Najib's fostering the illusion of change

If you have a sense of modern politics as a series of conjuring tricks perpetrated at the expense of the people, the latest round of the Najib Razak administration's 'now-you-see-it, now-you-don't' reforms won't have you bowled.

The prime minister's announcement on Malaysia Day that the abhorrent Internal Security Act will be abolished is qualified by the news that it will be replaced by legislation to tackle threats from terrorists and to public order.

Also, the news that annual licences for publications would be done away with is hedged by the disclosure that the one-off licences now contemplated for the print media could be revoked by executive fiat.

In other words, two repressive laws - one a holdover from British colonial times and the other a legacy of the Mahathir era - are slated for renovation, instead of repeal and expunging from the fraught memory of Malaysians.

With the announcements, Najib has sustained the illusion of reform rather than the actual substance of it: the possibility of detention without trial and by executive fiat is set to remain a continued threat to the civil liberties of Malaysians, while the proverbial sword of Damocles will dangle over the heads of publishers and newspaper editors despite not having to seek annual renewal of their licences.

That these announcements can, at all, be portrayed as manifestations of a liberalising streak show the extent to which the public is inured to thinking that no change could be expected to the gamut of repressive legislation under which our polity has been groaning.

Instantaneous liberation from these shackles is the promise of the Pakatan Rakyat government-in-waiting; now, an emancipation of sorts is set for delivery by a prime minister who knows he has to effect change or suffer a fate worse than his predecessor's, which was merely loss of office, not of government.

Tendency to slip slide

Sans the reforms he promised, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi decamped from being supremo of the 2004 BN landslide to scapegoat for the 2008 debacle. He had to relinquish the Umno presidency and its concomitant office, prime minister of the country.

Abdullah had begun his administration on a reformist note, initially shaping to make changes before developing cold feet.

In Najib's case, a pattern in the two-and-half-years of his replacing Abdullah is discernible in his approach to reform: he is adept at fostering the illusion of change but not getting down to its substance.

In this, the PM is very much like the applicant who wanted to join the navy. Asked by the interview board if he could swim, he answered he could not but that he knew the theory. He failed the interview.

Najib knows, as abstraction, the measures he has to take to bring about economic and political change, but lacks the gumption to go the full distance. At the first sign of resistance to change, he weasels out of it.

That has been the case with his initial move to replace the NEP with a more needs-based approach towards helping the needy.

Najib started to backtrack when Malay pressure group Perkasa, abetted by Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin (left), let loose an undertow of resistance to the move.

In tandem with the PM's tendency to slip slide in the face of resistance to liberalising maneuvers is his disconcerting amnesia over public statements he might have made at a fraught moment when tackling roiling issues.

Warning from Perkasa

His abrupt volte face last July over allowing electoral reform pressure group Bersih to use a stadium rather than the streets to demonstrate their concerns is ineffaceable from the memory for its supine vacillation.

However, it appears that there is now less cause for Najib to backpedal in the case of the ISA's planned repeal because his deputy, Muhyiddin, has come out in praise of the move, saluting his boss for courage he has not been known to have and generally lauding the PM's desire to be in consonance with what the public wants.

But Muhyiddin's endorsement should not be taken at face value. He could mount an effort to see that new legislation to check threats from terrorism and to public order would be a replica of what the about-to-be repealed ISA is.

For an indication that this might happen, do take note of what Perkasa chief Ibrahim Ali (right)has said on the matter - that he would only support the abolition of ISA if the projected laws on terrorism and public order replicate features of the odious ISA. Muhyiddin has been known to take his vibes from the Perkasa chief.

Thus the outlook for a new ISA-less dispensation in the country, together with liberal conditions for the press and people wanting to assemble in the streets to demonstrate their concerns, is decidedly hazy.

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.