MGG Pillai Commentary View

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The power of rumours, and where Malaysia went wrong

MALAYSIAN OFFICIALS GIVE the Prime Minister and the family the same respect they give the Royal Familes. We saw that yesterday (20 October 2005) in the death and funeral of the wife of the Prime Minister, Datin Seri Endon Mohmood. She was not the First Lady as newspapers and television networks insisted on referring to her. She was not even the Second Lady; that honour went to the deputy Yang DiPertuan Agung. She was not the Third Lady; she could be called the Fourteenth lady, after the Sultans' and Governors' wives. I am sorry she died, and this would make Pak Lah's burden heavier than normal. May he have the courage to face the years ahead. They are not pleasant. There is talk of UMNO members wanting to challenge him from the president, and one man, if he does stand, can defeat Pak Lah. Be that as it may, the Prime Minister has become more imperial as he loses his grip on the supreme council and the warlords in the party. He has untramelled powers as Prime Minister and as president of UMNO but he must always watch his back, because he is faced with political enemies in his own party. That he could not sack two cabinet ministers, after they had been found guilty, by the party or by the people, is proof of that. If more is needed, he has yet to revamp the cabinet of his predecessor two years after he took office and after the general election last year.

She visited me with her husband when I was recuperating at home after open heart surgery seventeen years ago. She was hurt later when I critised her husband not as a person but as Prime Minister. She could not separate the person from the office. I got along well with Pak Lah when I met him, but this is rarer these days since he lives in Putra Jaya and I in Kuala Lumpur, and I do not drive (yet) after my recent strokes. I liked her, but that did not prevent me from criticising Malaysian officials from turning her funeral around as if she was royalty. It was the first time that the Prime Minister's wife had died in office, though a Prime Minister (Tun Razak) had died in office. The officials were stumped at what to do, and they stumbled. The Prime Minister is an elected official, and his wife's death, though earth shattering to him, did not warrant the switching to Quran readings on radio and television programmes from 10 a.m. to after the funeral. Muslims die every day, and the radio and television do not shut off nationwide before their funeral. Why should the Prime Minister's wife's funeral cause it?

But the Prime Minister's office must be congratulated for announcing her death within an hour; Radio and Television announced it at 8.27 a.m.; she died at 7.55 a.m. yesterday. The whole country knew it as rumours and these spread like wildfire. The radio and television broadcast shut off all rumours. This is in sharp contrast to what happened in the past. The Agung, then the Sultan of Kelantan, had died. The flag at the Istana Negara was at half mast. But it was hours later that Malaysians were informed. I informed the BBC, for whom I was then working as a freelance, and the editor there asked the Malaysian High Commission about it. The officer confirmed the King had died. And it was so broadcast. Malaysians knews of it before the official announcement two hours later. Before the rumours took effect, the official announcement of Datin Seri Endon's death was announced. The authorities had done a wise thing. When the current trend is to give the people news as it occurs, it could not hold back the prime minister's wife's death.

The New Straits Times today takes the people to task for suggesting that the former deputy prime minister, Tun Ghaffar Baba, 80, had died. He has been in ICU at Pantai Hospital, and critically ill. The Prime Minister and others had paid their respects to him. He is not allowed visitors. But the preparations to have him transferred to a hospital in England caused that rumours. I had not met him since my strokes, and he looked unwell then. He had grown too fat, and he appeared to lose his memory now and then. He was defeated as deputy president of UMNO, and therefore deputy prime minister, by Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, later sacked by the prime minister of the day, Tun Mahathir, and retired when he lost. He has been out of the public eye since. He has been ignored by officialdom, especially since he was critical of some of the government policies, and not afraid to say so. The people I saw at his house in Bangsar were ordinary people. It is not giving the latest on a bigwig in retirement that is the problem. The people do not have ill intent. They spread rumours because official information is sparse. He has been in hospital for more than a month, but has any information been released? He may be a nobody today, but he was a somebody less than ten years ago. The rumours would not have spread if officials had given adequate information. The suggestion that the people deliberately gave out false information is not true. When they have to depend on rumours that later turn out to be true, they listen, and spread, rumours. They have no compunction in spreading it because the official media, and those close to the National Front, did not, or spread lies. Many of the news reports are in fact self-serving to the government, and often detrimental to the people.

Even if the newspapers do tell the truth, it takes long to get it into the readers' hands. I live in Kuala Lumpur and within a mile of the newspaper distribution office, but I just received it, at 10.00 a.m., this morning. This happens every day. I do not mind since I go on the internet and read both my paper and the international press early in the mornings. But to those who do not have a computer, he gets it (I was told the other day) as late as the next day in some areas. If he does not have ASTRO, he depends on rumours, which turn out in most cases to be true anyway. So the reasons for rumours spreading in Malaysia has no ill intent; the newspapers, radio and television sell them short, either by giving them news that has no relevance or giving them false news, or delivering their paper late. Let us look at Datin Seri Endon's illness. She had her treatment in California, and those who were in her party did not tell their friends and colleagues what was wrong with her. But Malaysians realised her end was near when her illness was treated in the Malaysian press as a medical bulletin a few days before she died. The getting of doctors treating her to tell the press was serious enough. But when the head of the various non-Islamic religions said prayers for her recovery, all hope was lost. It was a matter of time. But why did not the officials take the bull by the horns and cut out the rumours? I knew then, as did many Malaysians, that all hope was lost, and said so. Were we spreading rumours?

Why was not Malaysians taken into confidence, and told what was wrong with the Prime Minister's wife? Why was rumours allowed to fester about what was wrong with her. When rumours are allowed to spread in the absence of real information, and news, and officials and her office refused to answer questions, what else do we have? Why did not the officials inform us what was wrong, so that rumours had no time to spread, as in the announcement of her death? It is no use grumbling, as the New Straits Times column did this morning, that rumours of Tun Ghafar Baba, former deputy prime minister, is seriously ill, had been in an ICU ward of a private hospital, had died, when preparations was being done to take him to a hospital in the United Kingdom. If the public had been informed of his illness at all stages, perhaps the rumours would not be so severe. The first time Malaysia hears of his illness is when the Prime Minister and others had visited him in hospital, and they heard for the first time that he could not talk. But we have a habit of forgetting our past leaders, beginning with our first Prime Minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman. When he died 16 years ago, he asked to be buried in the royal masoleum in Kedah, whose royal family member he was, and that resolved a major problem of where he could be buried in Kuala Lumpur. The officials sighed great relief: they would not be asked to downgrade him then. But that is what happens when policies are not thought through. I do not think that Pak Lah, when his time comes as it comes to all of us, would want to be buried in the National Mosque when his wife lies buried in Putra Jaya. Nor whether Datin Seri Endon, the fine lady she is, should be given royal status. Unless the aim is to replace eventually the royal families with the Prime Minister. If this is the aim, we should be told about it now, not take us by surprise.

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