NST : On The Record: The battle for Terengganu
Yap Yok Foo
8 January 2003
On The Record: The battle for Terengganu
Abdullah Ahmad
FOR many reasons, the lessons of history continue to be ignored by
Malays and Bumiputeras, writes ABDULLAH AHMAD
However, one result of the 1999 general election — even then it has
taken more than three years — is the reawakening of an Umno political
sense that must wholly be good for the race and nation.
Recent Malay social and economic advances in other parts of the
country have apparently led Terengganu Umno leaders to behave in
statesman-like fashion. The truth has yet to be proved, of course.
Umno deputy president Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's exhortation
in Kelantan has stirred them from their apathy. Datuk Idris Jusoh,
Abdullah's deputy in Terengganu, and other leaders, I am glad, have
changed: they have accepted a new realism in local politics. The
voters want to see new blood — better-educated and with good moral
standing, not tarni-shed individuals — fielded in the next polls.
At the outset, this new realism must be premised on the fact that
Umno's and Pas' ideas of comfort and happiness differ widely. Neither
is their endgame the same. I am a Kelantanese. If Umno in the
north-eastern states should develop new political skills and
machinations to over-come Pas, it is more likely that the talent will
come from Terengganu than my home State, though it is not always the
probable that happens.
In any event, I've always noticed that a champion boxer who's been
knocked down must know when to get up: not too quickly, before he has
gathered himself in, and of course not so slowly that he risks
counting himself out. That is the position in which Umno Terengganu
has found itself. The 1999 general election was in many ways a sucker
punch. It must skillfully recover or face staying down for a long time
to come.
To its credit, Umno Terengganu recognises that the next general
election is "do or die", as it were, and has mobilised itself with the
requisite urgency. Much of the credit goes to Abdullah and Idris who
have quite literally smartened up the State grassroots apparatus.
Terengganu Umno has been shaped up to offer new hope, a new realism
and specific policy plans, directed particularly at the young. Under
duress, the party has bounced back, reinforcing solidarity and
preventing factionalism. The mood in Terengganu, after the intense
pessimism of 1999, seems to be upbeat.
"Unity among leaders is stronger and support for us is steadily
rising," Idris told us. At last year's party general assembly, he was
confident enough to predict that Umno had a "fighting chance" in all
seats.
Comparisons with Kelantan are inevitable, although the two states are
not entirely mirror images of one another. Pas is less well-rooted in
Terengganu. Except for the period between 1959 and 1961, Umno has
ruled the State, up to the debacle in 1999.
The governing party in Kuala Lumpur is the "heartland" State's natural
choice, per-haps more so than Kedah, whose religious and anti-Umno
activism has been on the rise, though Pas has never won Che Det's home
State.
For relatively poor and backward Terengganu, deve-lopment is still an
effective vote-get-ter. Much of the resumption of sup-port calculated
by Idris has arisen out of the stoppages in development pro-jects,
particularly in the provision of utilities in the rural areas,
attributed to the Pas Govern-ment's refusal to work with the Federal
Govern-ment. But that is not enough. More imagination and cleverer
political spinning is crucial, as is the element of surprise,
disclosing the presence of skeletons in the closet which cannot be
disputed.
The demonstration by farmers and fishermen at the Wisma Darul Iman in
Kuala Terengganu last month, protesting increases in pay and
allowances for the Menteri Besar and State Assemblymen, could be the
leading edge of a popular backlash.
It does not matter if the gathering was staged or abetted by Umno
sympathisers. Unlike Pas in Kelantan, whose leaders made a big deal
out of embracing the poverty of its people, Terengganu Pas has stepped
up to identify itself as a ruling class, whose important work absolves
it of the austerity demanded of its subjects.
Development and economic growth play better in Terengganu which, with
its oil, is much richer than Kelantan. The failure of the State
Government to let this wealth trickle down to the people could end up
as much a bane for Pas as it was for Umno. For the people of
Terengganu, other than devotion to Allah, there is salvation from
impoverishment in economic development.
But never, never underestimate the power of religion in politics. In
Kelantan and Terengganu, as in Gujarat, India, religion has been sold
to the voters as the best palliative for dead-end poverty and ultimate
salvation. But Terengganu could be saved if Umno hammers home the
message that economic development and the fulfilment of social
obligations are also extremely important.
All religions tend to lower expectations in life. If Terengganu Malays
were allowed to see no way out of their poverty, Umno would literally
be doomed.
Umno must learn from its blitzkrieg defeat in 1999 — it lost 28 seats
and won just four — and its full retreat in Kelantan. It must win back
Terengganu with a new set of faces over a clean slate, as Pas did
against Tan Sri Wan Mokhtar Ahmad's senescent incumbents, and avoid
the fate of Kelantan, which has been woefully slow even to think of
replacing its old guard.
Idris has promised fresh faces with good ethical and educational
backgrounds; perhaps good professionals imbued with Islam's finer
symbolic pointers! Terengganu Umno is blurring the religious
distinction between Umno and Pas by choosing an election strategy that
pits candidates directly against each other. I think this is a sound
strategy. If Umno can bring out better candidates, it can outflank Pas
and get round the ideological battleground of Islam.
Going head to head against Pas over Islam would be a grave mistake, as
everyone knows. It would be the height of folly to lock horns with Pas
over its blockbuster wayang, the hudud.
The party itself — beyond making maximum political hay out of it —
does not have much of a clue about how to implement the Islamic penal
code and make it relevant in this day and age. Both Kelantan, which
enacted the hudud in 1993, and Terengganu, which did so last year,
have asked for time to "extensively study" the subject.
Legislate first and ask questions later is clearly no way to make laws
or run a government. Terengganu Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi
Awang has, like Kelantan's Datuk Nik Aziz Nik Mat, deferred gazetting
the Syariah Criminal Offences (Hudud and Qisas) Enactment after
obtaining royal assent.
He has said his Government was studying the application of hudud in
Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan, all no doubt the exemplars of Islamic
modernity in the present day! In Terengganu at least, Pas can be left
to collapse under the weight of its inconsistencies. Umno can rely
solidly on its juggernaut grassroots machinery and build on Pas'
mistakes. Not so in Kelantan, where Umno must bank on a strategy of
attrition and concentrate its resources on the few seats it can win.
The party leader in Terengganu who has the confidence of the people
has a public trust not to abuse that confidence for any ends, least of
all his own. Political office is a public trust. When a man assumes a
public trust, Thomas Jefferson remarked, he should consider himself as
public property. Whoever is perceived to possess this will be a potent
force in the State.
In our society, theory is inapplicable and practice must be the
standard: what-ever is best administered is best.
More important than experiments in "ideal government" is the raising
of standards of living and empowering the people against abuse,
injustice, oppression, ignorance and poverty.