INSANE AND IDIOTIC
The best, brightest, most blessed and beloved of high public officials in Malaysia are those that could not be caught, did not or were not caught for any offence or abuse of their office, including corruption. They would have indulged in illegal and unethical practices to accumulate personal wealth but got away with it. Although widely acknowledged , accepted and suspected as being highly corrupt and compromised at a certain time in the past they continue to enjoy their ill gotten gains in some peace and a great deal of respectable prosperity. They also have that useful amenity of being able to rebrand themselves with the help of family, friends and friendly opinion leaders.
It is possible, generally, to survive and succeed in most hierarchical organisations with flattery, falling in with powerful people, obtaining a following for one reason or another, through family or tribal connections or absolute unfettered power like the kind that can be exercised by a malevolent Malaysian prime minister. Explanations are sometimes offered to justify the fact that there was simply no proof to bring them to book. Ultimately they integrate with the millions of respectable decent wage-earning workers who saved and scrimped to build their family and a decent life.
Two Unlucky Ones
In that sense former prime minister Dato’ Sri Najib Tun Abdul Razak and former deputy prime minister, Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim were not the luckiest, brightest or best albeit they remain somewhat beloved in certain localities. Najib not only got caught and arrested for the most outrageous and flagrant larceny, earned not just the country’s but the world’s ire; he not only got charged but got convicted. If he had not been unseated in a general election perhaps he would have got away with that biggest heist too.
The men that he believed to be the country’s best barristers failed to save him from being convicted with hefty but appropriate sentences that included a 12-year term of imprisonment and a RM210 million fine. Najib is now widely known to be seeking the services of a Queen’s Counsel from the U.K. to appeal the conviction.
Anwar Deserves Reconsideration
Anwar was never accorded the highly privileged freedom given to Najib. From the day of his arrest on Sunday, September 20, 1998 he was detained, hounded and taken straight to prison after a rushed, well engineered almost choreographed trial process. He had no consideration or freedom of any sort. Najib has not only fully utilised but capitalised on the privilege of being an elected MP and a convicted felon on bail. When one compares the fates of these two men Anwar deserves much sympathy and reconsideration.
Reinvented As Campaigner
Since Najib’s conviction at the High Court and the Court of Appeal he has emerged, based on reliable reports, as a phenomenal election campaigner. He has been given ironically iconic status and much idolatry is associated with him as Bosku. The system seems to have afforded him so much leniency and licence that he can quietly mock the entire law and order process.
Someone even remarked recently that by the overkill tactics employed by Dr Mahathir the convicted felon has been turned into a martyr. Dr Mahathir has long lost the overkill capacity that he used in the most wretched way to destroy Anwar in 1998. Relative to Najib’s proven crimes Anwar’s, even if they were perceived to be perverse were not of the type to bankrupt or render the country into the world’s laughing stock. So, while Anwar became a millstone for UMNO Najib became its mascot. At the political party level Anwar was stripped of his party membership while Najib to was elevated to the guardianship pantheon. Where is the balance or justice in this.
Najib’s was a most egregious crime, one that can be considered almost as treason against the nation. The glitter and glow surrounding Najib now demonstrates a dismal failure, not just an aberration, and an enormous embarrassment to the country. It suggests that our society has lost its moral compass, its sense of what is right and not right.
Currently Najib is engaged in a campaign for his BN coalition in Johor. He has applied much persuasion and a mixed package of some half-truths and outright lies and loose language to cast his political opponents as incompetent, insensitive and imbecilic. One lie that has been often repeated is that one of the Opposition parties was unsympathetic to the plight of the Malays. No party would attempt to convey anything of that sort as it would be not only insane but idiotic.
Najib’s opponents, especially within the predominant peninsular Malay segment, instead of uniting to unequivocally remove this felon from the political domain, are busy fighting amongst themselves. There were two significant enablers for this untenable situation. One was the country’s longest serving prime minister and the other was the country’s most short lived prime minister. Between them they decided willy nilly that the man who is longest-in-waiting to become prime minister, Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim, does not deserve the job. Consequently and perhaps unintentionally they have paved the way for a convicted felon to become the principal arbiter for the position of prime minister.
Is Anwar So Unpalatable?
It is stated, among other reasons, that Anwar was unacceptable because he was the leader of a multiracial political party in multiracial Malaysia. In essence the prospect of an Anwar prime ministership is denounced as being repugnant and an anathema because that would disturb the long laid seemingly sacred rule of exclusively peninsular Malay hierarchical and political supremacy. This is obviously a newly introduced and fabricated rule designed specifically to undermine Anwar’s prospects.
The obstacles raised to deny Anwar the leadership role which was his due has put askew the entire drift and equilibrium in Malaysian politics. The country is experiencing this disequilibrium particularly from February 2020. That was when it became clear that Anwar was being thwarted by many powerful leaders, including Dr Mahathir.
Anwar is by no means a perfect man, he has many faults but then are there not leaders who have risen to the top in spite of their known sordid or stained past.
A Transition Is Needed
The country does not need a saint. What it does need now is to make a slow but steady transition from the toxic brew and era of unabashed race and religion based politics, esoteric projects and sloganeering created by both Dr Mahathir and Najib. The country has to move from the era of fawning, obsequious spineless top civil servants who were more keen to obey and oblige than to observe norms of the law and good conduct. They failed to provide the right advice. 1MDB is an excellent example of how the top bureaucrats let down the nation.
The civil service must reassert and regain its traditional role of providing honest advice and inputs. It is important that the country moves onto a new realistic stage in the process of reducing and de-emphasising race, religion and region from the mainstream of political calculations.
Shafie Apdal was the first indigenous leader to actually articulate this maxim in clear terms. It seemed a radical idea but it was a good one to overcome the inadequacies that such ethnicity-based limitations posed to the governance system. Unfortunately Shafie was not a peninsular Malay. It would have been wise for him to have floated this idea and allowed it to sink in especially with his Malay brethren in the peninsula. But he was in a great hurry and his name was vainly used to pit him against the more acclaimed and nationally recognised Anwar. In the event the political prospects of both Shafie and Anwar got mauled and mangled. Both have lost out. They have lost the momentum not to some acclaimed or illustrious son but to a nefarious larcenist.
Anwar was well placed to bring about a much needed transition to some kind of sanity from the excesses that the reign of both Dr Mahathir and Najib typified. Yes, Anwar is admittedly no angel but his tenure would have encouraged more reform minded young leaders to rise. The Rafizis, Nurul Izzahs, Shafie Apdals and the Khalid Samads, even perhaps the Tawfiks needed to be nurtured to produce governance that is more impartial, equal, highly accountable and transparent. One cannot see this happening with that political cocktail being concocted in the UMNO-Bersatu- Pejuang nexus. In that situation even the affable Tengku Razaleigh was marginalised.
Najib’s Nonsense
The lie that Najib is constantly capitalising on is the overwhelming power of the DAP in the 22-month government of Pakatan Harapan with Dr Mahathir as the prime minister. To understand the falsity and emptiness of Najib’s vitriol one has to appreciate the obvious and outright peninsular Malay predominance in the civil service, the legal and judicial service and especially in all regulatory and enforcement agencies. Lim Guan Eng and Tony Pua bungled and mishandled the finance portfolio responsibilities through various indiscreet and misguided actions. They have been accused, with some justification, of being blind to the plight of the poorest segments within the majority peninsular Malay community. They have offered no satisfactory explanation for that. Najib has harped on this issue to immense advantage to rile his Malay audiences and reach out to them
If the system would not permit the transition from Dr Mahathir to Anwar it is not realistic to envisage that it would permit a powerful hold of the DAP over Pakatan Harapan. The predominant position of the peninsular Malay in the political and administrative setup is well geared to moderate and hamper any innovative or over enthusiastic step initiated by DAP leaders. In that regard also one can go so far as to say the administrative machinery is not strictly neutral or impartial although impartiality, equal treatment and efficiency is often enjoined. UMNO had from the late 1980s politicised the bureaucratic machinery and sometimes even opponents of the prime minister could be subject to harsh and unjustified actions. The best example is the famous black eye administered by a national police chief to a former deputy prime minister on September 20, 1998. It will be recalled that barely an hour after the sacking of Anwar the water supply to his official residence was turned off. Yet that same administration was in deep slumber while Najib siphoned billions!
Anyone who is clearly perceived to be not allied or antagonistic to the ruling peninsular Malay political party can be made to suffer such dire consequences. That discrimination is there but it is not public knowledge.
The ultimate cost of such parochial thinking means that the minorities in Malaysia- the growing number of enlightened peninsular Malays, Sabahans, Sarawakians, the Chinese and Indians- must belong to a political coalition in which the dominant party is made up of peninsular Malays in both an asymmetrical and hierarchical sense..
That was the case when UMNO became the dominant and often domineering leader of the Barisan Nasional from the 1970s.
On account of this factor and the well conceived and established gerrymandering in electoral boundaries Najib is on the same side as the country’s last five prime ministers. Interestingly in proportional terms the non-Malay minorities are also declining within the overall population. Sabah appears to have borne the brunt of this decline and distortion in population growth.
Dim Prospects
There are thus no immediate prospects for the country to realistically emerge from this disconsolate state of disequilibrium, degeneration and division. Inordinate and immeasurable political power, importance and influence is vested in the hands of a particular ilk of peninsular Malay politicians. The minorities- Dayaks, Kadazans, other indigenous groups, the Chinese and Indians with the help of a few enlightened peninsular Malays - have to be content with playing a relatively small secondary role, occasionally obtaining power on a regional basis and being the cheerleaders for peninsular Malay leaders.
In this situation the best and the brightest will have but a limited role.
Malaysia Is Being Left Behind
While Malaysia’s neighbours power ahead and attain new heights of maturity, unity and ascendancy Malaysia’s leaders with somewhat puritanical mindsets seem to continue to prioritise race, religion and region. The situation is alarming. Not only the minorities but even the Kelantanese, whether prince or pauper, cannot have a go at the country’s prime ministership.
M Santhananaban
March 11, 2022
The writer is a retired ambassador with 45 years of public sector experience
Comments