“You can’t destroy a populist like him with charges. He would only get more popular. The people see (Sanusi) as someone who dares to challenge the establishment.”
– Wong Chin Huat
If Inspector-General of Police Razarudin Husain’s claims is genuine, the implication that can be drawn from Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor’s arrest is he wanted to be detained in a time and place that gives him maximum martyr status for his base.
Sanusi held a presser giving his own narrative, which only points to the cosy relationship between the state security apparatus and the political class.
I am not interested in who is telling the truth - the fact that Sanusi refuses to name names should tell us something about the way how things work - but rather the drama that Sanusi is attempting to create around his arrest.
Let us be very clear.
The mainstream political establishment fears the caretaker Kedah menteri besar because he is an existential threat to their continued existence.
He is also a threat of their own making.
In my writings I have made it clear that worldwide, the rise of theocratic states is predicated on destroying normative power structures and replacing them with a religious bureaucracy.
So, thank your prime minister - Anwar Ibrahim - for enabling this by attempting to give more power to Jakim over policy matters.
People must understand that this Malay uber alles coalition is only interested in the 2Rs to maintain hegemony.
Race and religion are the only realpolitik they engage with.
Theocratic states do not want to share power. They want the religious establishment to be the sole source of power and legitimacy in the state.
Sanusi is a canny operative.
To disavow the whole institution at this time would be a bridge too far for the base, so what he and PAS are doing is normalising behaviour which would be verboten in traditional Malay politics.
Theocrats around the world do not share power in the conventional sense.
They allow certain legacy institutions to endure so long as those institutions give credibility and legitimacy to the religious party in control.
Sanusi questions the lineage of the Selangor sultan while reaffirming the royal house of Kedah.
This way, he questions the institutions but reaffirms his commitment to the royal house of Kedah, thereby making it seem that the royal house of Selangor is somehow tainted and therefore open to criticism by defenders of Bangsa dan Agama.
Keep in mind that the royal institution is currently under attack by the very same political operatives who for decades used them as a cudgel to quell dissent but at the same time neutered their powers.
Curtailing royalty
Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has a long history of not only curtailing the powers of royalty but also using state propaganda organs to discredit them.
Refer to Malaysiakini’s recap of the first time the old maverick tussled with the royal institution, which included reportage from the UK’s Independent:
“For the past month, page two of the government-controlled New Straits Times has been devoted to the sultans’ excesses: how Sultan Ismail Petra of Kelantan, for example, imported 30 duty-free luxury cars rather than the seven allowed and how he got away from customs officials in a Lamborghini Diablo on the pretext of test-driving it.
“The RM200 million cost of maintaining the rulers has been lavishly detailed, including the hospital wards kept for their exclusive use, and the RM9.3 million spent on new cutlery and bedspreads for the king, which the newspaper said could have built two hospitals or 46 rural clinics, or 46 primary schools.
“Religious teachers have been encouraged to comment on the un-Muslim behaviour of the supposed guardians of Islam.”
The interesting part of the reportage is where religious teachers were encouraged to comment on the excess of the royal institution.
Sanusi prides himself on his religious bona fides. He unilaterally carries out policies in the name of his religion. He suggests making constitutional changes to benefit his state but more importantly, he has the backing of PAS which sees him as some messianic figure to galvanise the base.
Keep in mind that PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang openly defied the Terengganu sultan and nothing happened to him.
Why do you think that Terengganu’s sultan decided to make this political play?
The answer is simple.
The legacy institutions of power in this country understand that they are vulnerable to the political and religious malfeasance of religious political parties.
The problem for legacy institutions is that Hadi says that he and PAS will decide which political institution must be followed.
In case you are wondering, the only political institution that Hadi believes needs to be followed is PAS.
Also remember that during the Bon Odori brouhaha, PAS again thumbed its nose at the royal intuition and went so far as to encourage other religious bureaucracies to disregard the words of a guardian of Islam.
The PAS ulama wing also urged religious bodies in the country to conduct further discussions on the types of festivals which may involve non-Islamic religions.
You have to understand that Sanusi is part of a political insurgency against traditional power structures in this country.
While Hadi and Mahathir remain untouchable for various reasons, the establishment believes it can curtail further dissent by making an example of Sanusi.
In my opinion, this would not work.
Mind you, I think this government is doing the only thing that it can do, which is to feebly defend the royal institution to the best of its abilities using pernicious laws.
However, the damage has already been done.
As I said, PAS - with the aid of the deep Islamic state - has had decades to indoctrinate large swaths of the voting demographic.
There have been enough scandals in the royal establishment to cause unease amongst the majority polity.
Mainstream Malay power structures have curtailed the powers of the royalty and at the same time used them when politically expedient to do so.
It is a mistake to assume that the “Malays” can’t see this.
All this has created is a majority who understand that they are somehow oppressed but without the means to articulate their grievances beyond the language of religion.
Sanusi supporters believe he is speaking truth to power. And the establishment knows that even if what Sanusi says is not true, he is speaking to power, to them.
And the more the majority believes what he says, the less control the establishment has over a populace who understands that for decades they have been taken for a ride.
Sanusi is the poster boy for what the establishment really fears.
They fear a growing disenchanted majority. - Mkini
S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum - “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
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