http://www.tranungkite.net - Out to oust PAS from Kelantan, Pak Lah finds a divided UMNO an insurmountable block

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' SERI Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, kept all guessing if he would attend the G-15 meeting in Caracas this week. Yes, he would; no, he would not; no, he would not. It is a straight forward decision, given that general elections are in the offing for him to have made a firm decision, and stick to it. But almost every major decision since he took office is mired in this doubt. He wants the suspense to unnerve the Opposition, but it does come out that way. It is of a leader in perennial doubt. He is capable of better. He can be firm when he wants to, and in the years I have known him, that has been his trait. He would, like Tun Hussein Onn, ponder over the problem for long, but once he has decided, he is firm. That seems not so nowadays. It could be the pressure of work and his wife's debilitating illness. But he should step out of it. He made, let us not mince words, a mess of the anti-corruption drive and of his son's involvement at one end of the nuclear weapon blackmarket chain. He now faces the most important General Election the National Front (BN) ever.

He faces two important pressures: that PAS could seize Kedah; and the need, for his own survival, to offset it with the return to BN of either or both PAS-run Kelantan and Trengganu. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, has rushed down to Kedah, and is terribly impressed with the reception, which he argues is a good sign that the state will remain firmly in BN hands. Crowds of 5,000 followed him wherever he went. There are two reasons for that: the BN's well-tested rent-a-crowd policy is augmented by a PAS organisation which has asked its supporters to welcome federal leaders with large crowds. Pak Lah came to similar conclusions in Kelantan and Trengganu. A prime minister cannot address crowds of 5,000 in hostile territory, so, depending on whether you believe the New Straits Times or the Singapore Straits Times, 50,000 or 30,000 attended. Curiously, for crowds of this size the newspapers would have at least had photographs of the crowds. There was none of that. Suffice it is to say that there was a large crowd. But it taken as read in a political society where support is measured in how many attend, that BN-controlled newspapers often drop a zero from the estimated crowd at an opposition function and add a zero for BN rallies and functions.

What both leaders found in the three states was fratricidal infighting within a leaderless state UMNO; in these three states, it is UMNO that matters. In Kelantan, there is the added problem of a state UMNO leader up in arms for being sidelined. Pak Lah acknowledged that in his speech in Bachok. He called on UMNO leaders to stop the infighting and work as a team to throw PAS out of office. With a solid unified UMNO with strong leaders that would be difficult. In 1999, UMNO won one parliamentary seat of 14, and two state assembly seats of 43. To Pak Lah's UMNO, that one parliamentary seat is as good as gone. Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, who is that MP, is out of the pale, and is not factored in UMNO's calculations for the state. Pak Lah's visit to Kelantan had one purpose and one only: to make certain that one of Dato' Mustapha Mohamed, the state UMNO chief, the UMNO candidate in Bachok, Dato' Awang Adek, or the lawyer, Dato' Zaid Ibrahim, is elected at all cost. Whoever wins is guaranteed a seat in the post-election cabinet. If all fail, it is the more likely that Dato' Awang Adek, would come in via the Senate. As matters stand, it is clear Pak Lah would be happy with the minimum he can get, and if he can hold on to Kedah. This is not to say BN cannot do better. There is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, and PAS, confident of victory in Kelantan and Trengganu, and of an upset in Kedah, can do something electorally stupid, and allow BN to draw circles around it. If that does not happen, BN must fight the harder to keep Kedah and return to power in Kelantan and Trengganu.

Weaving through the three states, and elsewhere, is the still unresolved political problem of Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. There is this fashionable view - one visiting academic told me this over dinner a few days ago - of a man who is as reprehensible as they come, a user and an acolyte of whoever is willing to meet his demands, which BN leaders often tell you. In strictly Western political science jargon, he is right. He was all that once; no one could rise as high in BN and UMNO as he did, if he did not wallow in the cesspit. But his strength to the Opposition and danger to BN is that he has re-engineered himself into some one wronged culturally, and turned BN politics upside down. In one sense, it is he and he alone that gave the Opposition the strength it has now. PAS would not have done as well but for the Anwar makeover. That remains, though not as strong as once. In the Malay heartland it is as firm as ever. KeADILan, his political voice, does occasionally go over the top to prove his continued importance, but it does that so ineptly that it sometimes deserves the opporobrium thrown at it. But the fact remain that Dato' Seri Anwar remains an underlying cultural problem that UMNO and BN has to overcome.

There are two further hurdles. Pak Lah inherited an UMNO that threatens to implode. UMNO's top down and autocratic rule with no counterviews allowed has over the years, especially after the old UMNO was declared illegal in 1988, been reduced to a political party of self-interested leaders. The machinery is all but decrepit, and the party comes to live just before an election. But the emphasis on the campaign is still the UMNO and BN president. It does not allow for contrary views and policies in the state. How long could it hold that out for? It was no surprise that BN castigated PAS for having special manifestos for the states and another for parliament. It showed its two-faced plans. But PAS is right. The states must not be run as appendages of the centre, but as political entities in its own right. Each has its pecularities that cannot be addressed in a national manifestos. Now UMNO and BN accepts it. It will now have separate manifestos for Kelantan, Trengganu and Kedah. It should have manifestos for all the states. It also implied accepts that the states cannot be run as appendages, and must be given its due under the federal constitution. Pak Lah is right in ensuring it.

The Opposition has learnt to read the signs from the clues the BN must give to get its troops ready for the polls, and make their own plans. Where once the short campaign period took it by surprise and caught it flatfooted and unprepared, it is not so now. Where once the printers would all be contracted to print BN posters and election material, today many do not want to. Many complain they are not paid for their work, promised printing contracts in lieu that do not materialise. The BN view then is that it is an honour to print what the BN wants. Today, the printers would rather deal with political parties prepared to pay for what they wanted printed. The advantage the BN once had in a short campaigning period is not as serious now. For that works against both BN and PAS. The BN in fact painted itself into a corner to have general elections done with in as a short time as possible. It cannot now have a longer campaign even if it wants to for that would benefit the Opposition more than it would BN.

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

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Terbitan : 25 Februari 2004

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