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Monday, July 25, 2011

Needed: Someone to manage BN decline

The government of Najib Razak cannot leave bad enough alone; it's wont to make it worse.

Bad enough is when you have a French court inquiring into arms procurement by the Malaysian Defence Ministry for evidence of kickbacks by brokers to agents of purchasers; worse is when youdeport the lawyer holding a watching brief for Malaysians wanting to know to whom the sleaze money was funneled.

Bad enough is when a reluctantly instituted enquiry finds that the controversial death of an opposition aide two years ago is a suicide when the public suspects homicide; worse is when a government minister adds insult to injury by describing the deceased as a“weak-willed” character.

NONEBad enough is when you have deployed a harsh hand against a movement legitimately trying to demonstrate its concerns over gaps in the electoral process; worse is when, instead of being chastened by the huge crowds that turned up to support the movement, the government harasses the demo's more prominent supporters with niggling trammels.

This list of the government's maladroit responses seguing into patently inept ones can go on until it seems that the administration is like a rent garment: anything it does to patch up has the effect of making the tear worse.

In terminal decline

Things are so bad that it has become fashionable in the political talk saloons to describe this phase as marking its terminal decline.

The more historically conscious are apt to draw parallels with Czarist Russia in the last years of the Romanov dynasty (1914-17), and with the Shah of Iran in the final throes of the Pahlavi dynasty's demise (1978).

No matter what Czar Nicholas and Reza Pahlavi did to stem the tide against their tottering dynasties, their rule was headed for capsize simply because when decline, long gestating, sets in it becomes remorseless.

The parallels between the declensions, on the one hand, of Czarist Russia and the Peacock Throne and, on the other, Umno-BN are apt up to a point.

Whereas the former two were rancid autocracies under which millions suffered manifold privations, Umno-BN is only a long-in-the-tooth plutocracy, unable to reform itself. And in its inability to regenerate, it is resorting to the despotisms that will only make more certain its final defeat.

Also, whereas extirpation was imperative in the cases of Czarist Russia and Pahlavi Iran, only removal from power of Umno-BN through electoral defeat is necessary for national rejuvenation to start in Malaysia.

NONEFurthermore, after its removal, the system needs an almost certain-to-be-reformed Umno-BN, or whatever conurbation that arises to be around - to keep replacement Pakatan Rakyat honest.

The two-coalition system must be protected and sustained for democracy to take deeper root in Malaysia.

In the period between accelerating decline and imminent fall, the ruling coalition needs a person to manage the transition, literally someone from within its ranks whose task is to tell them to keep their heads as they go down, that they may fight another day.

It's a thankless role, this management of decline and fall, but a necessary one, something on the order of the orchestra conductor's part on the Titanic after it had hit the iceberg - to keep the music going just so panic does not induce self-destructive madness.

Who can fit the role?

The question is who among the coterie of Umno-BN elders has the stature, the rhetorical agility, and the diplomatic poise to play that role?

Who has the courage to tell the younger set of leaders in charge that it is better to accept the end of their tenure rather become more pathetic in resisting the inevitable?

Who has the fortitude to withstand the brickbats that this role would certainly invite from rabid acolytes in the ruling coalition's ranks?

Najib at Pandan Umno AGMAdditionally, who has sight of a more distant future when it is probable that Pakatan would be unable to ring the deep changes needed to rejuvenate the politics and economy of the country and, in falling short, be vulnerable to challenge and replacement?

No one with a long view of history, with the inevitable alternation in the tides of change and decay, progress and regression, would discount the possibility that a spell in the opposition would do a power of good to Umno-BN.

In fact, one could say without fear of being gainsaid by events that this is vital to the development of the two-coalition system in Malaysia.

This is the next stage in the political evolution of Malaysia, a stage that has been in specific gestation over the last 13 years of the reformasi movement. It requires Umno-BN's removal to the opposition ranks to get started.

But for that to happen, with as little panic and self-destruction as can be managed, the process has to have a notional superintendant with the foresight and nimbleness to transmit the knowledge that the end is nigh and recovery can begin on the morrow of defeat.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them. It is the ideal occupation for a temperament that finds power fascinating and its exercise abhorrent. - Malaysiakini

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