TYPHOON TROPHY HAS BEGUN IN TRENGGANU

FLAGGING-OFF THE TYPHOON TROPHY IN TRENGGANU –

TIME FOR A SEA-TIGER

No sooner had he arrived in his home state, Sultan Mizan of Trengganu, who is presently the Malaysian King, was reported to have said Islam [in Malaysia] had become a confusion after Dr. Mahathir had taken power over it [in 1988], and he wanted the power back.

He was obviously referring to Pak Lah’s lovey-dovey hand-on-the-shoulder stunning exhibitionism with James Bond’s woman, Michelle Yeoh. He did it before the camera during the 2007 Monsoon Cup, which would have been as good as unbuttoning his fly in public. He could not be bothered with the local culture, just as he couldn't be bothered with the floods in Johor that took 17 lives in 2006.

The public lovey-dovey display was unacceptable anywhere in the Islamic world, the episode becoming the centre-spread in the Pas’ tabloid, Harakah, during the recent elections.

Michelle isn’t quite the kind of celebrity that would fit into the culture zone of the first Malay state in the peninsular to have received Islam. The religion had reached Trengganu in the 14th century, long before Paremeswara married the Muslim princess of Pasai in 1409. The world’s best Qur’an reader for many years (until she chose to retire) had come from Trengganu.

Pak Lah, having attired himself as the leader of “Civilizational Islam” (Islam Hadhari) which Mahathir launched in 1999, should have known better.

But something vicarious could have been lying hidden in the “Nice Guy”, “Mr. Clean” and the “pious Islamic scholar” people did not know about and had discovered with the Monsoon Cup. To all appearances, he could not keep his hands off her.

It was conduct unbecoming of the Imam of Islam Hadhari, especially after his loyal Menteri Besar, Idris Jusoh, had churned for the state’s slogan, “Trengganu Bestari, Islam Hadhari” (A Knowledge-based Trengganu [and] Civilizational Islam]. It has now become a suicide bid.

The regnant refused to swear-in Idris for a second term and chose instead, Ahmad Said, nearly an unknown but better than the notorious.

Much money from the state’s oil royalty had gone to waste in the Monsoon Cup caper, an annual event that was believed to have been used to siphon off a lot of money from the state’s coffer, the beneficiaries of which were identified personalities closely related to Pak Lah. The people now want them proven corrupt and locked up.

But Sultan Mizan’s remark about the bedlam resulting from Mahathir’s takeover of religious power from the states went further than the Monsoon Cup and the alleged embezzlement.

Mahathir’s infamous knockout of the Lord President and three Supreme Court judges in 1988 gave him greater influence over the Judiciary than any previous Prime Ministers had had. Then in the same year he complemented that with the constitutional amendment now known as 121 (1A).

The amendment virtually sqwarked the nation into two legal and judicial systems and as a result, while Mahathir became a dictator, Muslims and non-Muslims in Malaysia rued the evil of the near-absolute power he enjoyed.

Many persons were sent directly into detention camps and were wasted for years in them for practicing or teaching ‘deviant Islam’. Religious rehabilitation centers were built and many young persons were thrown into them for years for petty offences like being caught eating in a public place in the month of Ramadhan, or for buying the Digit Lotteries.

Muslims are free to eat and drink in the restaurants and food-stalls in Mecca and Medinah or anywhere else in the world during Ramadhan. This law and many like it occur only in Malaysia.

Mahathir progressed from dictator to ending his career with the great Putrajaya few approved and which plopped the residence of Prime Minister, Seri Perdana, into an obvious feudal setting, in isolation from his ministers and minions cast by a lake he crossed with umpteen bridges people can hardly understand what they were for.

It does seem like he had built for himself his own Camelot where he intended to remain all his blessed life but failed.

It is clear Sultan Mizan had flagged-off in Trengganu the Typhoon Trophy in place of the Monsoon Cup, which has surely come to an end.

In the twists of the unfolding plot Mahathir called for a foreign accountant firm to be hired to audit the spending of Trengganu’s oil revenue. His foes replied they want him scanned for financial traffic of similar sorts when he had been PM.

It’s a setting for carnival time. One or the others may, in fact, run themselves into goal.
Mahathir cannot champion anti-corruption, surely. He is himself popularly known in Malaysia as the Father of Corruption. Never was Malaysia as corrupt as she had been under his 22 years at the helm.

It has apparently become worse under Pak Lah but the rot quite certainly started with Mahathir.

He is proud to have made a few billionaires and several hundred millionaires among Malays. But most of these have merely become rentiers.

He succeeded to industrialize Malaysia, mainly with the help of the Japanese who now number more than 1,600 companies. He also succeeded to provide Malaysia with a broad-based economy that has been able to withstand severe downturns of the world economy. But morally he eroded the social resistance to the degree even the judiciary became corruption-pliant.

Mahathir has disqualified himself as a fighter against corruption and is merely observed as clowning. He has failed to keep the loyalty even of his protegé, Zainuddin Maidin, who he nurtured as a close aide from a newspaper stringer to become editor-in-chief of the leading Malay newspaper, Utusan Melayu, and then to the heights of Minister of Information.

The man swiped him several times since and recently held him also accountable for the BN crash on 8 March in which the former journalist was unseated in Sungai Petani, Kedah.

Tengku Razaleigh, a noble Kelantan prince who had been Malaysia’s Minister of Finance, is in relative terms, whiter than white, and when he lost to Mahathir by 43 votes in 1987, instead of ranting and cursing himself out of breath the man fasted for three months (or more) and prayed to his Lord so much he showed a mark on his forehead from the frequent prostrations.

I asked him then whether he was sure he was not overdoing it.

He told me in reply his mother had taught him when the time comes for him to take the taste of a fall, he must remember he has a Friend in God and ‘ He is your only reliable Friend. Hold fast to Him and perhaps one day what is yours that you seek will find you instead.’

I had been a witness to that good news that had secured him in his worst hours and he should now rely on God again. This time he will probably win.

But the important thing is not about that. Instead it is about what he will do with the acquired power and the distribution of that power. Will he promise us a mature democracy with the cherished freedoms and rights?

Will he promise us on his honor to rid us of all the oppressive laws and provide for us social justice?

What are his promises to us he must quickly say. It takes a first drop to release the forces for an ocean to flood the valleys and the plains. ---- a. ghani ismail, 1 April, 2008