When two dividers get together to urge unity

 

From Terence Netto

Last week, two perennial sources of division in Malaysian society got together to sign a proclamation that urged Malays to unite in order to save race and country.

We know that politics does throw up strange bedfellows but the notion of Dr Mahathir Mohamad teaming up with PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang to counsel Malay unity places a severe strain on credulity.

Their track records in the country’s post-May 13 history are an inventory of division, a blight that has followed them throughout their careers.

As prime minister, Mahathir had three of his deputies cashiered, then ousted one prime minister he had installed to succeed him, and another he had nurtured along the way. All that in an extraordinarily febrile career in which peaceful stretches were reloading pauses for the next round of internecine feuding.

Hadi is the PAS leader who in 1981 held that Malay Muslims who voted for Umno risked apostasy, a divisive formulation that spawned separate congregational worship, separate burials, and more separation in other rituals.

He was responsible for pulling PAS out from Pakatan Rakyat, the fledgling opposition coalition that had denied BN their supermajority in 2008.

In addition, he made it impossible for the continued existence of a professional cadre in PAS, an important segment painstakingly cultivated by his predecessor Fadzil Nor. They left to form the splinter, Amanah.

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Further, periodic pronouncements by Hadi, on matters to do with the bumiputeras of Sarawak, and non-Muslims in the Peninsula grated on their nerves, leaving them feeling alienated and restive.

His propensity to alienate was not just felt domestically.

During the 17-month premiership of Muhyiddin Yassin, a visit to Saudi Arabia by the prime minister did not feature Hadi in the entourage.

This was an anomaly because Hadi had been designated as the government’s special envoy to the Middle East. It is believed Riyadh had objected to his inclusion.

Hadi’s presence in an international Islamic scholarly organisation, supposedly partial to Iran, was looked askance by the Saudis.

The fractiousness of both Mahathir and Hadi makes their coming together to urge political unity for the Malays a strain on credulity for another reason.

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Mahathir is a modernist Muslim while Hadi is a dogmatic one, albeit his adherence to dogma has not been inflexible.

But the gulf between the two leaders has spawned hostility in the past, to the extent that in 1999 when Hadi was menteri besar of Terengganu, Mahathir had declined to grant Terengganu the royalties due on oil and gas found offshore.

There’s enough bad blood between the two to make incipient collaboration between them as dubious as would be the case if the two warring generals in Sudan were to declare an armistice in order to return the country to democratic rule.

Division-fomenting leaders don’t readily shed their fractious spots.

Mahathir and Hadi are using each other in furtherance of their separate agendas which Malaysians know to be toxic.

But do these Malaysians constitute a majority? That is the question. - FMT

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Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.