Thunderbolt danger for Umno on a tightrope 
CHIAROSCURO
MGG Pillai

Nine Keadilan leaders, including one of its most vocal and its webmaster and publicist, are arrested over the past three days. A former Keadilan leader, who left the party but would not join Umno, is fined the maximum RM5,000 for sedition, now faces an appeal which if it succeeds would send her to jail. Umno is angered its future is bleak if the Keadilan eminence grise, Anwar Ibrahim, remains in jail for sodomy and corruption. 

That the police seized a personal computer which hosted the ‘Free Anwar Campaign’, when they arrested the webmaster and publicist, Raja Petra Kamaruddin, and his wife, makes the arrests more serious than mere sedition. They were arrested for being at a demonstration. Why did the police have to raid the house and seize the personal computer? Or is this the beginning of a general crackdown? 

The deputy prime minister and home minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has had to come up and clarify that none would be arrested under the Internal Security Act. He had to say that if only because anti-Umno Malays believe they would be. But sedition laws seem to be used against opposition politicians as the ISA once was. 

The Umno-PAS Malay Unity talks are all but dead. When Terengganu files an action against the Malaysian government to recover the Petronas royalty payments due to it, PAS, which controls the state, cannot continue with the talks. But Umno needs the talks badly if only to reassure itself that it continues to lead the Malays culturally and politically. It lost the cultural lead in the aftermath of the arrest, assault, and jailing of Anwar. 

One PAS pre-condition for the talks was to restore the royalties, which Kuala Lumpur now insists it is not due for oil drilled offshore; it did not so think when Umno was in power there. Umno cannot now concede this with mud on its face. And PAS would not go to the talks without that conceded. 

In a pickle 

Umno wanted the talks to sidetrack Keadilan. It fears Keadilan's reach more than PAS'. Unlike Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah's Semangat '46, with more chiefs than Indians, Keadilan has a mass appeal but does not have enough credible leaders. Keadilan drifts as a sailing boat in a gale; but its underlying support amongst the mainly Malay masses is unmistakable, and attracts strong non-Malay support in addition. If it survives its near-hopeless predicament, it is the party of the future, as Umno once was. 

The DAP attacks it for accepting its former members into its fold. Umno members hedge their bets by becoming members of Keadilan as well. Sarawak DAP goes it alone in the Sarawak state elections, but Keadilan has announced it would contest more than enough seats to which if returned it could cause an upset. 

It cannot. It is a Peninsular Malaysia party, like the DAP, and the elections threaten to be between two worldviews, one of which does not want federal interference in any form. But should it win just half a dozen seats, it steals a march on Umno, which is not in the state. PAS, if it contests, would have but a token presence. 

It is in this context the arrests must be viewed. It is reasonable to assume that Umno's aim is to disqualify as many Keadilan leaders from the 2004 general elections. Anyone fined RM2,000 and more is automatically disqualified from standing for elections, and would lose his seat in the assembly if he already is a member. 

The Keadilan arrests are not unexpected. If Keadilan continues as it does, just managing to survive, until the general election beckons, it would have a surge of life, as oxygen to the breathless. However well PAS does, the Malays are as disillusioned of it as the non-Malays are. Neither would want a theocratic state. 

Humiliating the icon 

But PAS' attempt to remove these fears is strengthened by championing Anwar and fighting for his release, and its brilliant groundwork and organisation. But an Anwar out of jail, even if he is disbarred from the next general elections, remains a potent magnet that could threaten both PAS and Umno. The beneficiary of that is, inevitably, Keadilan. 

So, the government hopes to neutralise that by having as many Keadilan leaders disqualified from the next general elections. Would that work? It would not. The Malays watch from the sidelines to see which of the three Malay groups - Umno, PAS and Keadilan - would emerge. Both Umno and PAS look over their shoulders to see what Keadilan does. 

When Keadilan refused an invitation to the Malay unity talks, Umno turned the issue around by insisting Keadilan was not a Malay party. If it was not, why was it invited in the first place? What frightens Umno is that Keadilan remains an important factor in any political equation. 

It could dither and wither away. But then it may not. Suddenly, it is not only Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's political life at stake over how he had caused to humiliate his then deputy, Anwar, but Umno also trembles on a knife's edge over what thunderbolts Keadilan can throw at it. It is tested in the political world, as in a sense malaysiakini is in journalism. Its success frightens. For that success is at the cost of others’ equanimity.