MGG Pillai Commentary View

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The rise in petrol price damages the National Front

THE GOVERNMENT WILL SAVE RM4.4 billion annually by raising petrol prices but it will cost Malaysians five times that. This saving will be spent on public transport, says Pak Lah. So we must be happy the petrol prices are up! In 1990, it was RM1.10 a litre, today it is RM1.92. This is said to be inevitable, but is it? Its explanation why this is necessary comes after the public rebelled. Will the Malaysian government tell us, as rumours put it, why we are selling oil to Taiwan at about RM20 till 2010. Again as rumours, which turn out to be true most of the time, tell it, Malaysia is paying Taiwan US$40 a barrel for all the oil we do not sell or use. Most of that oil is now left in the ground, but we pay nevertheless. I was told this cannot be true: "If what you say is true, this is an unequal contract, and will be set aside." This rumour may be false, but before it gets wider publicity, the government must come clean about it. But can there be an unequal contract when the sale is by a willing buyer to a willing seller?

If general election was in the next few months, the government would not have raised the oil price; if it did, it would have absorbed it. There is no general election in the air, and there is enough time to fool the people and be swept in power. But the National Front government blinked. It announced public spending in transport of the savings. What this means is that the RM1.4 billion the government saves would be available every year for public transport. This is nonsene. This claim on improving public transport is to hoodwink the people. There is, as far as I know, no attempt at improving public transport before the petrol hike. It this had been announced before the petrol rise, the reaction would not be as sharp. The government was taken aback that Dato' Seri Najib annonced this saving would be put in improving public transport.

But a rise in petrol price affects the living costs of the people. The salaries would not go up 18 per cent, the percentage of petrol price rise, let alone double to meet the additional cost of everday living. The National Front knows this. This is attempts are made after to soften the opposition, not so that public transport can be improved. The National Front – UMNO, MCA, MIC, Gerakan, IPF, the Sarawak and Sabah parties, and others – have assumed they know what the people want, that they can do what they like for the people who voted them into office. The long suffering Malaysians has been gluttons for punishment, will gladly vote the National Front into office election after election. It had an irritant opposition from PAS, the only other political party which has the wherewithal to become the government of the day, but that day is far off. It did not therefore bother about that. The National Front knew this psychology of the voter only too well. Their aim is power forever, and they will tell any tall tales to ensure that.

But there is a fly in the National Front ointment. The younger voters, particularly the Malays, do not believe in this widely held belief that UMNO, its lead party, is there to ensure that they will be looked after. UMNO has turned into a religious party, which the National Front endorsed. It fights a political battle to have its version of Islam – called Islam Hadhari under the Pak Lah administration – against the PAS version, which is the Islam ordained in the Quran. This is understood by the UMNO leadership, for when UMNO meets PAS head on – in Kelantan, Trengganu, Kedah and Perlis – there is no mention of Islam Hadharii and only that PAS misuses the Quiran. Malaysias only hear of PAS members joining UMNO but many UMNO members, especially in recent years, have joined PAS. That is not reported, for that in National Front eyes, is not important, and the newspapers, in truth its propaganda organs, stay away from such newsta.

UMNO leaders – the other leaders in the National Front will not talk except to echo UMNO words, whether its members and the communities they represent agree or not, virtually telling their people that the leaders would do as they like. But it has to be careful now. The ordinary Malaysian do not believe that. In the past, they had no avenues. Now they write or say their piece on the Internet, which is more believed than the National Front public relations rags which appear as newspapers or relevision and radio stations. The Government makes sure that all follow its line. It replies to Internet queries in formal press conferences, which is reported as a secretary would write her report. The Malaysian media, orwned by the government or National Front members, do not report opposition to government policy. So the reaction to the petrol rise on the Internet is believed more than the the official media, the megaphone to authority. The reporters, knowing which side their bread is buttered, go along. But these reporters know what is going on. In Myanmar or Singapore, for instance, the the reporters know what happens, and are more accurate and believable than the diplomatic briefings. It is beginning to be so in Malaysia.

The National Front hopes that the Malaysian public will forget the petrol price rises. As it hopes they would of official attempts to make women, non-Malays, non-Muslims second class citizens. The opposition now accept that Malaysians must be canvassed against these moves. This will still give the National Front a head start, but it would have to fight hard to prevent that. In the heady days of Independence and before, UMNO could do what it wanted because it was a nationalist movement which brought independence. No political party would get much support if it challenged a nationalist movement. But since 1987 UMNO is a political party, and therefore defeatable. This happened in India in the 1970s, and the first opposition was led by a former member of Congress, Mr Morarji Desai.

UMNO and the National Front is going that path.although it might be 20 or more years later. The rise in petrol price, which it might be inevitable, is yet another reason why the National Front and UMNO is defensive. Add to this Pak Lah's irrelevant homilities, the belief that his son-in-law leads Pak Lah by his nose, infighting in UMNO and the National Front. It will be a long time before the National Front becomes the opposition in the centre, but it will have to learn how to explain its policies to the Malaysian people, an art it forgot as being in government became more important than succouring those who voted them in.

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