August of discontent

http://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/39614
August of discontent
Sim Kwang Yang
Aug 27, 05 2:17pm




Sim Kwang Yang
SIM KWANG YANG was DAP MP for Bandar Kuching in Sarawak 1982-1995. Since
retiring in 1995, he has become a freelance writer in the Chinese-language
press, and taught philosophy in a local college for three years.

He is now working with an NGO in Kuala Lumpur, the Omnicron Learning
Circle, which is aimed at continuing learning for working adults and
college students. Suggestions and feedback can reach him at:
kenyalang578@xxxxxxxxxxxx

'An Examined Life' appears in Malaysiakini every Saturday.
Malaysiakini

One chapter in the saga of political parties in Malaysia has been closed.
Another chapter is just beginning.

The media is in the midst of frenzy in their coverage of the party
elections, first in MCA, and now in Gerakan. It seems apparent that, as far
as the Chinese press is concerned, party politics sells better than Merdeka
celebrations.

At the height of the MCA party poll, I counted 12 full pages in one of our
Chinese newspapers, filled to the brim with an avalanche of news,
interviews, commentaries, anecdotes, and loads of photographs. The dust
there has hardly settled there when another heat-wave of party election
engulfs the other Chinese based partner of the ruling BN, the Gerakan.

A Chinese-literate casual visitor to Malaysia might have been given the
mistaken impression that Malaysia is having a national poll, or that
Malaysian Chinese are both politically savvy and very democratic.

The fact that the Chinese press gives such premier attention to party
elections in the Chinese parties is food for thought. Presumably party
elections are family affairs that involve a mere few thousand delegates. I,
for one, am bored to tears by this overkill of media attention on minor
inconsequential politicians posturing as larger-than-life leaders of the
people.

A national community

Nevertheless, the Chinese newspapers are - in Benedict Anderson's terms -
the commercial media that enables Malaysian Chinese citizens to imagine
themselves as inter-related members of a national community, even if vast
differences exist between Chinese nationalist sentiments in Malaysia and
that of Umno nationalist luminaries.

In effect, the Chinese press, together with the Chinese political parties,
the Chinese guilds and associations, and the Chinese school systems form
the four pillars upon which the architecture of Chinese political power in
Malaysia has been erected. Their destinies are intertwined within the web
of their symbiotic and sometimes stressful interactions.

To a great number of Chinese citizens, the MCA and the Gerakan are their
political vehicles in the ruling coalition, and some amount of hope and
aspiration have been invested in the well-being of these parties. It is
only natural that the Chinese press has to cater for the interest of these
large chunks of their readership, either out of a sense of journalistic
duty or in consideration of circulation and advertisement revenue.

That all the four or five Chinese national dailies are owned by political
parties or their coterie of business supporters probably has something to
do with treating a public vehicle like the newspapers as party propaganda
*** as well. I know many young reporters are unhappy in their line of
work.

The wide coverage given to party elections probably has the inadvertent
effect of forcing candidates to be more open to the idea of accountability.
Whether the delegates value accountability or not is another matter.

A lame-duck victor

When challenged to a public debate by his challenger Chua Jui Meng, the
incumbent MCA president declined, saying that he had more important things
to do. A democratically inclined body of voting delegates would have
wondered publicly what could be more important for a presidential
candidate, at the height of a campaign for the party presidency, than
meeting his opponent in the limelight of public attention, toe-to-toe so to
speak, to lay out his political platform.

Eventually, Ong won the contest, with a less than convincing majority. His
deputy fared even worse. That Ong won has long been anticipated. That he
won as a lame-duck victor is a bit of a surprise.

That ought to be good news for the MCA members, because they would no
longer have a patriarch at the apex of power treating the entire party like
his personal or family fiefdom. How he will fare as the new MCA president
from now on, with a mandate that is far from a landslide, depends very much
on how he treats the vanquished challengers, who would have sufficient
residual support to swing the results of the next general election in
favour of the DAP.

A piece of journalistic titbit keeps popping up in this gush of political
reportage. A former MCA president keeps denying he has anything to do with
the rise to prominence of his two sons within the party. There is no
conspiracy to establish a family dynasty, he proclaims. (Is Ong Ka Ting
going to do a Goh Chok Tong thing?) Meanwhile, the Chinese press keeps
speculating whether his lingering influence had anything to do with the
dismal showing of the deputy president. The term "invisible hand" has been
bandied about for weeks.

This chap should not have bothered. Neither should Dr Lim Keng Yaik in the
Gerakan. We are Asians after all, and family values are our strong suit. A
Chinese saying goes: a tiger cannot have dogs for its cubs. Why, it is not
even restricted to the Chinese alone. Two potential future prime ministers
of our country are the sons of former prime ministers. A third could be a
son-in-law. Now, I wonder whether Samy Vellu has any male offspring! And I
wonder whether political acumen is transferable through genes, like the
colour of one's hair..

The presidential challenge in Gerakan has turned a little ugly, polluted by
much mud-slinging and personal attack in the public space.

Too comfortable

Unfortunately for the Gerakan and Malaysia, the party election there is not
so much about party agenda and national issues, but rather about
personality conflicts, leadership styles and the question of succession to
the top leadership.


Again, I predict that Kerk Choo Ting's challenge will turn out to be for
naught, just as the gallant challenge posed by Chua Jui Meng for the MCA
presidency had ended in an honourable defeat.

Like Chua, Kerk is campaigning on a platform of reform of a sort,
specifically to remove an old war horse who has overstayed his
effectiveness. Lim Keng Yaik, together with Samy Vellu of the MIC, are the
two remaining party chiefs who have served in that capacity for nearly a
quarter of a century. That is a long time in the life of a person and a
political party.

It seems to be a general rule in human behaviour that powerful politicians
tend to become dictators if they occupy their thrones for too long, and
have become too comfortable with playing god with their congregation. It
also seems customary that followers of such long-serving helmsmen will come
to revere them as some kind of gods-incarnate, and therefore irreplaceable.
Their mortality is often forgotten. Thank God Nelson Mandela has been
spared this scourge..

Eventually, Kerk will lose and slowly retire from the limelight. It has
nothing much to do with whether he is a better or worse leader than Keng
Yaik or Dr Koh Su Koon. They are all capable leaders who can lead the
party, given the fossilised framework within which Barisan Nasional will
continue to dominate political power in our country. I am tempted to say
any fool can lead the Gerakan, but I would be insulting too many personal
friends there. So I wouldn't say it.

Kerk will lose because, apart from Keng Yaik's control of party resources
and intra-party channels for communication, incumbency in politics has a
strange semi-religious mystique to which Gerakan delegates - like the rest
of Malaysian voters - are particularly gullible.

(You would like to think that party delegates are elite troopers on the
ground, and therefore more politically enlightened, what with internal
political education and all that mumbo-jumbo. That is not an absolute
truth. It does mean party delegates and those more committed card-carrying
members are indeed skillful in fighting general elections and pulling in
votes.)

No rational deliberation

Is it the dwindling legacy of our typically Asian past that the feudal idea
of the King's divine right to rule continues to saturate the political mind
of the players? Today, the title given to political leadership may be
different, but the reverence and awe accorded to men with a halo around
their heads still influence a crucial democratic process such as voting.

Any challenge to the top incumbent can easily be painted as an act of
betrayal, undertaken by the small minded for the sake of their personal
interests, or any such unspeakable ulterior motive. Is it any surprise that
the ensuing public debate is seldom about public or party policies? When
elections are about personalities, the campaign will inevitably degenerate
into a mud-slinging match.

Who has time for rational deliberation, which ought to be the hallmark of a
vibrant democratic culture? Who indeed will recall the ideals of forming
the Gerakan in the pre-BN days in the first place, and the gang of a
different generation of political actors like Syed Hussein Atlatas and Dr
Tan Chee Khoon? Is not recalling history part of the Merdeka month?

Despite my personal discontent, the rule of man will continue to dictate
political behaviour in both political parties and in the national
government. As the slogan used to promote tourism would have it: Malaysia,
truly Asia!



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pluto
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