The vision and direction of Barisan Nasional (BN), including Umno, which is clear in developing the nation, is among five reasons outlined by the prime minister as to why the component parties must be given a clear mandate in the 13th general election.
Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who is also BN chairman and Umno president, said as an experienced party, Umno as the backbone in BN, always spurred numerous ideas and transformation towards a bright future for the nation compared to the opposition which was still blur on the matter.The Umno general assembly has often come across as reality comedy. Its ‘performers’ unwittingly amuse us with their unintentionally comic turns. This year, they didn’t disappoint.
Wanita chief Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, whose family is embroiled in the National Feedlot Centre (NFC) scandal that forced her not to renew her senatorship, says that for the upcoming general election, she is a winnable candidate. God help her.Can an election ever throw up the right candidate? Or to put it more moderately, is an election the mechanism best suited to throw up representatives that will strive to work for their constituents and attempt to better their life? Are there in-built into the electoral process, a set of imperatives that help pre-determine one kind of outcome, irrespective of the quality of the candidates?
Increasingly, it would seem that what it takes to win an election is not only very different from what it takes to govern, but might well be at odds with the idea of providing governance. The privileging of representativeness in our democracy, with an emphasis on caste and religion, has meant that electable candidates are chosen with a view to who has the biggest electoral draw in terms representing the interests of a community rather than select those that have a view on issues of policy or administration. At one level, democracy does not require its practitioners to come equipped with a track record, and representativeness is perhaps the most vital element in the idea of democracy, but over a period of time, what representativeness has come to mean identity rather than action; the leader resembles his or her constituents, speaks for them and on the occasion that he or she acts on their behalf, it is often through the same narrow lens of community. Under these circumstances, the election abets the process of weeding out those that see their role in more secular terms, and focuses its attention narrowly on those with more sectarian agendas.
Winning elections requires a peculiar kind of caste and community arithmetic, multiplied by financial resources and propped up by on-ground muscle. The reason why the incidence of criminality in politics has been such a visible presence is partly due to the fact there are great similarities between the two skill sets. It is easier for a local tough to become a politician than it is for a local schoolteacher, to use a crude stereotype, not only because it easier for the former to mobilise resources and numbers far more easily but also because the electorate sees more advantages in being represented by someone who can thump the table on their behalf rather than someone who is not seen to have a realistic chance of winning.
The prospect of winnability makes unsuitable choices rational, for it is seen to be smarter to align with those that could win rather than root for those that might act on one’s behalf much more usefully if elected, but are seen with little real chance of doing so. Money is the other reason why only those that already have the ability or are able to generate it, are found suitable to be offered as candidates. The political system wards off change at the point of entry itself, by making the entry level conditions unsuitable for anyone but those that toe the existing line and play by the rules already laid down.
The election requires that a large number of people exercise their preference for one candidate over the others on the basis of some knowledge and familiarity with the individual’s previous track record, the party that he or she represents, the promises made, and the overall feeling of empathy and trust generated by the individual. Given the sizes of constituencies and the scale of the geographies involved, it is difficult for someone who is already not a visible presence in at least part of the constituency to mobilise adequate support. Chances are that the choices will veer towards those that already enjoy a measure of prominence and power in the area- superannuated student leaders, local toughs, successful lawyers, families of politicians, wealthy landlords, caste and community leaders and the like.
The underlying assumption of elections is that every individual takes a personal decision, on the basis of the inputs received, to choose the person deemed suitable to represent his or her interests. The truth is in the Indian social construct, the individual does not necessarily act as a singular entity and is often inclined to act as part of a larger collective. This is true not only of elections, but of many other walks of life. The election is in some ways almost asking for people to find their own appropriate collective and to cobble together enough numbers so as to increase the bargaining power at their disposal. It is rational to do so, for otherwise every individual feels virtually no ability to influence the outcome.
Shame, that social device that acted as a self-restraining agent, aligning our internal compass with external expectation, pushing us towards behaviour that was considering socially legitimate and rapping us on the knuckles, often quite decisively, when we stepped out of line, seems to be an increasing absence in many sections of society today. Today, it is easier for people to be punished than to be disgraced; it would seem that the letter of the law has overwhelmed the spirit of the social convention. The gradual fading of a shared moral code, an implicit belief in the way things should be, has led to a fundamental transfer of responsibility- from depending on the collective wisdom of a social group to the personal conscience of the individual
massive corruption as the return of a conquering hero requires a special kind of ability, one that does not seem in short supply today. Increasingly, corruption charges do not seem to carry a social taint, and even criminals convicted of more heinous crimes
Both the French investigation and the Jaikishan comments spell continuing trouble for Najib on the domestic political front, and within his political party. The ruling national coalition has been seeking the appropriate time to hold national elections for more than a year but has continued to put them off for a variety of reasons including a long string of scandals over cost overruns on a big port modernization at Port Klang, west of Kuala Lumpur, as well as the so-called Cattlegate scandal in which the family of the minister for women’s affairs allegedly looted a cattle-slaughtering scheme of tens of millions of ringgit for their personal use. Corruption in the UMNO is nothing more than an aberration and is not an embedded virus afflicting the country . the voters must give the right message to clean up the system but what about the rest immersed in diabolical depravity?
But in a rapidly changing landscape, the individual finds it difficult to locate this conscience, having been set adrift in a world without maps that guide behaviour. If in an earlier age, one always knew, to the point of repressive certainty, what the expected behaviour in any situation was, today it is up to the individual to play the new games of the day , while simultaneously writing its rules, without having to worry too much about ‘what people will say’. The only outer boundaries are those imposed by the law, and these take on a technical rather than a moral hue. The law is seen as something that is malleable, an entity with which one can haggle, provided one has the means. If earlier social norms took on a regulatory responsibility today it is increasingly being seen as the job of the legal system to do so. When was the last time, for instance when we heard of any social pressure being brought to bear on a corrupt official or of a prospective match being cancelled because one party was deemed corrupt?
There is another side to this growing absence of shame too. As a device the idea of ‘knowing one’s place’ and ‘acting within limits’ was one that was used with great effect to maintain hierarchies and thwart discontinuous change. Gender, caste and class differences were enforced not only by external institutions, but by the victims of these inequalities themselves. The acceptance of inequality as legitimate was enabled by the idea of shame or ‘lajja’ or ‘ankh ki sharam’; these being homeostatic devices used by society to keep itself in check, in line with its dominant impulses. The gradual loosening of this implicit social contract is giving rise to a new breed of ‘shameless’ aspirers, people from different marginalities coming to the fore without being burdened by memory or expectations. As a reaction to this change, we see an attempt to foist shame from the outside, forms of social policing use force in a desperate attempt to draw boundaries and stem the flow of change.
In line with the times, shame, as a device is taking on a new form; it is now located in the body, and in a larger sense, the self. In keeping with the centrality of the individual, and with the growing primacy of the market in our lives, we learn to think of ourselves as congenitally incomplete and imperfect and strive to correct this by filling ourselves up with acts of consumption. The self is pictured as a perpetual project, needing improvement from within and constant validation from without. Shame resides in the spaces between the wrong car and the right and a blemished skin of the wrong colour and the white glow that radiates from flawless youthfulness. Tradition is now a honeyed voice from the television, that tells us what is desirable and makes us act accordingly.
When individuals take charge of their own destinies, it is inevitable that codes of behaviour rooted in socially determined collectives will need to give way. The question is, what replaces the old laws, the old mechanisms that allowed society to govern itself without needing constant intervention? Tradition served as the magnetic pole which mysteriously aligned our action with some ideals through many devices, one of which was the self-imposed idea of shame. In the absence of such embedded self-knowledge, and self-regulatory devices, every action of the individual is full of moral import, something that is impossibly exhausting as an endeavour. The secular institutions of the state, have neither the power nor the nuance that is required when dealing with issues of moral order. The newer institutions of media and the market do impose sophisticated codes but these are designed to benefit themselves; there is no great allegiance to society as a whole.
Effectively, the vantage point called society is going unmanned; no one is looking out for its interests as a collective. There is an emerging vacuum as society finds itself unable to govern itself and finds no other institution that can fill in for it. It is as if society is losing a sense of its own self and does not know what values to uphold and what to proscribe. This does translate into more freedom for the individual, but in the absence of a larger moral code in which the individual is embedded, this freedom can end up as nothing more than an indiscriminate celebration of one’s narrow personal interests.
A key figure involved in the cover-up of the spectacular 2006 murder of Mongolian national Altantuya Shaariibuu appears to have gone off the reservation, giving interviews to opposition media hinting at the involvement of Rosmah Mansor, the wife of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, in the conspiracy.
Deepak Jaikishan (left), a Kuala Lumpur-based carpet dealer who reportedly was Mansor’s business partner in the past, allegedly promised RM5 million to get out of the country to a private detective who charged that Najib had been Altantuya’s former lover, after the detective filed a sworn declaration describing his knowledge of the affair between the two and giving excruciating details of sexual practices, among other specifics.
The detective, Perumal Balasubramaniam, was terrorized after being dragooned into a Kuala Lumpur police station and told his family was in danger. He immediately decamped for Chennai, India after being promised the money to recant his declaration. He has remained outside of Malaysia, issuing periodic statements giving additional details of the affairs as well as alleged attempts by Najib’s forces to cajole him into coming back and blame Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim for the whole thing.
Altantuya, named in French Police documents as a translator, was murdered in October 2006 by two members of an elite police unit operating under Najib’s jurisdiction. The two were later convicted and sentenced to death for the crime. Abdul Razak Baginda, one of Najib’s closest associates and according to French prosecuting magistrates’ documents the alleged conduit for a €114 million bribe to the United Malays National Organization for the purchase of submarines from the French defense contractor DCN and its subsidiaries, was acquitted of the crime.
Razak Baginda had been Altantuya’s lover, supposedly after Najib had given her up, according to Balasubramaniam’s sworn declaration. Immediately on being cleared without having to put on a defense, Razak Baginda fled to the UK with his wife, where he has remained ever since.
Attempts to reach Jaikishan by Asia Sentinel have been unsuccessful. He first contacted Harakan Daily, the Malay-language newspaper operated by Parti Islam se-Malaysia, the Islamic opposition leg of the three-party Pakatan Rakyat headed by Anwar, and later gave an interview to Malaysiakini, the Kuala Lumpur-based independent online news website, describing additional details. Additional interviews have also been carried by the Malaysia Chronicle, another opposition website.
In the interviews, Jaikishan acknowledged that Najib and Rosmah had asked for his help in dealing with Balasubramaniam. In a translated interview, he told Harakan Daily that “Maybe my mistake was helping in the case of Bala, getting involved in Bala’s case to help the family of the Prime Minister. That was when I became famous. I don’t like it. I’d like to be low profile.”
In the Harakan interview, Jaikishan compared his involvement in Balasubramaniam’s case to rescuing a drowning friend. “So I jumped into the pool to help a friend,” he said. I felt at that time, I was the only one (they) sought for help.” He quickly responded: “Najib’s family” when asked whom he meant by ‘theirs.’
Jaikisan’s motives are unclear, sources in Kuala Lumpur told Asia Sentinel. One of the articles made a veiled reference to a belief that he hadn’t been given proper thanks for his efforts. One well-wired businessman in Kuala Lumpur said Jaikishan was known to have become close to Muhyiddin Yassin, the Deputy Prime Minister and a putative rival for the premiership should Najib stumble.
“It’s an UMNO play”, the source said. “Deepak claims he is now very close to Muhyiddin. The timing of his solicited interviews – he called the news portals and offered himself – on the eve of the UMNO assembly suggests he wanted to embarrass Najib and Rosmah.”
Another lawyer close to the Mahathir wing of UMNO said that was nonsense, and that there was no trouble between the two. He pointed to the fact that the interviews had all been given to anti-government media as an indication that he was acting for Anwar’s coalition.
In any case, the repeated interviews, including one in which Jaikishan accused the head of the women’ wing of the party of having been involved in a massive land scam that benefited Najib and his family, are significantly damaging to the Prime Minister, who has been fighting rumors of involvement in the Altantuya affair for the entire six years since the 28-year-old woman was murdered and her body was blown up with C4 military explosives.
Yesterday in Singapore, Apoline Cagnat, a lawyer with the French human rights law firm headed by William Bourdon, said Najib and Abdul Razak Baginda are “priority witnesses” in the investigation into bribes and kickbacks totaling about €150 million in the sale of Scorpene submarines to the Malaysian Ministry of Defense — the initial €114 million routed through Razak Baginda’s wholly-owned company Perimekar Sdn. Bhd and a second €39 million routed through a Hong Kong-based paper company called Terasasi HK Ltd. which had no known business affairs and which was wholly owned by Razak Baginda and his father .
It is highly unlikely, however, that the French authorities probing the scandal would be able to persuade the head of a sovereign state, especially one who is suspected of helping to facilitate the transfer of kickbacks to UMNO to testify. It is also difficult to imagine what they would be willing to add to the dialogue about the case if indeed they were called to testify.
No comments:
Post a Comment