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Could 100,000 Pakistani workers equal one Anwar Ibrahim?

MALAYSIA CANNOT SURVIVE WITHOUT foreign labour – especially illegal – politically, culturally, socially; and a scapegoat for the ills of Malaysian society. Factories and estates shut down, construction grinds to a halt, small and medium factories and industries head for bankruptcy, restaurants and hawker stalls have to close when they are not available. Periodically the UMNO-led National Front (BN) government creates an issue of it, blaming on it the ills of society: rapes, armed robberies, snatch thieves. What is not said is why and how foreign labour came to dominate Malaysian society in the three decades illegal immigration was encouraged within bilateral agreements to allow it in legally and officially.

So when Malaysia peremptorily threatened to cane illegal workers last year if they did not leave within a fortnight, it set off fear and panic. That this deadline was periodically extended because it raises more problems than solving them. Many went into hiding when they could not leave in time, and held to the mercy of policemen, petty officials and others. Since most illegal workers are Indonesian, it strained bilateral ties and worsened when linked to oil exploration in diputed territory in the seas between Sabah and Indonesia. There is a promise to allow those who leave to return legally, but the red tape and shifting rules makes it all but pointless. Registering the illegals in Indonesia is all but impossible. Internal travel to remote registration centres, often across waters, is not easy. It is often cheaper to just pay a middle man and cross the waters into Malaysia.

No one has a clue how many of them are here, but even government officials admit to two million, or more than Malaysian Indians. This is the new slave trade, and fuels corruption in the civil and public service, in BN and UMNO, from the most senior civil servant to the lowliest policemen, that any move to stop the corrupt sinecures would be a call to arms that could overthrow the government. The foreign workers, legal and illegal, is fair game. They cannot complain or protest for the cost of that is to get even further in debt. The employer holds the illegal worker to ransom, paying him less than the going rate and often not paying him for work done. The complaint of many who had to leave in a hurry without getting their wages is all to common in the best of times. But the official view is that as illegal workers they deserve their fate.

Then out of the blue the home minister, Dato' Azmi Khalid, says on 17 March 2005 Malaysia will recruit 100,000 Pakistanis immediately, cutting red tape, ignoring rules and regulations, with a Pakistani agency given the franchise to recruit them. He says it is to ease the labour shortage. The agreement with Pakistan was signed on 16 May, he said, and the Pakistanis would be allowed to work whereever there are vacancies. It was a bombshell, although the first hint of it came when Pak Lah visited Islamad a few months ago. That it is announced amidst the mudslinging across the Straits of Malacca suggests it was deliberate and calculative.

There was no hint of Pakistanis allowed in, not after Bangladeshi workers created havoc with Malay social and cultural life that they in time came to be hated and are now foreign worker pariahs. But the Pakistanis are brought in for the same reason as Bangladeshis, Filipinos, Indonesians in the past: to enable the BN to hold on to power. In Sabah in the mid-1980s, Indonesians, Filipinos and Pakistanis, with instant citizenships, voted out the Parti Bersatu Sabah government of Dato' Seri Joseph Pairin Kitingan. There is another unmentioned reason, as a retired senior civil servant delicately put it, of "improving the Malay stock". But that reflects the confusion about it all.

The BN knows that if it did not do this, power would recede from it with each general election. It did badly in 1999 when the Malays deserted it in droves, in the aftermath of the arrest and humiliation of the then deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. It was kept in power by a near solid non-Malay support. This would have been too in 2004 but for Tun Mahathir Mohamed's brilliant move to resign and hand power to Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi before the elections. Even UMNO officials admit that had he remained in office, the opposition would have done far better, capturing even his home state of Kedah. But Pak Lah, for his own reasons, had to fiddle with the electoral rules. He did not get what he wanted: annointment in office. He is today as unsure of his position in UMNO as on his first day as prime minister.

This is where the Pakistanis come in handy. They are brought in with an eye to the 2009 general election. BN must win that general election handily or lose political ground thereafter. The Pakistani worker, grateful for a livelihood, would do what is asked of him, and be amongst the illegal floating corps of voters who take to heart the injunction: Vote early and often. This is not far-fetched. I have met several of these floating voters who, after not being paid for their "work", spill the beans. Two, I know, were arrested, convicted, jailed and sent back to whence they came. The bringing in of Pakistani workers is so carefully hatched that the crisis of the illegal worker in October last year is no accident. It is an elaborate charade to bring in Pakistani workers.

By allowing them in on special terms, and given the delay in setting up new procedures, however the existing ones are gutted, still takes time, allowing the illegal Pakistani worker to come in as the others have come in. They cannot come in without an official nod. That is usually easy. The most important man in the illegal worker business is a former cabinet minister, who controlled the racket for years and still does. He is not involved in the Pakistani worker caper. That is given to new men loyal to Pak Lah and not to Tun Mahathir. The UMNO division and branch heads will in time shift their alliances in return for their illegal sinecures. And no doubt a new chief slave trader.

Why Pakistani workers therefore is clear. The BN's bigger fear in the 2009 general election is an opposition front under an Anwar Ibrahim-led PAS. That has its detractors in PAS. It is not plain sailing. It is not clear if the Chinese would desert this front if the DAP decides it would not join, or even if the multiracial Parti Keadilan Rakyat could attract Chinese votes if DAP fights alone. But fear alone is enough to goad BN and UMNO into action. Pakistan, for its part, sees it geopolitically, to wean Malaysia from India into its arms, and to divert attention from its looming Iraq-like conditions in its Western province of Balochistan.

The political and genetical plans for the Pakistani worker in Malaysia would not cause a hiccup in Islamabad. But it would here if the opposition gets its act together. There is no reason yet to hope it would. It might if Dato' Seri Anwar takes the lead. In this, the BN and the opposition are firm in their belief: each hopes an individual would rescue it from its political and electoral morass, without making sure that one man matters only if the party is all geared for victory, and a leader can make a difference. There is no likelihood of that now as UMNO opts for Pakistani workers and the opposition Dato' Seri Anwar. The fallout from both could be as disastrous. But it boils down to this: Could 100,000 Pakistani workers equal one Anwar Ibrahim?

[This is my column in Harakah, the PAS organ, in its latest issue, and published 22 March 2005.]

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