties, that he cannot be active in politics until 2007, that his future is circumscribed by his stated refusal to rejoin Umno, that the Malaysian prime minister must be from Umno. But politics has moved on, the tectonic shifts in 1988, when Umno the mass movement was replaced by Umno the political party.

The same refrain was seen in India in the mid-1960s when the Congress Party underwent a similar transformation. Ten years later, a non-Congress government was formed in New Delhi. On hindsight, Anwar in Umno was its best bet. Umno the political party had two widwives: Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Anwar. When Anwar was expelled, Umno lost its verve and confidence; Mahathir and his merry band since rushing hither and thither to keep Umno from tipping over. Now that he is back in politics, it is the worse.

Falsity and falsehood

This is both Anwar's strength and weakness. Those who gathered around his bed in Munich, and later in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, after surgery for a bad back included Malay sultans, politicians the world over, Malaysian corporate and political figures, and befitted an important political personality, not an ex-convict. Pak Lah realised on taking office that the longer Anwar stayed in prison, the more difficult his honeymoon and transition. Except those with a vested interest, Malaysians saw through the falsity and falsehood of his incarceration and demonisation. The collective sigh of relief at his release shocked the Umno powers that be. The deputy prime minister, Najib Tun Razak, disbelieved his political secretary who told him of Anwar's release until he saw it for himself on television. The shell shock that day was considerable.

Anwar is a politician in search of a constituency. He ruled out returning to Umno. He would remain in the Opposition. He would spend the next few years shoring up an opposition coalition of which he is a natural leader. But Umno cannot get him out of its system for two reasons: Umno's irrelevance can be halted awhile if he returns; but that might make some leaders irrelevant; and it would allow Umno to slow the rot within. It frightens both government and opposition he would go the other way, and at the same time uncomfortable to welcome him into their ranks.

But he has to watch his back. The fear of a political assassination, like Ninoy Aquino in the Philippines, could be real. He could face one in this continuing conflict between money and principle, though it is limited: for one, the reaction now could well be worse than in 1998, the bare details of that could only be deduced through a royal commission; anything that happens to him now could only be played out in public.

The six years in jail has made him larger than life: he never lost hope, and prepared himself for his political resurrection. I met him a few days before his arrest in 1998, and the day after his release from prison: the prison years, I judged, makes him a more dangerous political opponent for Umno. His conscious call for unity and to return to what Malaysia stood for at its start is at odds with the prevalent political belief that the future is undoubtedly Islamic.

He is more pragmatic than those he deals with. It does not matter, in his calculations, if he did become prime minister; if he could bring about a fraction of what he hopes for, it would create a revolution within. Which is why, in the view of his political enemies and critics, he is better off dead than alive!

[This is my Chiaroscuro column in malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com) today, 25 November 2004.]

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