The news that Malaysian citizens who are ethnically Chinese in Sabah (1) may now be allowed to join the United Malays National Organisation (Umno) party has caught the country by surprise.

Overnight, it became the news sensation of the country and some members of the oft-maligned ethnic community must have been perplexed and surprised to discover that all of a sudden they have become the flavour of the month.

(For those of us of Indian or mixed Malay-Indian ancestry, I suppose that there is still some time to wait - though judging by the way in which Malaysian politics is changing so rapidly these days, I am sure that there will soon be an opening for us, too).

That none other than the Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad himself, has declared that the time has come for Malaysia to 'move on' and that the era of race-based politics is drawing to a close comes as a welcome relief for many.

Those of us who have been calling for an end to such sectarian forms of politics may yet live to see the day when political parties in this country of ours will be divided solely along ideological lines, rather than ethnic and religious cleavages.

Indeed, looking at the personalities and agendas of individual politicians in Umno, MCA, MIC and Gerakan, one cannot help but see how many of these Malay, pribumi, Chinese and Indian politicians have so much in common, and it would only make sense to bring them all together under the banner of a single Conservative-nationalist party like the Tories in England.

Bringing together the conservatives of the country under a single party-political banner would also make redundant the vertical cleavages of race and ethnicity that has helped to rationalise and perpetuate the hierarchical relations of patronage and power between the different ethnic elites and their respective constituencies.

At least from now on, the members of all communities will be able to look to one conservative party as their sole 'protector'(2) and benefactor. The clientelist networks will not disappear, but at least they will be mainstreamed and rationalised.

But if the invitation to the other non-Malay communities to join Umno at this late stage of its development is meant to help prop up the withering fortunes of the beleagured party, its leaders would do well to think again and to consider the factors that stand in their way.

What is more, a quick glance at the history books will show that such an attempt has been made many a time before, and on each occasion it has failed for a host of reasons that cannot simply be sidelined to the margins.

Onn Jaafar and the IMP project

In the immediate aftermath of the PM's recent declaration, several leading figures in the local media and academic circles quickly came to the conclusion that Umno was about to fulfil the original promise of its founder, Dato' Onn Jaafar.

Some of us might still remember the controversial figure of Dato' Onn Jaafar, the Johorian aristocrat who was the founder and leader of the Umno party back in the mid-1940s.

Onn Jaafar was hardly an ordinary Malay leader at the time. Himself a product of British colonial (not to be confused with Western) education, Onn Jaafar was a functionary within the British colonial administration, a member of the Johor aristocracy and one of the most articulate leaders of the Malay community then.

Like his contemporaries Tunku Abdul Rahman and Tun Razak, Onn Jaafar was also a fervent anti-Communist who wanted to ensure that independent Malaya would remain firmly located within the orbit of the Western bloc. (Something his successor, the Tunku, managed to guarantee).

By the late 1940s, however, it became clear that Onn Jaafar was ahead of his time and out of touch with the feelings and sentiments of the ordinary Malays he came to lead. He attacked the country's first Islamist party (the Hizbul Muslimin, formed in 1948) as a 'subversive Islamist threat' working hand in glove with the communists of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP).

He also counselled against an over-hasty departure by the British, as he feared that the newly independent Malaya would not be able to hold out on its own with such powerful neighbours like Indonesia next door.

Onn Jaafar, being a member of the Anglophile elite, was also quite open about his love for the West and things Western. He viewed the West as a model to be emulated and he admired the legal and political institutions of Britain in particular.

When the Nadrah Affair (3) erupted in 1950-51, Onn Jaafar failed to act decisively in favour of the Malays and the Malay-Muslim cause. Onn Jaafar was badly discredited and the Umno leadership suffered a major blow.

It was also at this time that the ulama faction within Umno began to call for a split within the ranks of the party and it was hardly a surprise that the Pan-Malayan Islamic Party (PAS) was formed on Nov 24, 1951.

Onn Jaafar dug his own grave when, in an effort to recover his support and expand his own political constituency, he called on Umno to open its doors to the non-Malays. The membership of Umno reacted harshly, accusing Onn Jaafar of treason and betraying the interests of the Malays.

Out of anger and frustration, he left the party he had formed and led and formed another party of his own, the Independence for Malaya Party (IMP).

Cocktails and bowties

The Independence for Malaya Party was well and truly Onn Jaafar's private stomping ground. Free to rule the roost, Onn Jaafar was allowed more room to manoeuvre within this party that he had in Umno.

The IMP was launched with much fanfare and gusto, and it was promoted as a liberal alternative to Umno which was seen as too sectarian and communitarian in its outlook.

The dapper and suave Onn Jaafar was able to convince the British colonial authorities (and scores of Western embassies and journalists) that his IMP party was the future of Malaysia and that should the IMP come to power Malaya would become a truly multiracial democracy that was liberal, pluralist and tolerant.

The fact that the party's launch and gatherings were held in a party atmosphere where the men were dressed in suits and tuxedos and the drinks flowed endlessly seemed to animate the fluid rhetoric of Onn Jaafar even more.

But Onn Jaafar's dreams of a multiracial Malaya were dashed as soon as the elections were held. By 1952, the party was already a spent force and its members demoralised and disillusioned.

Onn Jaafar, an aristocrat who felt that he deserved to be in power if for no other reason than the fact that he was a member of the Malay elite, made a second bid for power by forming the Parti Negara (PN).

The Parti Negara marked a 180-degree turn as far as Onn Jaafar's liberal worldview was concerned. From being the friend of the non-Malays he transformed himself into a Malay demagogue and populist who preached a decidedly reactionary and ultra-conservative Malay-centric agenda.

Onn Jaafar's Parti Negara sought to out-Umno Umno itself, by being even more conservative and sectarian than the other. (Something that the ill-fated Semangat 46 party also tried to do in the late 1980s, when it pushed its own Malay-centric agenda at all costs. Today, the ex-members of this defunct party of feudal Malay traditionalist-royalists have all been rehabilitated as Malay liberals and progressives, of all things).

The shape of things to come

The proposal to open up Umno to non-Malays today may sound progressive and a step in the right direction, but it must be remembered that this has been attempted before - and with disastrous results.

The Umno-IMP-PN story was a sordid saga of high hopes, broken promises and unscrupulous compromises with negative results for all concerned.

Onn Jaafar's sudden U-turn after the demise of the IMP proved to everyone that the 'liberal aristocrat' was no different from the 'commoner' politicians he so openly despised. When push came to shove, Onn Jaafar was willing and able to play the race card as long as it suited him.

This is not to suggest that there should never be any attempt to break the vicious cycle of race-based politics in Malaysia. All that we are trying to say here is that the path has been chosen before, and it is fraught with dangers.

The time has come, therefore, for us to consider the possible shape of things to come.

Umno and PAS, race and religion

One school of thought claims that Umno's attempts to woo the non-Malays stems from its own belated realisation that Umno has lost the support of its natural constituency. This is so painfully obvious to all of us by now that it is hardly worth repeating.

At the general elections of 1999, Umno lost more seats and support than any other party in the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition. Umno has also experienced the biggest drain of its members, when thousands of ex-Umno members left the party in droves to join PAS or Keadilan.

Now if Umno is trying to shore up its defences by appealing to the non-Malay constituency, we still need to ask what the short and medium term consequences would be. Would Umno, in effect, end up taking in members of other non-Malay parties in the country, for instance?

If Umno were to do the same in the peninsula, would this mean that members of the non-Malay parties in West Malaysia could join Umno? Should this happen, unlikely though it seems, would this mean the dilution of MCA and MIC? How would the other non-Malay parties react should Umno open its doors and extend its invitation even further?

And what would be the fate of the Barisan Nasional coalition if the fragile ethnic balance between the different communitarian parties is disturbed by defections from one party to another. (We are not, of course, suggesting that this is on the cards or that it is bound to happen - but these are variable factors that need to be considered nonetheless).

Secondly, if Umno's open invitation to the Chinese in Sabah is meant to show that Umno is no-longer a Malay-dominated and race-based party, do the leaders of the Umno party seriously think that this will dilute the support for PAS or the opposition? That would be so far-fetched that one could only hope that it was not true.

It must be remembered that since 1982 (4) PAS has openly (and quite effectively) renounced the politics of race and ethnicity anyway. PAS has a small number of non-Malay Muslims in its ranks and unlike Umno, PAS's official party website even has a webpage in Mandarin for the Malaysian Chinese community.

Since the 1980s, PAS has launched outreach programmes and bureaus within the party structure, as part of a long-term effort to woo non-Malays and persuade them to vote for an Islamist option.

If anything, it is PAS, and not Umno, that has demonstrated a willingness to go beyond the politics of race and ethnicity since the 1980s. To play the 'liberal, non-racial' card at this stage would be a tad out of date and behind the times for Umno, considering that PAS has beaten them to it anyway.

What is more, it would be foolish to think that by opening Umno to non-Malays the support for opposition parties like PAS will be diminished in any way.

Though no accurate and reliable statistics exist, it is safe to say that most of the non-Malays who would be interested in joining Umno were never supporters of PAS in the first place.

PAS's vote bank therefore remains untouched, though Umno may be jeopardising the vote balance within BN if it makes this move.

Caught in its own web

Umno is therefore caught in a web of its own making. The fact that the leaders of the party are now openly talking about the possibility of opening up the party to non-Malays is commendable and long overdue.

But ironically, Umno is not able to act upon this due to the fact that it is hemmed in by variable factors beyond its control.

Should Umno open its doors to non-Malays and bid farewell to the era of race-based politics, its gains may be less than its losses. We may witness an even bigger haemorrhage of members from Umno to the two other Malay-dominated opposition parties, PAS and Keadilan.

Those who resent the entry of non-Malays and non-Muslims into Umno on the grounds that the party no longer represents Muslim interests might turn to PAS, with its more hardline Islamist agenda.

Those who feel that Umno no longer represents the interests of the Malays may in turn move to Keadilan (which even today, is seen by many as a Malay-dominated opposition party overwhelmed by ex-Umno types who have brought their neo-feudal political culture along with them).

Ironically, Umno is no longer able to do the right thing - but only because by playing the game of racial politics (like the MCA, MIC, DAP, and practically every other party on both sides of the political divide in this country) it has been doing the wrong thing for so long.

The sad fate of Malaysian politics is that it is unable to extricate itself from its own mortal vices and frailties.

We have all become captives to our own political culture, something we should have challenged and denied a long time ago. This is not to say that it cannot be done, or that there is no room for human agency and the will for change.

But what it means is that change, at this juncture of our history, will not come without a price and a human cost.

The BN formulae and the rationale of the BN parties may have served us up to now, but it will not and cannot take this country any further.

But to alter the course of Malaysian history means doing the unexpected and unprecedented - something a domesticated nation like ours is less inclined, or perhaps not even capable, of doing.

Endnotes :

(1) It is interesting to note that many of the reports on the PM's speech classified Malaysian citizens of Chinese ethnic background as 'Chinese'. Lest it be forgotten, the people in question here happen to be Malaysian citizens and should therefore be referred to as 'Malaysians'.

They are not 'Chinese' in the sense of being Chinese nationals. This is yet another example of hegemony at work - rarely do we come across reports or articles that refer to the Malays as 'Malay Malaysians'.

Being 'Malay' and 'Malaysian' is something that many of us take for granted while overlooking the fact that other Malaysian citizens are entitled to the same classification regardless of their ethnic backgrounds.

Being Malaysian is, after all, a political category and this applies to all of those who have resided in the country and have been awarded citizenship to it.

To continue using terms like 'Chinese Malaysian' or 'Indian Malaysian' may sound politically correct if recognition of pluralism and diversity is to be the paramount concern, but it should at least be universal and no community should be singled out as 'alien' or of 'alien origin'.

(2) The term 'protector' here is taken from Chandra Muzaffar's book Protector? (Aliran Press, Penang, 1987). The book remains the best analysis of patron-client relations within traditional Malay society till today.

(3) The Nadrah Affair revolved around the sad fate of a young Dutch girl named Mariah Hertogh, who was abandoned by her own parents at the outbreak of the Second World War. Mariah was brought up by her Malay nanny, who brought her up as a Malay.

In time Mariah converted to Islam (questions remain as to whether this was done voluntarily or not) and took up the name Nadrah. Later Nadrah, now a Muslim, married a Malay man by the name of Mansoor Adabi.

After the war was over, Mariah/Nadrah's parents returned to Malaysia and attempted to have her repatriated back to the Netherlands. The British colonial authorities finally declared that her conversion to Islam and her marriage to Mansoor Adabi was null and void.

This enraged the Malay and Indian-Muslim communities in the country, for it effectively meant that the secular British legal system could override the Shariah court. In a matter of weeks, a massive nation-wide campaign was launched to prevent the repatriation of Nadrah and to preserve her marriage.

Leading the campaign were men like Dr Burhanuddin al-Helmy (the future third president of PAS) and other leading Malay and Indian-Muslim activists, lawyers and politicians. The demonstrations led to violent riots in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

But at the height of the crisis, the leadership of Umno failed to act. Worse still, Onn Jaafar was of the opinion that the whole matter should have been left to the British court - a move which cost him dearly in terms of support from the Malays as a whole.

(4) PAS today is quite different from the PAS of the 1970s when it was under the leadership of its fourth president, Dato Muhammad Asri Muda.

Asri Muda had effectively turned PAS into the most fanatically Malay-centric and chauvinist party in the country, and during the era of Asri Muda (1970-1982) it was PAS that was the most uncompromising defender of exclusive Malay rights and privileges.

Asri Muda brought PAS into the BN alliance between 1973 to 1977, an instrumental coalition that was aimed at uniting the Malays (while empowering PAS in the process). But the move cost the Islamist party badly.

Its Islamist credentials were compromised by Asri Muda's blatant communalism which opened the way for a host of other non-governmental Islamist organisations like the Darul Arqam and Abim to appear on the scene.

PAS's flirtation with power also led to its corruption and downfall. By the end of the 'honeymoon' period between Umno and PAS, the latter was known as Parti Asri Sekeluarga - an obvious reference to the corruption and nepotism that had taken root within the party.

After Asri Muda was deposed by the internal party 'coup' that brought to power the ulama faction led by men like Yusuf Rawa, Nik Aziz, Fadzil Noor and Hadi Awang, the leaders of PAS vowed never to play the racial card ever again.

PAS has been trying to brush up its Islamist image and recover from its losses ever since.