The Pahang mentri besar, Dato' Seri Adnan Yaakob, stung as never before, threatens to sue PAS for character assassination, accuses it of blowing out of proportion his taunting of the PAS crowd with obscene signs at them. Does PAS not know that "I have done a lot for the people, especially the poor and single mothers"? PAS does this, no doubt, because they are jealous of his achievements, which presumably gives him the right, in the true spirit of democracy, to do what he did. In the video clip of the incident, distributed widely on the Internet, the embarassment of his aides, tugging at his arms discreetly, is so clear that Dato' Seri Adnan does not have a leg to stand on in his defence. But the National Front condones it. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, believes such behaviour is correct. Prof. Shahnon Ahmad, now a PAS member of parliament, only strengthened the contents of his satirical political novel, SHIT, which caricatured politics as the human body, and how all good things end up as faeces. What shocks is the National Front's attempt to regard the incident as insignificant. But would it have condoned this if it the roles were reversed?

Despite his unacceptable and provocative actions, Dato' Seri Adnan insists PAS should take the blame. This is character assassination, he thunders. His has called in his lawyers, no doubt with a view to a multimillion ringgit defamation suit. He is outraged that his concern for the people is sidetracked by his boorish behaviour, which he insists, is "a small slip on his part" -- as no doubt his beating up of a PAS member at the Bentong nomination centre for the general elections last November was. He has todate not apologised, and PAS, as any opposition party would in the circumstances, takes full advantage of it. Besides, in his view, PAS "will deny everything because they are a bunch of hypocrites." But how could that be when he admits to have shown the offending signs for what he terms "nasty remarks" like "Hancur Barisan" and "Mampus Barisan" (destruction and death to the National Front)? If a political leader can lose his head over a matter of political semantics at an orderly election procession, can he be trusted in worse situations?

When the National Front used the Kadazan headress Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah wore at a function, which the spinmeisters decided was a cross (when it clearly was not), and splashed all over the country days before the 1990 general elections, it was considered a coup which sank the Semangat '46 political party. That, no doubt in Dato' Seri Adnan's view, a perfectly legitimate reaction. But if he shows obscene signs at his opponents, and the opposition react as the National Front would have if the roles were reversed, the opposition are hypocrites and deserve to lose. His claim that it was PAS who started taunting does not hold water because all the evidence we have is what PAS had videotaped. It realised, after the Bentong affair, when they did not have videocameras on hand, that the mentri besar of Pahang would provide issues like this that would aid their campaigning. And so it proved. Since the National Front's candidate's involvement in Islamic affairs is highlighted, am I, as a non-Muslim, to believe it not un-Islamic to show obscene signs as the mentri besar of Pahang makes a habit of on nomination day to elections?

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my