Money politics: Governance's bastardisation

A cursory glance of Malaysia’s newspapers recently, including online media and blogs, shows Malaysians have been fixated on the case of Malacca Chief Minister Mohd Ali Rustam. Like every other society, Malaysians love a scandal, but perhaps more so than others. Hardly surprising, given there’s at least a scandal a day in Malaysia’s utterly scandal-riven Umno-led ‘government’.

Umno’s so-called disciplinary committee bagged Ali Rustam for being ‘more directly’ involved in buying votes with money. It let off ousted Selangor chief minister Mohd Khir Toyo. The committee said he had no case to answer. Funny. And Khairy Jamaluddin, the suddenly filthy-rich son-in-law of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, was slapped on the wrist like a schoolboy for - wait for it - having been ‘less directly involved in money politics. Hilarious.

Khir Toyo isn’t without financial means. Nobody cares if he makes a come back in politics or not. He comes from the same batch of Umno rotten eggs. Khairy will contest Umno Youth’s presidency. It doesn’t matter if Khairy or Hishammuddin Hussein, son of Malaysia’s third prime minister Hussein Onn, win the contest. It’s not the case of better the devil you know.

Umno Youth is Umno supreme council’s sycophantic bunch of neo-nationalist, rightwing no-hopers. They’d sooner brandish the keris (Malay dagger) and threaten bloody murder every time Malaysia’s ethnic minority dissidents challenge their so-called Ketuanan Melayu. They’re Umno’s brown-shirt brigade - the kind Adolf Hitler ran in Nazi Germany.

Ali Rustam is barred from campaigning for the deputy president’s post at Umno’s forthcoming general assembly. He could still pose a challenge, however serious, if he wins his appeal to the Umno disciplinary committee. He could become Malaysia’s deputy prime minister.

Nothing has changed

Who’s willing to wager that he’ll come back, Nazarus-like, and take his place within rotten-to-core Umno and consign his place to history? Muhammad Muhammad Taib, the former Selangor chief minister did — after he was found guilty for trafficking a suitcase-full of money from Australia. In Malaysia it pays to be a crook to gain political office.

Rustam has made his intentions clear: he will be back. He told this to his paid supporters. It’s the only way Umno leaders can publicly show the level from their rent-a-crowd political flock. Rustam told them to ‘Relax, lah: I’ll be back’. And the supporters, like drunks, sang and danced at their messiah’s lament. His appeal to Umno’s supreme council is being heard. Let’s see their gall.

Whether Rustam would’ve won a deputy presidency spot, or could win one after the appeal, isn’t so relevant now. Many in Malaysia say there’s a new politics at play in Malaysia after the 2008 elections, in which the opposition parties, in a loose coalition called Pakatan, took five states from Umno-led Barisan Nasional.

But nothing has changed. Whatever change that was heralded from the March 2008 poll is now unraveling. Perak has been returned to the old regime. Whether by hook or crook is not the point. The point is that Pakatan is crying foul over Perak’s retrenchment of the old state government. It can thank Anwar Ibrahim for his lame-brained promise of tossing out the ruling regime by September 16 2008 simply by poaching sitting Barisan Nasional politicians.

It backfired, of course, smacking rotten eggs into Anwar’s face. Karpal Singh is right: it’s Anwar’s fault. Anwar, the self-professed renaissance man of Asia, should learn to never promise what he can’t deliver. Anwar has always been behind the curve. But he let his ego get the better of him.

Instead of creating politics that could win hearts and mind through intelligence and persuasiveness, Anwar has done exactly what his former mentor Dr Mahathir Mohamad had taught him when the former autocrat had co-opted Anwar from ABIM in 1982. More significantly, Anwar had allowed himself to be co-opted.

In light of his problems since July 1997, Anwar’s willingness to join Umno was a dumb move. That he later postulated the same strategy to win government in September last year was a repetition of that same dumb move. Will Anwar ever learn? Simple answer: no.

Why? Because in Malaysia, money politics is the soul of the corrupt, philistine Umno regime in conjunction with its equally corrupt and philistine political partners, the Malaysian Chinese Association, the Malaysian Indian Congress and Gerakan. Corruption is the kernel of Malaysia’s political economy.

Money politics is at the heart of Malaysia’s corruption. In Malaysian politics, money talks. In Malaysia’s judicial system, money talks. In the Malaysian police force, money talks. But in terms of intellectual acumen, it’s glaringly absent in everyday Malaysian politics. Not money, though. And the more, the better.

Legitimacy counts for nothing in Malaysian politics and certainly not within Umno, MCA, MIC and Gerakan. It doesn’t, glaringly for example, in Sarawak under Abdul Taib Mahmud. Under BN, and especially under Umno’s leadership, legitimacy and, by extension, political legitimation, has been seriously bastardized since 1969 and the implementation of the disgustingly racist New Economic Policy.

A patronage state

This bred money politics. Malaysia under Umno and Barisan Nasional may have the political authority to ‘govern’ the country through its structures. However, most of the regimes’ institutions have failed to govern in the interest of all of its citizens. The Umno-led government is facing serious erosion of the public’s confidence of its ability to rule democratically and transparently, with policy coherence and efficiency, and institutional independence and will.

What Malaysia has had, as if unbeknownst to all, is the creation of a patronage state and patron-client relationships that work on the common denominator of money transaction for political power. And typical of any authoritarian regime, this is structural power, not institutional.

Umno and its component parties in the Barisan Nasional have plundered and bastardized Malaysia’s pre-1969 democratic institutions. This has allowed Barisan Nasional to transact exclusively with powerful, corrupt vested interests so that the political elite can retain and usurp structural power.

There is no coercion of one group over the other, no contradictory position between the two. This is power transaction by consent, for ultimate material benefit of patron and client. It describes rampant crony capitalism and nepotism in Malaysia, which can only flourish under a corrupt authoritarian regime led by Umno. Umno is synonymous with corruption.

The opaqueness of money politics is entrenched because UMNO and Barisan Nasional have bastardized the democratic institutions of accountability and responsibility. It has purchased with money Malaysia’s judiciary and the police force, including the so-called anti-corruption agencies that it has established. It has bought with money Malaysia’s mainstream media, whose editors lack the moral compunction to do what the press is supposed to do — society’s watchdog over government. Their raison d’être is the preservation of this corrupt regime.

All this leaves Umno, the MCA, MIC and Gerakan devoid of all morality, let alone ethical behavior. Isn’t that why the PKR turncoats and cowards were so easily bought over by the Umno regime, to switch their allegiance, thus precipitating the collapse of the Pakatan government in Perak state?

Let’s be clear: in trenchantly corrupt Malaysia, with its trenchantly corrupt political elite, money politics is so embedded in Malaysia’s political structures and institutions that it would be utterly stupid for anyone to think Najib Razak, when he becomes prime minister, will clean up the crap to which his former master patron, Mahathir Mohamad, had given succor during his 23 years as premier, and to which the weak-kneed and fraudulent Abdullah Badawi has conveniently closed an eye.

The only ones who can change money politics in Malaysia are ordinary Malaysians - of all races - standing together not as Malays and Chinese and Indians but as ‘Malaysians’, to pour into the streets and show this vile, racist regime that they have had enough of its filthiness, gutlessness and corruption.

But, first, ordinary Malaysians too must rid corrupt tendencies in their midst. Until then, the likes of Mohd Ali Rustam, Muhammad Muhammad Taib, Khairy Jamaluddin and others will always abound or be resurrected by those crooks who run the vast patronage machinery of money politics from within Umno’s supreme council.