The Lunas Typhoon
M.G.G.
Pillai
THE POLITICAL TYPHOON that swept through the Kedah backwater town of
Lunas on 29 November 2000 destroyed the National Front's equanimity. The sitting MIC
state assemblyman for Lunas had been murdered early that month and, in a rush to hold
the beyelection before the onset of Ramadhan, by elections was called for, in the usual
rush that normally handicaps the opposition. Nominations were called for on 21 November
and polling eight days later. To the National Front, a seat it had held for 42 years is
so safe that any donkey could win it. So, a colourless party apparatchik, S.
Anthonysamy, was the candidate, a man whose only strengths is that he was close to the MIC
president and had parents who were labourers in the area. The National Front did
not see any need to look closely at the typhoon that sweeps through the Malay world.
Nor did it realise the opposition's deliberate selection of a KeADILan candidate,
Saifuddin Nasution Ismail.
But the typhoon struck,
destroying everything in the National Front path. It was Saifuddin who was
returned in a byelection in which the National Front campaigned without thinking,
pouring men and money when the voters wanted answers. Quickly, the campaign took
on a confrontation between two men, the UMNO president and prime minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir
Mohamed, and his nemesis (and once his successor-to-be in UMNO and government), Dato'
Seri Anwar Ibrahim. And showed, clearly and starkly, that the Malay cultural and
political ground, without which its political presence is marginal, shifted
definitively and deliberately away from it. The National Front is, to all intents
and purposes, an euphemism for UMNO, the Malay political party which dominates the
government and, indeed, all political activity.
At
least it did until 02 September 1998. On that day, the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri
Mahathir Mohamed, took the fatal step to sack, without due process, his deputy prime
minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. Eighteen days later, he was detained, beaten to an
inch of his life, charged and convicted of sodomy and corruption in trials that
indicated to the man-in-the-street his crime was not for what he is convicted for but for
disloyalty and treachery. Dr Mahathir ran foul of the Malay cultural convention
that a chief may be destroyed but not humiliated. The Malay ground shifted.
UMNO is unnerved and, with it, the National Front it controls and such political
parties in it as the MCA, MIC, Gerakan.
This came to a
head in Lunas. UMNO had lost the Malay ground, as the 1999 General Election
showed: the National Front had been returned with four-fifths of the seats in
Parliament but almost every Malay majority or dominant seat became marginal. In
the three byelections since, this erosion showed. In Lunas, it was confirmed.
The National Front ignored the Malay areas, with its 43 per cent of the voters, and
concentrated on the Chinese and Indians. But the Chinese themselves were in a
simmering cauldron, accused of treachery and worse for not agreeing to submit its schools
to the voluntary, ill-thought-out vision schools, of which no one, not even the
education ministry knows much about. So, in an election in which the National
Front needed Chinese support, it did not. The National Front took the politically
questionable way out of its predicament by attacking the Chinese. It hoped that
this would bring back the support it lost.
It did not.
Instead, it incensed the Chinese community even more. It sought the Chinese votes in
Lunas a few weeks after the Prime Minister excoriated Chinese educationists of
anti-national behaviour. They were in Lunas explaining their stand on opposition
platforms. The MCA, which supports the vision schools though it does not know
what it is all about, could not rebut. Neither could the education minister, Tan
Sri Musa Mohamed, who, faced with a hostile Chinese audience, softened its impact. It
was too late. The vision school is no more what it was when he expounded it.
It is not compulsory for the Chinese schools now, but Dr Mahathir still excoriates the
Chinese educationists of treachery and worse. They took it to the people of
Lunas, and got their support.
The Indian vote was ignored.
It was, said the MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, a safe-deposit box for the
National Front. If the Indians held the balance, it was. The Chinese did.
And they stayed neutral. The Malay wants answers neither UMNO nor Dr Mahathir
could provide. A subtle cultural tug-of-war between Dr Mahathir and Anwar Ibrahim
overshadowed the campaign. The National Front, as always, plastered the
constituency with photographs of Dr Mahathir. That was a mistake. He is the
focus of Malay cultural and political anger and angst for what he did to cause Anwar to
suffer. The infamous black eye photograph of Anwar Ibrahim, in colour, made UMNO
campaigners nervous.
The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, had doors shut in his face. A policeman, after Friday
prayers in Lunas, brusquely pushed aside the proferred hand of Dato' Hamid Othman, the minister
in the prime minister's department. It reflected the National Front campaign in
Lunas for the hearts and minds of the Malay community. The opposition had its work cut
for it amongst the Malay community. Dr Mahathir, due to address a rally, decided
discretion the better part of valour, and stayed away. Quickly, it turned into a
confrontation between one who would not come and another who could not. The
Chinese ministers would not discuss issues with the Chinese electorate.
The National Front did not know what hit it. The eight-day campaign,
it found,
was too short. The opposition, on the other hand, used to fighting elections at
short notice, hit the ground running. It ignored the world outside Lunas, and
went into the ground, campaigning by word of mouth, using the plight of Anwar
effectively, with a campaign which took in all the issues for which the National Front
had no answers for. And it worked. In an election, all sorts of issues are
raised, some fair, some unfair, some tendentious, some wrong, some irrelevant.
The opposition concentrated on few issues which it hammered home frequently and persistently.
The National Front first hit out at the seeming split within the opposition Alternative
Front. This collapsed when the DAP joined the campaign in the later days of the
campaign. It insisted that only its candidate could provide the help and
assistance the good people of Lunas, though its record here is patchy. But it had
not for 42 years. It did not address the issues. It blustered, hectored,
cajoled, threatened, and swamped the constituency with cabinet ministers and mentris
besar, ignored the local UMNO network, and did not know, as the campaign went on,
whether it came or went. Abdullah Badawi, despite his valiant campaign, could not face
the typhoon as it hit town.
Samy Vellu, as works minister,
used his ministerial prerogative to announce instant projects. A cabinet minister
is allowed, on his own bat, to so long as it does not exceed RM5 million. If you
look closely, each of the project is around this sum. Almost all of it went to
one man, Dato' Aziz Sheikh Fadhir, the UMNO youth supreme councillor and brother of the
cultural and tourism minister, Dato' Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadhir. Work, I understand, has
slowed down, not that the election is lost. But questions are asked within UMNO
how he came to be the main recipient of this largesse. The knives are out.
But this not all. The National Front operations room was headed by two men known
to be firmly in the Anwar campg. The final indignity was when the political
highflyers from Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere slunk off like rats off a sinking ship when
it realised, a few hours before polling ended, the seat was lost. Dato' Kadir
alone was on hand when the result was announced.
And so,
Saifuddin Nasution Ismail defeated S. Anthonysamy, turning a National Front majority of
5,000 last year into an opposition majority of 530, a swing of about a third, one which
if had happened in a general election, would have turned the government out. The
fallout is worse. The National Front loses its two-thirds majority in a Malay state.
This is importance, since it insisted it needs two-thirds to govern comfortably.
A simple majority would not do. Lunas confirmed what had been only guessed at:
the Malay ground shifted irrevocably against it. Other frights are in store. In a
future byelection in a Malay constituency -- and one is likely -- if the opposition
decides upon a non-Malay who gets the majority of the Malay votes, it would all but put paid
to a National Front and UMNO led by Dr Mahathir.
Lunas
proved the Malay is not enamoured of Dr Mahathir and of UMNO so long as he leads it.
UMNO and he is now stalked by Anwar from his prison cell in Sungei Buloh. The
more racial UMNO's response -- the threat of another May 13, the Chinese treachery --
the more it would be marginalised. But it continues to raise the race and
religion card. The opposition, to its credit, has not. We are only told by
the National Front it has. The threats have all come from UMNO leaders. It
had put its future upon the Chinese community. In 1999, its wholehearted support saved
the National Front. A year later, it confronts each other. The Indians are
irrelevant and marginalised. UMNO cannot depend upon the Malay vote anymore.
It is this Malay marginalisation UMNO and the National Front should makes UMNO and
National Front more racial than it should. That is a sign of fear not strength.
The UMNO and National Front predicament is not over. Not by a long shot.
Ends
