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The political art of self-destruction

IN ITS PANIC-STRICKEN VIEW, the UMNO-led National Front government and UMNO have decided one man must not intrude into the Malaysian consciousness. It has decreed he is a nobody, a sodomist and corrupter to boot, not worthy of the high trust Malaysians depose on its leaders. The mainstream newspapers, under its leaden hand, will not allow him to sully their irrelevant pages and ignore him unless he echoes what they want to hear. In foreign countries, the government moves heaven and earth to insist he be ignored as he is at home. But the more it tries, the more it loses ground. Every attempt it made backfired. He is the more popular now, at home and abroad, the official attempts to consign him to purgatory having failed abysmally.

That man is, of course, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, former deputy prime minister and UMNO deputy president, he who is back from the political dead to even greater prominence in Malaysia and the world. The government is in mortal fear of him. BN and UMNO leaders look over their shoulders before they act; are struck dumb when he is mute and when he talks; turned him into a political ogre since his release from prison three months ago; and one who could well edge UMNO on to the unaccustomed opposition benches.

One need not look beyond December 2004 to find out how and why. In every foreign visit, the government blinded itself by its ham-fisted attempt to deny him coverage and audiences with leaders. Official requests were made to deny him official coverage, but all that did was for Malaysia to shoot itself in the foot. His media coverage, his welcome in distant lands, the crowds that attended his public functions were all the more. The government has ordered a media frieze on his coverage here. There is no specific order, of course, but mainstream media editors are their creations, with recent examples of editors sacked without notice for misreading official intentions.

Dato' Seri Anwar flew to Qater this week for a 90-minute interview in English with Al-Jazeera for its "Bila Hudud' programme, which was broadcast on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Except in Malaysia, where it was banned. It was a stupid move. It would not be long before the CDs of the interview be sold in the night markets ('pasar malam'), and the typescript released on Internet. The government destroys its own credibility with its Luddite belief in controlling information. It loses credibility in West Asia. He has now an offer of a senior advisory position that would make him a frequent presence in the area, to repeat even more extensively the fiasco of his return home from post-operative recovery in Saudi Arabia.

It is not the first time either. His interview with Al-Jazeera on his release from prison was too. So was an interview with Lorraine Hahn's Talk Asia programme with CNN, broadcast once with the repeat cancelled. As no doubt there would be more to come.

Earlier this month, he visited Indonesia about the same time the Malaysian deputy minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, arrived for a general border committee meeting. His media coverage was impressive, making the front pages while Dato' Seri Najib had to be content with the inside pages, though, in truth, his overall coverage was better in Indonesia than in Malaysia. The Malaysian embassy in Jakarta moved to restrict Dato' Seri Anwar's access to top officials, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and his media coverage. It only reinforced senior Indonesian officials' contempt for those across the Straits of Malacca.

Malaysians have several theories why: Dato' Seri Anwar is a chameleon, changing colours to suit the audience; he buys support with money; he is unscrupulous in his self-publicity. A prominent official personage, a former cabinet minister, added another: he had journalists on his payroll, spread through the Indonesian media. If this was so, I countered, why did not the Malaysian government go through the same route? One desperate attempt by Dato' Seri Najib to persuade his (and Dato' Seri Anwar's) host, Vice-President Jusuf Kalla, to restrain Dato' Seri Anwar's news coverage evoked near contempt from his host and the government behind him.

It is more prosaic than that. Diplomacy is ignored. Friendships and policies are not kept in good repair. Embassies are mere post boxes, with diplomats at a loss and often confined to their compounds, talking to each other and other diplomats, not building bridges in the country they are accredited to. There is, I dare say, but a handful in Wisma Putra who could call a senior official anywhere to discuss a pressing problem. Foreign policy now resides in the Prime Minister's office, not in Wisma Putra. For an active foreign policy, hard work and long hours are a prequisite. The good will we had is all but destroyed during the Mahathir years. For matters to improve we must have a more dynamic, intelligent and forward-looking foreign minister than the bumbler in our midst.

When foreign policy is no more than to make the Prime Minister look good in foreign countries when he visits, fiascos like how to force Dato' Seri Anwar off the radar screen in foreign countries are built into the system. Especially when the former deputy prime minister is on a political rampage to restore his credibility in Malaysia and internationally. He is a monster it unleased, a genie out of the bottle, which it cannot force it to return. This frightens UMNO and his detractors, of whom there are many. His political plan frightens those in BN and UMNO, and many in the Opposition. But it attracts a resonance from the ground, ordinary Malaysians, not just Malays. He is now seen as the one man who could possibly bring the fundamentalist extremes of the DAP and PAS into a workable coalition under him. The last man who tried, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, failed, and remains passively on the sidelines waiting for the call that could well come but which recedes by the day.

It would take more magnanimity than UMNO leaders can garner to use Dato' Seri Anwar as he uses them. Accept him as an opposition leader, give up its stupid vendetta, and co-opt him into restoring Malaysia's shattered international standing. All they have now are diplomatic double-talk on its firm standing in the world. Malaysia needs more than that. There is no one in UMNO who could, except the other exile from leadership, Tengku Razaleigh. The two evince a polity in which it is important to speak softly but carry a big stick. Malaysia however talks loudly and stutters at the world stage but stumbles when an ex-prisoner travels to Munich for surgery, and is reduced to silence when he returns to pick up the pieces of his shattered life from six years ago. But a heavy official cannot stop him for it would do him no harm. But it would UMNO and the BN government. However one looks at it, Dato Seri Anwar is half-way to where he once was.

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