"There is no one fit to succeed me. Since I am holding the post (of president) for three decades, I clearly don't want to leave it in the hands of incapable leaders, who will not do any good except split the party. Besides, I am needed, the people want me, and they will benefit the longer I remain. So I shall quit when God tells me to."
This, in short, is the octogenarian James Wong Kim Min's riposte to his detractors in the Sarawak National Party who want new blood and new leaders.
But it could as well be Dr Mahathir Mohamad in Umno, Dr Ling Liong Sik in MCA, S Samy Vellu in MIC, Abdul Taib Mahmud in PBB, Lim Keng Yaik in Gerakan, Lim Kit Siang in DAP, and others less well known who equate longevity in office as proof of their contribution to society.
All prevented both open debate and new leaders in the party and in the end all but destroyed it.
Untrammeled power and autocratic rule guarantees chaos and disruption once it lifts, not peace and stability. For it creates in its wake a class of time servers and cronies who pander to the leader's foibles and move ahead, and a frustrated political underclass who would split the party because they are refused the right to participate in the party except on the leader's terms.
An autocratic oligarchy would stay on in office in the teeth of opposition, expelling and jailing those who challenge, and in time, insist on its invincibility to stay on. We see variations of this at every political party convention, when a leader chosen unopposed in compromise, now demands he is lord of all he surveys in the party and expels any who disagrees.
In oligarchic tyranny as this, nothing moves. Intrigue is the only reality, ignored and drowned out by the overwhelming and irrelevant public displays of feudal loyalty which is then taken as proof of the leader's popularity.
Form over substance
In a society where form is more important than substance, a Malay attribute now arrogated by non-Malay party leaders as a perk of office, this drowns out all else.
So, Mahathir insists he leads Umno until he is ready to quit, whether the members like him to or not. Ditto Ling, Samy Vellu, James Wong, Lim, Taib, Kit Siang et al .
Accustomed to the perks of office, they would not give it up unless they are forced to. They cling to office for they would be lost out of it. Even if their retirement is in a gilded retirement cage.
What it does to the country is ignored. It brings in its wake an underclass of men and women who believes change in these circumstances is possible in chaos and violence. All avenues to peaceful change are blocked because the leaders order the changes, at their option, to suit them, not the mood or need.
Usually, this opposition is curtailed and contained so it is the challenger who is out, in the party's view, to disrupt and break up the party.
With time, when open challenge is dangerous and inadvisable, a frustrated, angry group emerges like a cancer in the leadership, to unnerve it to raise the barricades and declare war on the rebels.
Every political party president in Malaysia, holding office in the accepted norm, reacts in fright and attacks the challengers to reveal not their strength but their weakness.
The minor mutinies are severely dealt with, but each ensures the next to be more serious. It sometimes explodes in the face, as in Umno, Snap, MCA. The leaders move to make examples of their challengers, and the fat is in the political fire.
Umno is unnerved by what its president-for-life, Mahathir, did to his challenger, then deputy president, Anwar Ibrahim. The Snap president-until-God-calls-him, James Wong, and MCA president-by-the-Grace-of-the-Umno-president, Ling, scream as a banshee because their deputies decide they had had a long innings and it is time they were put to political pasture.
Querulous undercurrent
When public debate is not the norm, the surface calm wishes away the querulous undercurrent.
But when push comes to shove, as when the Malay revolted at how Umno humiliated its deputy president, deserted it either to the sidelines or to the opposition parties, notably PAS, the internal problems of leadership cannot cope with the consequent loss of the community's support.
To not put a fine point to it, Umno's poor showing in the Pendang and Anak Bukit by-elections is a direct consequence of that internal convulsion.
This is repeated in every political party whose leader believes, as James Wong enunciated so trenchantly, in the Divine Right of Party Presidents.
Like monarchies of old which demanded that they are God's representative on earth, resulting in the Divine Right of Kings, Malaysian political parties believe that while Malaysian sultans must have their powers trimmed down so that they would not misuse it, their leaders must have untrammeled powers the sultans should not so that they would not misuse it.
As the elite of the Malaysian political system, their divine belief in their invincibility rubs on to it. And destroys it from the inside. When a political party with a determined view, as PAS over an Islamic state, the government, mired in its own spiral of irrelevance, cannot respond except in panic and fright, to seize what it hopes is the upper hand, not by debate and argument but by threats and calumny. For it has lost the art of the cut and thrust of debate to emerge with a policy that can stand the test of public debate.
It is this lack that devalues the Malaysian state, where policies are announced in isolation, amended almost immediately, with no public debate or views encouraged. The feudal role is inherent in the Malaysian system, adopted by all leaders. But the feudal leaders do not accept their responsibilities. And pay the price.
Meanwhile, they continue to bleat about their divine right to be party leaders. Only to prove the truth of Lord Acton's aphorism: Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
MGG PILLAI is a freelance columnist. He also runs the Sangkancil discussion group.
