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PAS : KE ARAH PEMERINTAHAN ISLAM YANG ADIL
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June 16-30, 2000 / Malaysia
Malaysian prime minister Mahathir losing the plot as
PAS successes put regime under pressure
By Abd Rahman Koya
[Crescent International, June 16-30, 2000.]
While his youthful looks conceal his age, his words do exactly the
opposite. It seems that these days Malaysian prime
minister Mahathir Mohamad is vying in eccentricity with colonel Mu’ammar
Qaddafi of Libya.
Addressing the ruling United Malay National Organisation’s (UMNO) annual
congress
on May 11, Mahathir accused his main rival, the opposition Islamic party
(PAS), of
abusing Islam for political ends, claiming that children of PAS members
were made to
step on the portraits of government leaders to instill in them "hatred
of the
government". This accusation is not wild by his standards, but recently
he went a step
further: "Similarly, the Malays don’t eat pork not because it is
forbidden in Islam, but
because they have been trained to hate pork from very young," he said.
One wonders
whether he was putting pigs and government leaders in the same category.
The septuagenarian Mahathir has a habit of dishing out strange opinions.
When he dismissed his deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, two
years ago, Mahathir orchestrated a vulgar propaganda campaign against
him, accusing him of the most vicious crimes:
everything from becoming a traitor to the country to being a homosexual
and womaniser. Anwar is currently being tried for
sodomy in a case which has exposed the Malaysian judiciary’s servility.
Prosecutors have twice amended the dates of the
alleged offence after finding out that the apartment in which it
supposedly took place had not even been constructed at the
time. The court has ruled in favour of Mahathir’s refusal to face the
defence in court, despite his claim that he has proof of
Anwar’s alleged homosexuality.
In his latest speech (18 paragraphs of which he devoted to
Anwar-bashing), Mahathir for the first time admitted that his party
has succumbed to PAS. He warned members that UMNO might suffer the same
fate as Taiwan’s Kuomintang (which was
disgraced and removed from office earlier this year) if it failed to
make "reforms". But, far from blaming his vicious ways,
Mahathir placed the blame squarely on young Malays "who are not grateful
to the government" because they are shifting their
allegiance to the opposition parties. "The Malays now think differently.
They think it is enough to be thankful to God alone,
and not to the government," he said.
At the UMNO congress, its leaders also renewed calls for PAS to be
forced to stop using the word "Islam" in its name — a
suggestion which the government came close to enforcing a few years ago.
Three weeks after the UMNO congress, PAS held
its own annual muktamar in the east-coast state of Terengganu, which it
captured during the last general election. Tens of
thousands of people thronged to a sports stadium for the event, which is
the country’s largest Islamic gathering every year.
PAS leaders hit back, warning the government of "public anger and street
protests" if any plan to force a change in name is
implemented. The warning comes at a period when PAS is increasingly
consolidating its position among Malaysia’s
Muslims, despite having to suffer many restrictions. Its only newspaper,
Harakah, has been forced to come out twice a month
instead of twice a week. Its editor, Zulkifli Sulong, along with other
opposition figures, is currently being prosecuted under
Malaysia’s notorious law for ‘sedition’: a term that is loosely
interpreted by the attorney general and used as a weapon
against opposition publications.
Mahathir also has many reasons to be angry with PAS and the Malay
Muslims. During last November’s election, PAS
candidates defeated several senior UMNO ministers, more than tripled its
share of parliamentary seats and took more than
100 state seats. Analysis of voting patterns shows that UMNO, hitherto
backed by Malays, lost support in constituencies
where there were more than 80 percent Muslims. This is a major victory
for the opposition alliance dominated by PAS,
which had faced daily attacks through the tightly-controlled mainstream
media during the election campaign.
While calls have mounted for UMNO to do some soul-searching over its
weak performance, PAS also faces the uphill task of
preparing itself to take over the country. With a Muslim majority of
less than 60 percent of the population, PAS’s biggest
challenge is to convince Malaysia’s non-Muslim minority of its ability
to govern. Last year, a daily barrage of propaganda
against the Islamic party turned non-Muslims away from supporting the
PAS-dominated opposition alliance, which brings
together the newly-established National Justice Party headed by Anwar
Ibrahim’s wife Dr Wan Azizah Ismail and the
Chinese-dominated Democratic Action Party (DAP).
The result was unprecedented support for UMNO from the country’s
non-Muslims, despite the fact that many Chinese
community leaders openly criticised the government over its increasing
corruption and cronyism. Chinese organisations also
praised the PAS government in the east-coast state of Kelantan, led by
Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat. People are attracted by his
simple lifestyle and friendly approach, and he has become one of the
most popular political leaders in Malaysia, among both
Muslims and non-Muslims.
But in the face of UMNO’s huge electoral machinery, this display of
honest governance failed to persuade the non-Muslim
masses, prompting most of them to vote for the "devil they know".
Drawing lessons from this, PAS moved swiftly to seek
alternative methods of reaching the voters. Last month it launched its
Internet television channel, making it Malaysia’s most
advanced organisation in terms of multimedia use.
However, it remains to be seen whether support for PAS will grow in the
near future or remain restricted to Malays. Islamic
activists have also expressed concern that despite its successes, PAS is
increasingly finding itself trapped within the secular
political system. Its recent gains in parliament through the ballot box
mean it now has to play more politics than it used to in
order to woo popular support, especially from ‘moderate’ Muslims and the
non-Muslim minority.
While UMNO has been forced to try to play the Islamic card (and fails to
do so), PAS on the other hand has to be cautious in
its approach in order to avoid "scaring away" its already hard-earned
support. It has found itself more and more pushed into
election politics, spending huge sums on campaigning for elections.
Often it finds itself cornered between the Muslims’
increasing demand for a more honest Islamic government and the
non-Muslims’ ignorance of Islam. This is what PAS (and
indeed most of Malaysia’s Islamic organisations) have failed to address.
Much of the blame for this lies with Muslim
politicians, who are often obsessed with election politics, leaving the
work of educating the masses to non-political groups.
Da’wah organisations and the Muslim population as a whole also have
failed miserably to enlighten their non-Muslim
minority about Islam. Such ignorance easily accumulates in the face of
the government’s secular media, and renders the
non-Muslims easy prey for UMNO’s anti-Islamic propagandists.
It remains to be seen whether or not PAS will fall to the level of
Indonesia’s opportunist "Islamic" parties, whose so-called
Islamic leaders have actually pledged allegiance to the pagan pancasila
ideology. One good sign is that PAS leaders have
not so far shown any regret for their Islamic approach.
Meanwhile, the Mahathir’s crusade against PAS and other opposition
groups continues. Recently, the government announced
that UMNO supporters will get priority for education loans from the
state. "In politics we have to give priority to our
supporters before we consider others," said a junior government
minister. Such a blatant misuse of public funds is no longer
frowned upon by the Malaysian public. Perhaps they have become immunised
by far more ludicrous statements.
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