Puteri UMNO:Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing New
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| The old despicable UMNO-style politics has crept into the women's wing |
News of tiffs and acrimonious contests within Puteri Umno in the run-up to its first election in November makes for salacious reading. But this belies a sad commentary. A commentary on how women are not immune to dirty politicking. Worst, once mired into it they do not get out of it. One slander begets another. One sensational exposure leads to even more.
While one might think of the fight for the top post with contenders, Mastina Abdul Hamid, Raihan Sulaiman and possibly others, against the incumbent Azalina Said Othman as a ‘healthy’ demonstration of democracy, there is always something more to this than meets the eye.
There are several questions that deserve asking. Is Puteri Umno merely nursing its teething problems or already weathering a political tornado that can potentially damage it even before it can barely begin to attain legitimate status? Is Puteri UMNO the antidote to UMNO’s ailment? Is Puteri UMNO the answer to women’s plight?
Dilemma
What is reflected in Puteri UMNO’s impending election is not just a contest, but a questioning of the unsolved legitimacy of Puteri UMNO. It is really a contest to decide what identity Puteri UMNO should wear The perennial dilemma of the Malay-Muslim woman, having to choose between the symbolisms of tradition or modernity seems to be at play.
On the one hand there is the feisty Azalina, unconventional by most Malay political and cultural standards. On the other hand, there are her two rivals who outwardly exhibit every bit the norm of Malay-Muslim womanhood.
While Azalina does not wear the tudung, her two rivals do. While Mastina is unmarried she is socially acceptable because of her educational qualification of an MBA, and has professed that she will be injecting more Islam into the movement. Raihan on the other hand is by far the epitome of the ‘traditionalist’. Not only is she of UMNO stock, being the daughter of an UMNO veteran, but she is married with four children.
Among the three, the scale seems to be sliding in the degree of how far one nears or veers from the symbols of traditionalism. It’s a question as to who best shall provide the best role model for the movement.
Saviour Of UMNO
When Puteri Umno was first formed, hopeful initiators of this idea thought of it as a gain for women. UMNO apologists within the media saw it as a saviour for UMNO. Challenged by the winds of reformasi UMNO was cornered into seeking its own formula for reform. One badly needed area of improvement was for the party to re-build or expand its corps of vote-solicitors. The target was to win new voters and win-back the youths previously attracted to reformasi.
Perhaps UMNO also knew that from the 1999 election women could be more trusted to be loyal voters to one party than do men. But why Puteri UMNO?
Wanita UMNO was probably no longer capable of attracting youthful women voters, being saddled with its ‘motherly, old-fashioned’ image for as long as it has existed. UMNO Youth on the other hand is etched with a “thuggish” image having been prominent only at demonstrating stridency when the issues demanded of them.
Given all of these, the prime minister’s attention naturally turned to an untapped political force, namely young women. And why not?
Young women have either been neglected as a political entity or when they are publicly acknowledged it had always been for the wrong reasons. Young women were either considered uncontrollable (the ‘bohsia’ phenomenon) or in need of excessive protection from sexual predators.
UMNO’s new-found positive attention towards women as political agents were greeted with much approval by those who consider themselves progressive.
Women In The Machine
This phenomenon of the sudden recruitment of young women to fuel a flagging party is comparable to an older phenomenon of the massive deployment of women into the industrial workforce during the 1970s.
The stigma of “Minah Karan”, the label given to young Malay women who were recruited in droves and with sudden speed into the electronics industries of the early 1970s had long gone. Then, women were preferred over men in the electronics industry. The famous reasons being that they were nimble-fingered, obedient, disciplined and easily controlled.
Male youths were not trusted with the job of factory workers as the skills required were more cultural (passivity, tolerance for long sedentary and repetitive tasks) rather than technical. But women’s sudden appearance as the new labour force was greeted with disdain by a strongly male-biased society. Women were accused of becoming “loose” once they embraced the urban lifestyle.
All these are in many ways not too different from the Puteri UMNO experience. While the progressives cheer on the bright-eyed women, the conservative elements ridicule them.
Several decades ago, it was the lagging economy which needed a boost in the form of export-orientation and the setting-up of offshore multinational electronic companies. Women, the so-called ‘reserve army’ of labour were entrusted to do the job.
Now, UMNO, having grown into a sluggish dinosaur badly needs an ‘army’ too. It needed a force that can jump-start it towards a sense of purpose and bring in new, dynamic recruits to sustain its legitimacy.
What does all of this tell us about women? That women, in both cases were really needed as cogs in the bigger wheel of change. In the first case it was an industrial machine. In the second case it is the political machine.
And qualities of women needed for both instances? Not much difference —— discipline, obedience and tolerance for long hours of meticulous one-on-one campaigning and grassroots mobilization. Men, as usual, may not have the patience for such a laborious task.
Much More Than A Cog
But Puteri UMNO was needed for much more than all of the above. Forming a new women’s wing with the purpose of drawing in more women supporters for UMNO will deal a blow to PAS. PAS’s policies are most easily challenged when it comes to women’s rights.
Puteri UMNO was to serve as the contrast to PAS’s notion of women within the party. Instead of treating women as silent workers of the party, UMNO would be the opposite of PAS. Young women within UMNO would even be the beacon of its reform agenda.
Instead of ‘scaring away’ women by stern Islamic reprimand, Puteri UMNO would present itself as the caring face of freedom for women. Instead of having women on the sidelines as PAS does, Puteri UMNO would not only be given equal status as the other wings in the party, it would even be centre-staged as evidence of UMNO’s success at embracing reforms.
Perhaps this is where the Puteri UMNO phenomenon departs from the “Minah Karan” predicament of before. Save for the initial flurry of unwanted attention given to them, women factory workers eventually faded into the scene as the silent backbone of the economy. But Puteri UMNO is meant to stand out more forcefully. While members are really recruited to mainly deliver votes for the party, it is also necessary for UMNO to give ample leeway to the new wing to invent an image of the “New Malay Woman”.
The New Malay Woman
Silent and subliminal propaganda has been going on to thrust this ideology into the Malay consciousness. In the wake of Puteri UMNO’s formation, novels have been churned out to construct this image of the new woman. Sometime early of this year, there was a report in the papers, side-by-side on news of Puteri UMNO’s activities that a lengthy 1000-page novel was released. The title of the novel, said to be the longest book written in Malaysia was Bukan Puteri Lindungan Bulan, written by a writer by the supposed name of Liana Afiera Malik.
The title is hardly subtle, with “Puteri” to mean female offspring or daughter of “Bulan” which mean many things but closest to today’s politics now, is surely none other than PAS. And the term “bukan lindungan” (not overshadowed by) is self-evident. Not much is known of this writer or that in fact it may be just a nom de plume, but a check at the bookstore in Putra World Trade Centre, where the UMNO headquarters is based shows that there are already a string of novels written by this author.
Each novel has a young Malay woman as its protagonist. The cover of each book has an appealing art work. Each has an illustration of the heroine, inevitably with good looks but caucasian features. They are dressed in modern attire. The central character is always of a young, brave, unrelenting woman, undergoing the usual tribulations with family and love-lives.
Dew Of A New Dawn
Another more telling though never linked issue of this subliminal propaganda to the story of Puteri UMNO is the making of the film, Embun. Is it any wonder that Erma Fatima the film’s director was also an erstwhile committee member of Puteri.? And is it any wonder why it is being sponsored by the government?
Forget about the historical distortion of the film. The subtext this time is not the rewriting of the Japanese Occupation. It’s not an oblique way at hitting out at the by-now-almost-history Look East Policy. The portrayal of Japan or Japanese soldiers is a non-issue in the film, acting as an almost meaningless ploy to prop up its main theme.
It is Embun, “dew of the morning”, the female protagonist that matters. The message is simple, if not simplistic. She is brave. She is a fighter. She is a heroine. And she is not necessarily a self-sacrificing mother. In an Embun of the imaginary past, one sees the workings of a reconstruction – the unearthing of the new Malay woman for the future.
But is the message clear and is the propaganda having its effect? It may have, if not for the fact that Puteri UMNO has proven itself to be all sound and fury but signifying nothing new.
The Cracks
For one thing, Puteri UMNO has already taken on the form of the party it is supposed to reform. Although the potential of this new wing was encouraged by successes of its involvement in several by-elections, particularly the Indra Kayangan by-election in Perlis, the cracks appeared quite soon after that.
No sooner was Azalina (above) slandered by an infamous writer of being a lesbian, Puteri UMNO was shaken by a number of resignations and the sacking of a considerable number of its central committee members. Prominent among whom were Erma Fatima and Wan Mastina Hamid, one of the present contenders in the coming election.
And the reasons? The usual accusation of abuse of power, misappropriation of party funds, deception and chicanery. By July when the Kedah by-elections for the Anak Bukit and Pendang seats were being held, Puteri UMNO had lost its verve. The young women were ineffective in the campaigns. As to be expected they had become the easy target of male ridicule, taunts and sexual harassment.
Puteri UMNO was additionally accused of unlawfully recruiting female university students. Whether this allegation is true or not was never clarified by the wing.
Father’s Daughter
And now, as the election nears one sees an amusing similarity to the kind of bitter campaigning that used to plague the UMNO of before (that is before the party leaders declared a no-contest rule for the top two posts).
One awaits as to whether Puteri UMNO may still be able to live up to its expectation of injecting a new reform politics within UMNO and that it could ever be the answer to women’s woes today.
But Puteri UMNO was originally conceived to function as vote-mobilizers for the party. It was not meant to be a feminist movement. Although its propaganda in envisioning a new Malay woman may have shades of proto-feminism, its substantial philosophy is not.
It is not an autonomous movement created out of an organic stirring among young women marginalized by an authoritarian, male-dominated system. The architects of Puteri UMNO were male party elders, not even women within the party. Its source of funding and activities were decided by a top-down, and hardly accountable leadership structure.
The survival of chosen leaders within Puteri UMNO is highly dependent on the patronage and patrimonial support of party leaders. Members were recruited based on the temporal appeal of feel-good programmes, namely charity work, education and health-related grassroots activities. There is a mismatch between its exhorted principle of uplifting women with its pragmatic task of reviving UMNO’s ethnic-centred legitimacy.
But most of all, as women thrust into the limelight, they are not immune to naked ambitions and the temptation of high office and power. To put it blatantly, the pecuniary gain that could emanate from being propelled into the “right” party has always held sway, and in a gender-blind way too.
Subordinate Players
It would seem that UMNO party politics is still limiting for women. It takes little intelligence to surmise that genuine empowerment for women will not be found on the political terrain of the party. Till today, women don’t make the party, the party makes them. Women only aspire to become secondary players and get subordinated for it too.
And what does the Puteri UMNO episode reveal? Nothing much, beyond what has already been concluded above. But the perennial subject of the Malay dilemma has been compounded — by a hollow attempt at the reconstruction of the new Malay woman through the workings of UMNO politics-as-usual.
Now tell us what you think. E-mail us.