"Fanatical" and "irrational" that's what voters who supported PAS in the recent Kedah by-elections are, according to Umno president and Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad in a report from state news agency Bernama .
"It is not easy to convert fanatics. Even if PAS puts a tree stump as a candidate, these people will still vote for the party," Mahathir was quoted as saying.
Incidentally, this is reminiscent of the partisan bitterness of MCA leaders in the 1970s and 1980s who had often said that even if DAP fielded a donkey as candidate, the urban Chinese Malaysian would still vote for DAP on the strength of its Rocket symbol.
But back to the recent Pendang and Anak Bukit by-elections in Kedah, in any case PAS fielded, respectively, a medical doctor and an engineer who also holds a Master's degree in business administration not "tree stumps".
Mahathir, however, rightly observed that in these by-elections, Umno's influence has "penetrated" the ground PAS had in the 1999 general election.
He also publicly and vehemently rebutted, although without naming names, the hypothesis advanced earlier by his deputy and anointed successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, that Umno's defeat in the Anak Bukit state constituency could be due to the choice of a "wrong" candidate.
His public outburst seems to confirm an earlier 'prediction' made by some observers and analysts to the effect that in the long 16-month power transition in Umno, a confusing situation of two top commanders could arise. Whether this 'two-heads' dilemma would continue after October 2003 is worth watching closely.
Mahathir's frustration
Indeed, it is not difficult to understand Mahathir's bitterness and frustration with regard to the Anak Bukit defeat. It is about what proponents of the 'Asian value' call 'the face', or 'the ego' as conceptualised by Austrian psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud.
Kedah has been Mahathir's power base since 1964 when he was first elected as a member of Parliament. In the 1969 general election, he was defeated by an amicable PAS candidate, the late Yusof Rawa, who obtained support of the Kedah Chinese who then saw Mahathir as a "Malay extremist".
But Mahathir bounced back, was re-elected in the 1974 general election, and retained his seat in subsequent ones from 1978 through 1999.
However, in the 1999 general election held in the aftermath of the sacking and arrest of his former deputy Anwar Ibrahim, Mahathir's majority was slashed by some seven thousand votes by a PAS lightweight who was a former journalist with the official Malay media.
In 1999, PAS captured eight out of the 15 parliamentary seats in Kedah, and 12 out of the 36 state seats. In a subsequent by-election in Lunas, Keadilan defeated a Barisan Nasional candidate, and the two-third majority of the Umno-dominated front in the Kedah state assembly was thus broken.
Although the recapture of the Pendang parliamentary seat by Umno with a razor-thin margin of 283 votes has reduced PAS' parliamentary strength from 27 to 26, PAS' victory in Anak Bukit also with a razor-thin majority of 508 votes means that the two-third majority of the Umno-dominated BN is still denied in the state assembly.
There is a third set of explanations which may indicate the reason for Mahathir's
compounded anxiety and partisan passion not only against PAS but also thousands of voters who supported the Umno nemesis.
As postulated in a July 20 commentary in Singapore's Strait Times , the less-than-satisfactory performance could be due to "the paralysis of Kedah's election machinery", "the ineffectiveness of the chief minister", and "the unwillingness of older candidates to make way for new blood", according to an anonymous senior Umno official.
It is interesting to watch how Umno, if it agrees with the analysis in the Singaporean commentary, will remove the political deadwood and overhaul the party machinery in Kedah without provoking conservative reactions within the party's rank and file, from now till the coming general election.
The Straits Times also quoted anonymous party insiders as warning that "Pendang and more seats in Kedah could fall to PAS in the next general election". Mahathir certainly does not wish to end his political career with his home base shattered, if not destroyed.
Transient victory
Indeed, the Umno victory in Pendang could be transient. The reason is familiar and well-understood by all seasoned politicians and campaign strategists.
In by-elections, the Umno-dominated ruling coalition can always concentrate the resources of its own as well as those of the government in the constituencies involved, which only number one or two at a single point in time, never more. Top leaders of the party can avail themselves to lead campaigns, and the official media as well as their strange bedfellows or fellow travelers can also hit at fewer campaigning targets.
However, in general elections, all the 193 parliamentary constituencies will be declared vacant and contested simultaneously throughout Malaysia. So will hundreds of state seats in the peninsula (Sabah and Sarawak's state elections come later).
In that situation, not only will top leaders of the BN have to contest and campaign for themselves in their own constituencies, the official media will also find it difficult to target their attacks. Resources of the Umno-dominated coalition and the state will also be spread wide and thin, and on multiple fronts.
There will be open power-jostling and secret back-stabbing among the BN leaders and members all over the country, before and during the campaign. This situation can't be helped because there are more self-perceived qualified people than seats available unless Umno decides to allocate more seats for itself at the expense of other component parties like MCA, Gerakan and MIC.
In any case, according to a PAS analysis quoted by the Straits Times , between 90 percent to 95 percent of Pendang voters who supported the Islamic party in 1999 gave their votes to it again in the by-election three years later.
This means that despite the concentration of resources on the part of Umno, the PAS organisation and manpower were still strong enough to withstand the onslaught, at least in the Malay/Muslim ground.
What would happen to Umno if the same amount of united organisation and manpower of PAS confronted a faction-ridden Umno whose concentration of resources will be reduced in the coming general elections?
Applying a similar reasoning, an experienced political reporter of a Chinese-language newspaper commented that the organisation and manpower of PAS in Kedah still pose a great challenge to Umno, especially at the state level.
Cause of PAS' rise
The results of the Kedah by-elections perhaps also suggest that, after all, premier-in-waiting Abdullah's Islamic credential is not as adequate as his think tanks, lobbyists and flatterers have projected to Singaporean and Western media. However, it is still slightly stronger than his boss' and those of the three vice presidents of Umno, as well as the youth, women and young women chiefs of the party.
The ground battles ahead for the hearts and minds of the people in the Islamic heartland are certainly tough. And the faction-ridden Umno seems to be unconsciously and paradoxically supplying its nemesis more and more causes from the issue of judicial independence and integrity to the indiscriminate use and abuse of the Internal Security Act (ISA), Printing Presses and Publications Act (PPPA), Universities and University Colleges Act (UUCA) and Police Act, etc. to fight with greater determination and valour.
Seen from this perspective, if the rise of the so-called "fanatical" and "irrational" PAS is a 'problem', the faction- and scandal-ridden Umno could be the cause, not the solution.
JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia (SAM) which produces the subscriber-based political report, Analysis Malaysia . Wong is a former member of parliament (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily. He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. While in Sin Chew , he and a team of journalists won the top awards of Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) for 1998 and 1999.
