Thinking Allowed
Mahathir Quitting?
Well, well, well, it finally happened, Dr. M’s long-awaited “resignation” — in about 15 months, that is! While there was early disbelief over the decision, few people now believe that Mahathir’s resignation from all political posts is sandiwara (play-acting). And, in one and half years or so, we will have a new prime minister. But have you wondered about the timing and the strange elongated schedule of retirement? Mahathir made his announcement at the UMNO general assembly on June 22, in the year 2002 and will be relinquishing all posts in October next year, which is exactly 22 years since he assumed the premiership. This man sure has a thing for the number “2”, don’t you think?? Word has it that he consulted his personal numerologist about the best date for quitting! There are many theories circulating about Mahathir’s enigmatic decision to quit at this time. Let me run through the gamut of these speculations and see if we can foreclose on a plausible overall explanation. 1. The Party's Over “The party’s over, it’s time to call it a day”, so the song goes. The suggestion that Mahathir’s time’s up; he’s had a good innings, and should give way to others; that he’s pushing 77 years and has high blood pressure; should spend time with the family, is that standard thesis. It’s the one floated most often by Mahathir himself, who had claimed years back that he wanted to retire but political imperatives postponed his decision to do so. But most thinking people find this too bland a theory. Why should anyone want to quit at the pinnacle of one’s political career and when all opposition to one’s leadership has been safely locked up? And, furthermore, Mahathir at 76 has not stopped globetrotting, visiting practically every country on earth, the Vatican, and the Antarctic, to boot; no, this man is not tired nor is he in any need of political viagra or even the real thing! So, there goes the theory that he may not be in the best of health and wants to opt out for the quieter life. Much more likely is the suggestion doing its rounds that he is hoping to move on to the international stage; maybe not as the OIC secretary-general, which he denied, but perhaps to a bigger job such as the UN secretary generalship?? But this still begs the question why he had to leave the local stage. 2. Failed the Malays One highly plausible thesis is the idea that Mahathir had either failed to change the Malays or alternatively that he had failed the Malays. This was an idea which the PM highlighted himself shortly before his tearful resignation speech of June 22. There’s something to be said about this thesis, particularly the alternative theory that he has failed the Malays. The argument has been advanced that the Malays, despite all the help of the NEP, have failed to make the cut. They can’t seem to complete with the non-Malays in the professional field and are lagging behind badly in many life skills including the all-important command of English. Worse, Malay entrepreneurs under UMNO’s wing have also failed miserably post-Asian crisis. With Daim exiting from the Mahathir cabinet, it would seem also that much angst and disagreement has surfaced over what UMNO can actually do to correct the situation. It’s not even clear if UMNO can do anything effective in the long run. Mahathir, the one leader who, since penning The Malay Dilemma, devoted his political career to uplifting the Malays from their underdevelopment, has failed miserably, by his own admission, in his most important political project. The thesis goes that the Malays have not been able to break out of that invidious subsidy mentality, the very sort of problem that the PM had sought to excise from the Malay psyche. But if truth be told, it was Mahathir himself who failed the Malays. Twenty two years at the helm and what has he engendered? Crony capitalists and UMNOcrats. All the talk about creating the “New Malay” with a true sense of achievement orientation has gone the way of Sisyphus. And the final blow has been the English issue; Malays have by and large rejected Mahathir’s insistence on the reintroduction of English medium schools, which, it has been contended, would be the only way to pull all Malays out of their current state of non-functionality in the new global world order. This thesis of “Malay failure” can be augmented by a related thesis for Mahathir’s exit, namely that while he had failed to get the Malays around to his kind of thinking, PAS has famously succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of most Malays. Mahathir’s and also UMNO’s egregious failure to win the Malay vote in the 1999 general election is proof of this. In short, Mahathir felt hapless and frustrated by PAS’ new-found ability to win not just the votes but to also resonate with Malay feelings and their growing sense of religiosity. No doubt the Anwar Affair and the reformasi movement has helped PAS enormously and eventually dealt the lethal blow to Mahathir himself. In the end, Mahathir, the putative champion of the Malays, ironically lost the support of the very people he had devoted his political life to helping. Now, for that, he surely should cry his heart out! 3. Party Coup Based on the above, one may want to go for the more refined thesis that Mahathir quit because he had by and large become a liability to UMNO. Many in the party had virtually expressed this sentiment since the Anwar Affair turned sour for UMNO but nobody was willing or brave enough to bell the cat. But the party hacks have been waiting patiently for the right moment to strike. And Mahathir’s moment of weakness finally came with his admission of failing the Malays. It seemed like the UMNO party congress was as good a time as any to strike the mortal blow. Yes, Mahathir wrote his own speech but isn’t it plausible that he was practically ‘forced’ to write it that way? So there was sandiwara after all at the party congress; not by Mahathir, but by the conspirators! In all coup plots there is usually a Cassius (a schemer) and there would also be a Brutus or two (‘honourable’ men?), and perhaps a Mark (mak cik?) Anthony too — who’s a little bit out of the picture? Friends, Malaysians, countrymen, I put it to you that it was a party coup of sorts and I leave it to you to surmise for yourselves who may have been the main conspirators. The party coup idea is given credence by the idea that Mahathir had wanted to push one or two of his choices for future leadership in the party. The story doing the circles is that he had the intention to name Ku Li to be the new finance minister but the party hacks had rejected this. This rejection was allegedly re-emphasised in the 45-minute huddle of the small circle of party hacks after the tear-jerking speech. Apparently somebody called out to Ku Li to attend the meeting but he couldn’t get past the door. Ku Li has of course denied any suggestion that Mahathir wanted to put him up as finance minister. There’s also much speculation as to what Mahathir had intended to say after he had taken the third sip of water. Now we will never know because of the onrush of apparently distraught personages onto the podium, led by Rafidah Aziz, which cut short Mahathir’s intended speech. Perhaps in 15 months time, when a new cabinet is formed, the ‘conspirators’ would be unmasked and come to the fore. But one thing’s for sure, there won’t be a Mark Anthony in the new cabinet. Perhaps, the most apt words for the occasion of Mahathir’s impending exit from politics are to be found in Shakepeare’s Julius Caesar:
“The evil that men do lives after them;
UMNO may want to inscribe these lines under the larger-than-life portrait of Mahathir at the PWTC. Enter Hudud, Qisas And The Islamic State As Mahathir makes his exit, he also wittingly or unwittingly paves the way for the new phase of Malaysian politics centred on the discourse of “Islamic State”. Practically the most talked about issue today is the passing of the Syariah Criminal Enactment Act in Terengganu known as “Hudud and Qisas”. Non-Muslim opinion such as that of the DAP has argued that the passing of the bill at the state legislature represents an irrevocable watershed in Malaysian politics where “secularism” as the basis of the Malaysian political discourse (embodied within the Constitution) has been upended by the new discourse of “Islamic State”. Along with this, Malaysia’s long-established multicultural and multireligious practices will be jettisoned. Lim Kit Siang has rightly pointed out that Mahathir himself had behaved unconstitutionally by declaring Malaysian an “Islamic State” in September 29 last year (“929”). According to Lim, “929” represents “the second great nation-building crisis since Merdeka” and the attempt by the government to jettison the Merdeka ‘social contract’ among the different ethnic groups. While Kit Siang is wont to exaggerate a little, his basic point is well taken: we are facing the steady and inexorable mainstreaming of the discourse of Islamic state in Malaysian politics. When Kelantan also passed a Hudud bill in 1993, DAP should have been equally agitated, but I suppose nothing happened by way of an actual implementation of Hudud, so most people forgot about it. But now there is a sense the both PAS and UMNO are in competition over Islamism and both parties are continuously ‘upping the ante’. Will Terengganu push for an actual implementation with some test cases of hudud and qisas? There is already strong indication that the Menteri Besar, Abdul Hadi Awang, may do so. Perhaps, he may want to test the limits of Muslim support for his brand of radical Islam, now that he has assumed the mantle of PAS leadership after Fadzil Noor’s untimely demise. The character of the debate in the Terengganu state assembly over the bill, to say the least, should be worrisome or even “scary” to non-Muslim Malaysians. One ADUN quipped that people (meaning non-Muslims) shouldn’t protest too much about discrimination. After all, it was argued, to date non-Muslims have been allowed to eat during the month of Ramadhan and non-Muslim boys are not required to be circumcised. This drew laughter from the Muslim audience but I suppose it’s no laughing matter for non-Muslims. The day will come, Hadi Awang averred, when Hudud and Qisas will be accepted by all and sundry, including non-Muslims. Is such a statement dishonest or simply naďve? Whatever our conclusion, it suggests that the new leader of PAS couldn’t care a hoot for the maintenance of any form of multicultural or multireligious practice. But are UMNO members any better, when it comes to religious tolerance? The four UMNO ADUNs in Terengganu only abstained from voting on the bill. Their position was that the PAS bill was “man-made” and flawed but there was hardly any suggestion that it was objectionable in principle. Non-Muslims and liberal Muslims can perhaps take solace from the fact that UMNO, despite having taken the Mahathir line that Malaysia is already an “Islamic State”, will in practice do little to implement full Syariah law. However, thinking Malaysians should also be aware that many Muslims may in fact not be opposed to Hudud and Qisas. Indeed, the Persatuan Ulama Malaysia and 13 other Muslim organizations, including ABIM and JIM, have supported its implementation. In a multiethnic society, communities may choose to implement policies or laws on themselves within the ambit of accepted universal norms of human rights, but once we slip into imposing our values on others, we have crossed the bounds of reasonable and decent human behaviour. Unconsummated Politics Of The BA
D.L. Daun Now tell us what you think. E-mail us. |
||||||||||||||||
It’s a supreme irony that that the Barisan Alternative (BA) is virtually in tatters today dogged by PAS’s pursuance of the Islamic State and by broken and unconsummated unions. This is ironic, given that the BA should really be celebrating Mahathir’s impending exit from the political stage. Mahathir’s quitting, to add yet one more theory to the list, was in no some measure due to the persistent campaign of the BA to unseat him. The failure of the BA to hang together now is all the more sad, given that Fadzil Noor, one of its foremost advocates, has passed away. However, Fadzil’s advocacy of a seven-point model of the Islamic State at the PAS party congress has done little to alleviate ther widening gap between PAS and its BA partners. Compounding matters is the inability of Party KeAdilan and PRM to make headway in their attempted merger, while erstwhile partner DAP has distanced itself even further from the BA by choosing not to campaign for PAS in the Pendang and Anak Bukit by-elections.