Subject: [sangkancil] Policy U-turns And Polls Gimmicks
From: "M.G.G. Pillai" 
Date: August 22, 1999 11:43:38 PM EDT
To: Sang Kancil 
CC: SK 

The Prime Minister's China visit is not a "polls gimmick", he told reporters in, where else, Beijing. The deputy health minister, Dato' Wira Ali Rustam, insists not corporatising healthcare services is not a gimmick. The sudden government interest in blanketing Malaysia with a network of untolled roads is not either. The government reverses its existing policies so that people would not be inconvenienced or shortchanged -- or as Dato' Ali Rustam put it, "the government is prepared to pay for quality sevice and comfort to the people".

Why does the government go out of its way to assure people these changes are not polls gimmicks? The opposition shouts from the rooftops, sorry, from their Internet webpages, that they are. But the government knows only fully well -- as a cabinet minister assured me over the weekend -- that the opposition are out to hoodwink the public. So, why this prefacing of government policies these days with the disclaimer that it is not a polls gimmick? Or is it a public admission that its polls strategy has gone horribly wrong on account of He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost refusing to?

In ten days, it would be one year since the fellow was shot out of the cabinet as deputy prime minister and from UMNO in a sleight of hand so blatantly unfair that the dust on that continues to hover over the political fortunes of He Who Thinks He Is Lord Of All He Surveys and his cabinet. UMNO is in worse straits now than it was a year ago, the government more awry, the Prime Minister more harassed, the political outlook more contentious, the opposition better organised. Government defensiveness of its policies has increased of late, with public criticism rather more strident than it ever was.

Government statements and policies are challenged with a stridency that forces the cabinet on the defensive. The mainstream media, avoids these questionings like the plague so thoroughly that it has become the plague which Malaysians avoid in increasing numbers. Internet postings of Malaysian events provides a divergence of views and comments and take the place of the official media to provide a balanced view of the day's events. Inexplicably, the National Front and the government have given up the ghost and ignore this potentially valuable medium.

The coming Malaysian general elections, which can be held as early as 11 September or as late as June next year, is one in which the Internet plays a terribly important role. The opposition, deprived of an avenue to make its voice heard, adopted it as ducks to water. The government presence is restricted to occasional gadfly attempts to take on contentious writers. Its web pages are usually out of date, moribund, lethargic. The level playing field that Datin Rafidah Aziz talks of when she discusses international trade is in Malaysia for the first time since independence because of Internet.

The National Front cannot adjust to this in the runup to general elections. It is forced in the unusual position of having to explain and justify its actions, something it never had to. The Malay ground then backed it to the hilt; now that ground is split and wants an accounting on why the former deputy prime minister continues to be humiliated after his conviction. Excathedra statements of government intentions were accepted as the ultimate truth, the opposition excoriated for daring to question it. When policies fail, they are forgotten; when official bumbling causes untold losses, the Official Secrets Act, or the threat of detention under the Internal Security Act, takes care of the mess.

Not any more. Now, the government is asked to justify its actions; it is peeved and irritated that its statements are challenged not only by political parties but by the people themselves. It must worry the National Front leaders that many UMNO divisions and branches are atrophied for lack of a quorum to hold meetings, PAS continue to form branches in their strongholds with such ferocity that in Gombak, its principle psychological warfare officer, now in PAS, continues to form branches and address crowds that the sitting member is justifiably worried. It is this problem with the ground that results in this new National Front mantra: "This is not a polls gimmick". But the regularity with which it is repeated does suggest it is.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my