COMMENT So S Samy Vellu, presumable monarch of the Indian Malaysian survey for the better part of three decades, is quitting some seven months sooner than he had earlier indicated.

After seeming determined on staying through the next general election, expected to be held between February and June next year, Samy Vellu has suddenly done an about-face: he is going before the speculated earlier-than-expected national polls, not after.

utusan kisah wan mokhtar taib mahmud samakah 290910 The news comes on the heels of a call by a senior editor of Utusan Malaysia , the unofficial Umno mouthpiece, that Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud should be mindful of the experience of Terengganu Umno in 1999.

Then the Umno chieftain Wan Mokhtar Ahmad, menteri besar for 25 years, declined to retire despite popular perceptions of him as being out of sync with the party and the people. He refused take heed and Umno fell to a PAS sweep of the state in the November 1999 general election.

But Taib Mahmud is not in the mood for history lessons. He has reiterated he is prepared to lead the Sarawak BN into the next state election which must be held not later than July 2011.

Now with Samy Vellu quitting, increased pressure may be applied on Taib to emulate the MIC leader who has been president of his party for 31 years.

samy vellu mic agm 110710 04 Taib will mark his 30th year as CM on March 26 next year. His and Samy Vellu’s are the two longest tenures by a reigning Malaysian politician. With Samy Vellu quitting in January, that will leave Taib alone among the leaders of the Dr Mahathir Mohamad era still trying to reassert his writ long after the reasons for it have lapsed.

Tenancies in a democracy (Malaysian democracy is an incomplete affair, but a democracy still) tend to limit leaders to two or three terms. Democracy’s yen for replenishment and refreshment militate against lengthy tenures.

But both Samy Vellu and Taib have endured – Samy Vellu for 11 terms as MIC president and Taib for a comparably long period as Parti Bumiputera Bersatu chief – by a combination of iron-fisted control and a shrewd sense of supplying Umno with what the latter expected of them.

Too much at stake for Taib

 

Umno required of Samy Vellu that he deliver the Indian Malaysian vote which he did until the 2008 general election. His failure to do so in the latter election presaged his departure, now apparently expedited by several months.

As for Taib, a less-than-sweeping BN performance in the state election of May 2006 and Umno-BN’s shaky performance in the 2008 national polls have combined to put his lengthy tenure under the microscope. Taib is seen as a holdover from a past that voters want to forget.

NONE But Taib, a fabulously wealthy man, has got too much at stake to want to leave under pressure. He wants to calibrate the succession such that it suits his best interests. And interests, as Charles de Gaulle famously reminded, are permanent; allies come and go.

     

It looks like Taib’s ready to tough out the pressures that are growing on him to cede to the political gravity that overtakes even titans, barring a Castro or a Kim.

Samy Vellu has conceded, but Taib reckons he can attempt to stretch his longevity to match that of hereditary monarchs.

He’s an albatross around Umno-BN’s neck but the latter will find it difficult to finally rescind its time-honoured principle of ‘deliverer-endures-as-gamekeeper’ on which the coalition’s ancillary leaders, like Samy Vellu and Taib, once flourished.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.