Raggie Jessy
a. May 13, 1969 (continued…)
Mahathir knew the lay of the land where it concerned UMNO. He knew that members were expected to toe the party line and say only what needed to be said or do what needed to be done. You see, early UMNO elitists were heavily influenced by traditional Malay customs, which were in turn influenced by a line of kingship. Nobles and courtiers who accounted for the majority of UMNO’s founding members were bound by custom to behave in decorum before their elders and the Monarch.
Similarly, it was expected of UMNO members to behave according to traditional Malay customs when addressing party superiors, though the practice wasn’t as stringent or ceremonial as one would expect it to be. Like I said, the Tunku had a rather bureaucratic approach towards authority that balanced itself on aristocracy and western dogma.
Be that as it may, the established order was for party members to shun the views of the adversary. That is to say, you were not expected to agree with something that originated from the opposition camp if you were an UMNO member. And if there was a problem within the party, members would be expected to settle differences in accordance with party proper and not to wash their dirty linen in public.
Even to this day, you will not find a party member coming to the fore sharing Kit Siang’s perspective on hudud or the secularity of the Federal Constitution. Unless, of course, he or she had the backing of several party insiders, in which case, it wouldn’t matter.
But Mahathir regularly found himself out of step with the Tunku’s leadership and hogged opposition bandwagons when it suited his purpose. Ironically, not only did he get away with it, he went on to become Prime Minister and, thereafter, harassed his successors by marching in cadence with the adversary. In other words, he would appear to be in favour with the likes of Kit Siang, Dato’ Haji Mahfuz Omar or Mat Taib should the end, as he perceives it, justify the means.
Over the years since 1954, his conduct seemed to contribute immensely to the precipitation of factional politicking within UMNO, where a new generation of ‘nationalists’ went around soliciting support against one another, possibly even against their leaders. In the later years, these acts of solicitation almost always involved money that summed into the millions.
I would have expected party succession within the Tunku’s UMNO to graduate towards a system clinched on merit. But it appears that Mahathir worked his way around that and turned the party into a den for wolves in sheep clothing. Every now and then, you would find one on the verge of attacking another, because each thought the other was prey.
Today, it is commonplace for party members to be audaciously rude or disrespectful towards their leaders, a demeanour that was unheard of in the early 60’s. Party members have taken to decrying their leaders in public whenever their demands are not met, or when someone by the name of Mahathir comes around crying 1MDB or Rosmah. And to publicly dishonour a leader was never a traditional Malay culture, but a Mahathirian culture UMNO may now lay claim to.
Back in 1964, this culture was somewhat bolstered by voices of fanaticism that ruptured ethnic relations and deepened factionalism within UMNO. None of those who came out strongly against the Chinese were ever willing to work with the Tunku towards any form of reconciliation between the races. Instead, they hammered in racially charged rhetoric in a frenzy that drifted the Chinese further apart from the Malays. And among those voices was that of Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Syed Hamid Albar’s father, Tan Sri Syed Jaafar Hassan Albar.
Syed Jaafar, like Mahathir, was known for his radicalised views on Malay supremacy. Professing the need for Malay sovereignty over Malaysia, Syed Jaafar seemed more the extremist to me than he was a nationalist. As far as people like Syed Jaafar were concerned, the Malays conformed to an order of pre-eminence and would rule over the Chinese and the Indians.
But such an assessment of the Malaysian charter was somewhat skewed. As far as the Federal Constitution goes, there was never mention of the Malays ruling over the Chinese or the Indians, but the rule of a collective that holds majority representation in parliament. It was and still is required that this majority observes Malay special privileges and the status of Islam as the official religion in Malaysia.
In spite of that, Syed Jaafar went on to misrepresent the constitution and stoked racial sentiments to the brim. He charged the Malays with anarchical bombast and got them fuming over alleged state-sponsored discrimination against their kind in Singapore. While it is true that Kuan Yew’s PAP had questioned Malay special privileges, Syed Jaafar’s team was really coming at it from entirely a different angle. He had Malays on the warpath when spoke of intimidation under the heels of Kuan Yew’s pro-Chinese government. He impressed upon the Malays that such an act of intimidation violated the very precepts of Malay supremacy within the Malaysian framework.
Meanwhile, Razak was busy plotting Kuan Yew’s ouster from behind the scenes as Syed Jaafar was on the offensive. By this time, Kuan Yew had realised that team Razak was hankering to dispose of him. In fact, Razak had clandestine meetings with Singaporean Finance Minister Goh Keng Swee, to whom he promised a future with PAP in the Federal Government of Malaysia. Of course, the pledge was with the understanding that Keng Swee would see to it that Kuan Yew is retired.
Meanwhile, Syed Jaafar went on to orchestrate a hate campaign against Kuan Yew, infuriating the Malays almost to lunacy. This culminated with the 1964 riots in Singapore that left dozens dead and hundreds of Singaporeans injured.
Keng Swee later attributed the riots to a campaign led by Syed Jaafar and Razak that sought for Kuan Yew’s ouster. By this time, speculation was rife that both Razak and Syed Jaafar worked behind the Tunku’s back in orchestrating these riots, meant also to undermine the Tunku’s leadership.
Attacks on Kuan Yew rode on the crest of spite following a speech Mahathir made in Parliament on the 26th of May 1965. Then a representative from the Kota Setar Selatan constituency, Mahathir remarked that PAP was a discerning and sophisticated communal based party that was positively anti-Malay, despite using the non-communal label.
Mahathir further alluded to PAP’s challenge for anyone to prove it to be communal. He believed the party to adopt such stances by design, in overawing what the party (PAP) presumes to be the ‘less clever and more timid groups’ into refusing the challenge. According to him, PAP had kept its anti-Malay aura shrouded, only to let out its colours as a matter of political strategy in winning Chinese and foreign countries to its side.
Mahathir, Razak and Syed Jaafar are rumoured to have engaged in cloak and dagger pursuits to undermine the Tunku’s leadership. It is believed that they achieved this by leveraging on the deep-seated animosity between the Chinese and the Malays, spawned off a succession of events that eroded their confidence in one another and the Alliance.
But it was Mahathir’s speech in Parliament that impregnated deep fissures into the Singapore-Malaysia political quotient. What Mahathir said then and what Kuan Yew said after rewrote the books on Singapore-Malaysia relations in the years after.
It was also the advent of Mahathirism, a Machiavellian philosophy that defines power as something you take by artifice, and not something you earn.
To be continued…
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