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Is Anwar Ibrahim UMNO's prodigal son or a Trojan horse in its midst?

DATO' SERI ABDULLAH AHMAD Badawi, should be on top of the world. He led the National Front (BN) to its best ever electoral showing four months after he succeeded Tun Mahathir Mohamed as prime minister in November 2004. Two months later, he was elected unopposed as UMNO president. On paper, he had more power, and control, of Malaysia, UMNO and BN than any of his predecessors. But he is not at peace. His writ does not run, unless enforced with a whip. The state UMNO chiefs defy him with impunity. His cabinet is split. His deputy prime minister and deputy UMNO president, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, is in revolt, after Pak Lah's advisers decided he had to be cut down to size to protect their leader; and he, not to be undone, is on the offensive. The two men are bitter political rivals, but challenge so amaterurishly that it beggars belief.

In a feudal UMNO, Pak Lah should have sent his deputy packing. But feudal respect comes only when the leader conducts himself with probity, which he cannot say he has. He surrounds himself with a group of young Oxbridge graduates led by his son-in-law, Mr Khairy Jamaludin, on whom he relies thoroughly but who knows nothing about Malay cultural mores, and often acts in defiance of accepted feudal norms. When the feudal leader is challenged, his governance is in dispute. UMNO's feudal credentials were challenged when, in 1987, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah stood against Dato' Seri Mahathir, as he then was.

That he lost is not the issue. That Dr Mahathir was challenged is. He could continue to govern only by destroying UMNO the mass movement that brought independence and forming UMNO the political party. For another 17 years since UMNO became flawed it held on, especially after Dr Mahathir got rid of the only prop who could have preserved UMNO for perhaps a decade more, and, today, UMNO's man for all seasons, the former deputy prime minister and UMNO deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. UMNO now represented only Malay politics, not the Malay cultural force which accepted it as its feudal overlord. Pak Lah therefore inherited a pastiche of what UMNO once was. And made it worse when he receded from the cultural centre to petty politics. But if he had been challenged, he could well be not where he is today.

The UMNO general assembly last September provided much evidence of it. For all the spin, Pak Lah came out of it weaker than before his election. A ground revolt, disgusted at the attempt to shorten his odds to control UMNO, made sure of it. He does not control UMNO. The state chiefs, though nominated by him, is in revolt. The defiance of at least four mentris besar has spilled over into foreign affairs. Johore UMNO is dissatisfied with Kuala Lumpur's negotiations with Singapore over outstanding issues. He cannot reshuffle his cabinet for fear of those dropped turning against him. To be in charge, he had to destroy Dato' Seri Najib, the unlikely flag-bearer of the Mahathir insurrection. The Proton chief executive resigned because of Dr Mahathir's "interference" in the car company is more than that: he bites the hand that appointed him. His importance is only that he is a Pak Lah pawn to bring the good doctor down.

Into this equation comes the man who Pak Lah believes can put his enemies down: Dato' Seri Anwar. So much of what he said before his arrest, imprisonment, humiliation has come to pass. UMNO fears him for what he represents. It does not want him in the party, but is afraid of him outside, especially as he now wants to turn the disorganised opposition parties into a coalition to meet the BN head on. He is now in residence at St Antony's College, Oxford, writing a book of his experiences in prison and his thoughts of the future. Though he has ruled out returning to UMNO, and the general assembly precluded that last September, he is still the hero of the rank and file. He does not miss a chance to make that known. He turned up at Pak Lah's open house in Kepala Batas, the latter's hometown, in what now appears to be more than what it is: a courtesy call on the Aidil fitri celebrations.

It had one desired effect: the sheer terror in Dato' Seri Najib's camp. It fears Dato' Seri Anwar is Pak Lah's secret weapon against its leader. There is little love lost between Dato' Seri Anwar and Dato' Seri Najib. The Najib camp is in disarray. So when Sabah UMNO and BN attacked Pak Lah's weakest link there, the chief minister, Dato' Seri Musa Aman, Dato' Najib sent his preferred choice to head Sabah UMNO, the federal cabinet minsiter, Dato' Shafie Apdal. All that did was to reveal a man Pak Lah would make certain would not be Sabah chief minister for long. The Sabah UMNO crisis has got out of hand. Dato' Seri Musa is Pak Lah's man in the state. But the growing revolt against him, mainly from his unalloyed ambition to be the power in the state, his arrogance, his belief that he is Sabah UMNO and Sabah UMNO he, foments a revolt.

But if there is one state that is strongest for Dato' Seri Anwar, it is Sabah. The infighting in Sabah UMNO over the next chief minister is not easily resolved. UMNO in the state has more factions than colours in a rainbow. The non-Malay tribes, the Kadazandusun, and others, resent being told, after the state election last year, that the chief minister in future will be from UMNO. Dato' Seri Anwar has yet to show his hand there, but his one visit there, before his departure for overseas, upset the political establishment there that it fears what he would do. Pak Lah therefore needs him in the peninsular but not In Sabah. How would he enforce that? If Dato' Seri Musa is ousted, it weakens Pak Lah yet more. But it is in Dato' Seri Anwar's future political alignments that he be.

He is a political animal. He will sup with the devil if he has to, as indeed his former patron, Dr Mahathir, and other politicians would. He needs to bring UMNO down a few pegs, and head it towards self-destruction. He works to get the opposition parties to a workable coalition in which two parties, DAP and PAS, reduce their extreme political views to one both could accept without giving up their extreme positions. If one man could do that, it is Dato' Seri Anwar. He thinks through what he does, which is more than can be said of the other politicians, in government and opposition. He is not without detractors, but they spout the same refrain with less and less confidence: that his sexual proclivities, which the courts could not prove for lack of evidence and those who claimed inside knowledge hid in the bushes rather than provide the 'incontrovertible. proof, and therefore unfit to govern. In short, Dato' Seri Anwar looks ahead, his detractors back.

Is he then the Trojan horse, brought into UMNO in stealth, to destroy it from within, or is he the prodigal son, who having strayed, returns to the family. The UMNO family is not prepared to take him back, though the head of the family does see some use of him to keep the family on the straight and narrow. But given his power base in UMNO, and this is unquestioned, is he a Trojan horse to destroy UMNO from within? One thing is unchallenged: he is brought in to hold Pak Lah's rivals at bay. Dato' Seri Najib reacted at this news with cataclysmic shock, attacking Dato' Seri Anwar when he could. That has stopped. Dato' Seri Anwar sent word that if he persists, he would have cause to react that even the New Straits Times, which dismisses him as an irrelevant non-entity, would happily publish it on its front pages. The attacks stopped forthwith. Could Pak Lah dare do that?

[This is my column in the latest issue of Harakah, the PAS organ, and published today, 08 February 2005.]

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