20.03.2000
The crushing defeat of Kuomintang (KMT) in Taiwan after 50 years of political hegemony in the island must have sent jitters to UMNO leaders.
UMNO leaders have reasons to worry, as the apparent parallel between UMNO and KMT is obvious. Not so much in UMNO’s longevity in the governing seat (42 years), as in its rampant indulgence in money politics. One of the major factors that prompted the people to desert KMT is their utter disgust at the ever increasing omnipresence of what the locals call “black gold politics” – amassing of wealth through politics and the massive deployment of such money to manipulate the electoral process. Not unlike UMNO in Malaysia, KMT has amassed immense wealth through decades of political hegemony, extending its business tentacles to every aspect of the economic life of the country. In addition, decades of unchallenged political control has bred such arrogance of power that many KMT officials are unable to distinguish between KMT and the State, much as UMNO leaders do, though the latter display an even higher degree of arrogance, for lack of effective democratic institutions to restrain them.
In rejecting KMT, the Taiwanese must have gone through many agonising moments, emotionally and intellectually. For 80% of the population of Taiwan, KMT is the only ruling Party they know of. And that ruling Party has transformed what was once a poor and backward island into the present thriving and prosperous economy, right at the forefront of modern technology. To crown it all, KMT has brought democracy to Taiwan, making Taiwanese society the first to enjoy such privileges in the 5 thousand-year history of China. Then, why should Taiwanese turn against such a great benefactor?
The answer is: the fruits of KMT’s success are also the seeds of its downfall. As Taiwan society progresses rapidly in the economic and educational fields, KMT stagnates and regresses in the moral aspect of its rule. The rapid expansion of KMT’s business empire only heightens the conflicts of interests between Party and State, and hastens the spread of corruption. To an increasingly enlightened population in a democracy like Taiwan, such continuation of corruption and arrogance was no longer tolerable. The people of Taiwan promptly answered the calls for reforms by the opposition, and handed KMT a humiliating defeat, with the latter securing only 23% of the votes cast in a 3 corner fight..
The unsinkable KMT has sunk in Taiwan. Will the invincible UMNO follow suit in Malaysia, considering its similarities with KMT?
Before answering this question, one has to understand why UMNO had been invincible – that is, until lately. UMNO had been embraced by Malays as the sole champion of their race, and the Malays (as a racial block) enjoy absolute domination in the polls, due to a combination of gerrymandering and numerical superiority. Hence, as long as UMNO played the racial tune, and as long as Malays accepted this tune as their prime consideration in their voting preference, UMNO’s iron grip on political power in this Country remained unbreakable.
As in the case of Taiwan, Malays have progressed by leaps and bounds through the decades in economic and educational fields, thanks to UMNO’s political struggles. As Malays have become many times more advanced than they used to be in the earlier days, the priorities of their political struggles were bound to change. Where economic uplift of the racial group was once the prime and only burning issue that occupied almost their entire political psyche, it is not so today. The Malays were jolted to this reality, when the recent Asian economic and financial crisis struck Malaysia. The fragile business empires that were built up under Mahathir’s brand of crony capitalism could not withstand the test of this international whirlwind, and buckled under tons of bank loans, caused by reckless expansion and spending. Many Malay entrepreneurs were among the worst hit.
The more enlightened Malays realize that the economic ills of Malays today lie not in not implementing the New Economic Policy vigorously enough, but in the failure of UMNO to upgrade its ethical and managerial standard. Far from improving itself to cope with the ever more challenging environment in a fast globalising world, UMNO has plunged into unprecedented depths of totalitarianism and corruption, bringing the entire Country down with it.
The deterioration of the administration of this Country was obvious since Barisan Nasional scored its most resounding victory in history in the General Election in 1995. Much to the misfortune of Malaysians, that election victory had accelerated the making of a megalomaniac of Mahathir. He mistook that victory as licence to act as the Infallible Leader, above the laws and fellow human beings. In his haste to fulfill his dreams of grandeur and greatness, and prodded by greedy cronies for obvious reasons, he threw rational economic planning to the winds and embarked almost simultaneously on numerous grandiose but uneconomical mega projects. Billions worth of contracts and privatisation projects have been handed out to cronies and the like without proper tender. In that fashion, billionaire entrepreneurs were made overnight. As such mega spending was building to a climax just before the Asian Crisis, corruption and cronyism became the order of the day. And naturally, UMNO, being the kingpin of the Ruling Coalition, was right at the core of these activities. It was in that context that UMNO Youth, under the patronage of Anwar, started the battle cry to stamp out corruption and cronyism during the UMNO Conference in 1998, in a desperate bid to save Malaysia from falling into the same pit as Suharto’s Indonesia which collapsed into a heap of economic and political mess, at the onslaught of the Asian Crisis. UMNO Youth’s calls for reforms were smothered, and Anwar was landed in jail.
UMNO suffered an unprecedented set back in the recent General Election at end November 199, when it lost the support of the majority of the Malay electorate, which is the very bedrock on which UMNO was founded. One would have thought UMNO would take this as a serious warning and start soul searching with a view to avoid impending political oblivion. Alas, this is not to be. The recalcitrant Captain is still at the helm, and the Malaysian Titanic is still on course speeding in the direction of the iceberg.
Should some UMNO members be in doubt over the pessimistic scenario portrayed above, they need only to look at the stream of ugly events that emanate from the ruling clique since the recent General Election. These events degrade our democratic institutions and alienate further the hearts and minds of all right thinking Malaysians.
The latest came in the form of an order from the Chief Minister of Melaka Rustam Ali to punish professionals such as doctors, lawyers, architects, surveyors, valuers etc for being pro-opposition by terminating their services with the State Government. He also ordered the withdrawal of fixed deposits from banks whose staff were found to be pro-opposition. These unprecedented barbaric acts are a) violation of the individual’s constitutional right to freedom of political association, b) abuses of government authority, c) tantamount to wrongful dismissal and d) reflections of UMNO leaders’ inability to distinguish between State and Party, mistaking anti-Party as anti-National.
Other atrocious acts are:
Kim Quek.