How dark and ironic it was to listen to
the Inspector-General of Police’s alarmist explanation of the
arrests. The IGP alluded to a plan to ignite grenades, explosives
and Molotov cocktails at a human rights rally on April 14.
Not a shred of evidence was produced by
the IGP to substantiate his claim or to show how those arrested
were connected to the purported events. The IGP only deepened
the mystery by referring to ‘revelations’ made by police intelligence.
For the record, those arrested are not
faceless and nameless agents of subversive movements!
The ten detainees, all prominently known
to the public, are: a vice-president, the youth chief and four
other leaders of Parti Keadilan Nasional (Keadilan), the webmaster
of the Free Anwar Campaign, a freelance film maker and web journalist,
and two human rights activists.
Those who know these people know that they
have scrupulously avoided any violence in their activities.
All of them have been labelled ‘reformasi activists’ by the
compliant mass media as if reformasi was something sinister
and militant.
In fact, the whole tone of reformasi in
Malaysia has been avowedly and consistently peaceful. About
all that the ten detainees had ever ignited before their arrests
is the continuing disgust, opprobrium and contempt for the present
government of Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
And, for this, can we blame them?
Many people had anticipated that, desperate
to stem the non-violent forces of reformasi, Mahathir would
sanction an ISA ‘swoop’ as he did with ‘Operation Lalang’ on
October 27, 1987. Beginning on that day, 106 social activists
and politicians were detained.
Opposition politicians and social activists
in Malaysia are understandably relieved that this has not happened
– at least, not yet. Thus far the present wave of arrests are
pointed in a specific direction – principally at Keadilan. But
this does not make the present arrests any less traumatic for
the ten detainees and their families or any less gloomy for
Malaysia’s future.
No civilised government has any excuse
for using the ISA. But, inheriting the ISA from British colonial
rule, all Malaysian governments have used and re-used it to
repress all shades of opponents.
Even the government-established National
Commission for Human Rights (SUHAKAM) has called on Mahathir’s
regime to discontinue the use of ISA and to charge the detainees
in an open court of law if the regime has evidence against them.
Numerous other voices at home and abroad have for years demanded
that the ISA be abolished.
Why has the Mahathir regime deemed it necessary
to use the ISA again? Let me offer five reasons why, and also
why, ultimately, the ISA will fail to achieve Mahathir’s goal.
If anything at all, these desperate detentions will deepen the
regime’s crisis of legitimacy and make leadership change an
even more urgent issue.
Reason
1: Crippling Reformasi
The first reason is a deceitful use of
ISA to frighten the public, to make the public fear that the
regime’s opponents are plotting to topple it by ‘subversive’
and ‘militant’ means. This is a standard ploy.
Malaysia has never come close to such a
situation other than during the Emergency (1948– 60). The real
aim of using ISA is to cripple any movement, group or party
that the government alleges is attempting to topple it.
Here the Mahathir regime badly needs to
discredit reformasi and its most energetic leaders. To do so,
the regime has foisted the ludicrous charge of ‘militancy’ upon
the ten detainees, all of whom have been deeply associated with
reformasi. In the past, the Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS), Democratic
Action Party (DAP) and the Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM) had also
been subjected to such attacks.
The attempt to emasculate reformasi has
an obvious motive. Despite Anwar Ibrahim’s sacking on September
2, 1998, his first sentencing on April 14, 1999 and second sentencing
on August 8, 2000, the reformasi movement which Anwar inspired
has grown stronger with more and more young people joining it.
Reformasi inflicted severe losses on the
United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) in the November 1999
general election and continues to haunt Mahathir. For instance,
an analysis of the 1999 election results in the state of Selangor
shows that Malay-majority constituencies swung by 30 percent
to the opposition when compared with the 1995 election.
If Mahathir’s ruling Barisan Nasional (BN)
does not contain the forces of reformasi quickly, who knows:
perhaps BN may lose the next election.
Reason
2: A Regime with No More Ideas
The second reason for using the ISA is
a mundane one. The Mahathir regime is at its wit’s end. It suffers
from inertia, lack of imagination, deep insecurity, and denial.
Hence the regime finds it convenient to use the ISA.
In Malaysia, the ISA is the biggest ass
of laws: it hasn’t budged no matter how often people have moved
to have it abolished. Mahathir’s insecure regime will not remove
the ISA because it cannot bear the possibility of being ousted
from office by electoral means.
Although the regime continues to deny it,
many Malaysians believe that the Mahathir regime has overstayed
its time but hangs on to power with the aid of ISA and other
repressive laws.
Were there freer and fairer electoral competition,
the regime which has been accused of corruption, injustice and
incompetence might well have been defeated. An imaginative and
responsive ruling party that can accept rejection by voters
will not resort to laws like the ISA. If it was defeated, it
would regenerate itself and try to return to power. But not
the BN, it seems!
Reason
3: Mahathir Strengthens His Hand?
The third reason for using the ISA is sinister:
a much-besieged leader is desperate to consolidate his personal
power. To bolster his weakened position, Mahathir uses the repugnant
ISA to show opponents and supporters alike that he can marshal
force against them if he so chooses.
To take an example, Deputy Prime Minister
and Minister of Home Affairs, Abdullah Badawi, was strangely
nonplussed when he was quizzed about the arrests. Having once
promised not to use the ISA, Abdullah seemed unable to explain
the reason for this round of detentions. Presumably only the
Prime Minister knew why.
Cases of besieged leaders resorting to
force in politics are well documented in history. In autocratic
regimes power is monopolised by one person or a small clique.
The more insecure they feel the more frequently they will employ
draconian measures to retain their power.
Despite having said many times he would
retire ‘if the signs are there’, Mahathir has held power for
20 years. Mahathir’s use of the ISA simply shows that he is
unwilling to believe that the end of his tenure is practically
here.
Reason
4: Reformasi is Everywhere
The fourth reason for using the ISA is
not hard to find. Signs of reformasi are everywhere. Its staunchest
supporters are the young. And it is Keadilan’s young and energetic
leaders who have maintained reformasi’s momentum.
In the last general elections, Keadilan
only won five parliamentary seats. Many of their leaders were
very narrowly defeated. Since then, Keadilan has unexpectedly
won a by-election in Lunas, in Mahathir’s home state where support
for UMNO has been draining away.
From Mahathir’s perspective, the young
‘reformasi activists’ who managed the Lunas victory pose the
most serious threat to his hold on power. Like so many other
BN politicians, Mahathir must by now fear that the future of
Malaysian politics, if not the next general election itself,
may well belong to Keadilan and its Barisan Alternatif allies.
Reason
5: Pre-emptive Strike against keADILan
Therefore, the fifth reason has much to
do with making a pre-emptive strike against Keadilan, almost
to remove the party from electoral politics.
A closer reading of current politics in
Malaysia suggests that the 48 parliamentary seats held in Sarawak
and Sabah have become crucial to BN’s hold on power. Out of
those 48 seats, BN won all 28 in Sarawak and 17 of the 20 seats
in Sabah. This lopsided result enabled BN to retain its two-thirds
majority in parliament.
In Sarawak, recently, the schism between
the Melanaus and the Malays has reared its head again within
the ruling Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu, the dominant party
of the Sarawak BN. In the last general election, Keadilan reaped
the benefit of this in-fighting by winning about 30 to 40 per
cent of the popular vote in Malay constituencies and dented
somewhat the power of the Sarawak chief minister, Mahathir’s
ally.
Given that Sarawak is scheduled to hold
state elections soon, could it be that Mahathir is anxious that
Keadilan should not be in a position to do well in Sarawak?
One of the ten detainees, a Keadilan youth leader, comes from
Sarawak.
Why
ISA won't work
Whatever may be their political reasons
and Machiavellian objectives, it is obvious that its users consider
it as a final resort and virtually an embarrassment. Why else
would a regime stoop so low as to fabricate all sorts of outlandish
explanations to justify the despicable use of this instrument
of repression?
There had been so much use of the ISA in
the past, and cynical use, too, that ordinary people have come
to disbelieve the reasons offered for ISA arrests. The published
and televised ‘confessions’ of ISA victims, extracted under
duress, have long been exposed as mere charades.
Ex-detainees and human rights organisations
have exposed those confessions to be the results of the ‘turning
over’ techniques of the Special Branch police who have never
been held accountable for inflicting mental and physical torture
on detainees.
Especially since Anwar’s trials, there
is a huge credibility gap when it comes to ISA. So it will be
with this wave of arrests. If some of those presently detained
later confess their ‘crimes’, no one, other than Mahathir and
his diehard supporters, will believe the confessions.
However, ISA has helped to create a culture
of fear in our body politic. Few people would stand up to protest
the use of the ISA. In adding its voice to the many anti-ISA
voices, SUHAKAM has made an important contribution to changing
this culture of fear.
I believe that Malaysian society is beginning
to find a critical mass of people who will mobilise to remove
the ISA from our midst. Difficult as detention will be for the
ten imprisoned ‘reformasi activists’, their arrests will merely
swell the ranks of objectors to the ISA. The more principled
leaders of Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia, a member of BN, have
openly questioned the use of the ISA.
The use of the ISA will not put an end
to reformasi. Reformasi was not something created by a few individuals.
It is rooted in a broad and deep discontent with the Mahathir
regime because of the latter’s obstinate denial of its own injustice,
incompetence, lack of accountability and lack of human decency.
The regime’s latest use of the ISA can
only undercut the eroded legitimacy of the present leadership
and lead it to a further slide into ignominy. It is only a matter
of time before such a regime self-destructs.
Malaysian citizens should not allow this
sorry state of affairs to continue since it only insults their
intelligence, weakens their moral fibre and turns their country
into a pariah state in the eyes of global society. Is it too
much to expect this of them?
