[Pihak kami sedang berusaha untuk menterjemahkan atau mengolah rencana yang menarik ini. Nampak jelas sesuatu yang terbang semakin tinggi akan jatuh dan terhempas sehingga berkecai nanti (the higher you fly, the harder you will fall).

Rakyat sendiri akan membayar kesemua kerugian itu termasuk generasi yang mengampu dan tidak mengerti. Mahathir gemar berlakun lagi tetapi dia hanya mempercepatkan panggilan kubur buat dirinya dan Umno bersekali. - Editor]

Source: The Bangkok Post [http://www.bangkokpost.net/] 1st January 2001

Mahathir thumbs nose at Chinese community

Divide and rule is a strategy as old as politics itself, and few have used it to such good advantage as the Malaysian prime minister. But sometimes he appears to flirt too heavily with danger.

By S.H.Chong, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok Post

Say what you will about Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, but there is one thing even his greatest rivals acknowledge: The man is a master politician.

As leader of Malaysia for the past 20 years, Dr Mahathir has fought many epic battles against forces as diverse as the royal family, the judiciary, a breakaway faction of his own party and, most recently, his own former deputy prime minister. He has emerged triumphant in all cases.

But there have been some setbacks, and the most recent should serve as a real wake-up call. His National Front coalition lost to the opposition Alternative Front in the hotly contested Lunas by-election in the northern Malaysian state of Kedah in late November.

This was a blow to Dr Mahathir on several counts. Firstly, the National Front had controlled Lunas for the past four decades. Secondly, Kedah is the prime minister's home state. Thirdly, analysis of the voting pattern revealed that almost all the newly registered voters (mainly young people) voted for the opposition. And lastly, and perhaps most significantly, the majority of Chinese voters in Lunas voted for the opposition.

In the last general election, in November 1999, the National Front won with a convincing two-thirds majority, largely with the overwhelming support of the Chinese community. The Malays, who make up the majority in Malaysia, were split right down the middle with almost exactly 50% voting for the opposition.

Many Malays are still angry over Dr Mahathir's 1998 surprise sacking of Anwar Ibrahim as deputy prime minister. Anwar currently is in jail after being found guilty for corruption and s###my. He denies all charges and claims to be the victim of a political conspiracy.

This placed the Chinese in the unique position of kingmakers and in the general election, they sided with Dr Mahathir. Analysts believe the reason the Alternative Front failed to garner the support of the Chinese was largely because the key player in the opposition team is the fundamentalist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party which wants to turn Malaysia into an Islamic state (something most Chinese fear).

A lot has happened since then. On National Day, Aug 31, this year, for some inexplicable reason Dr Mahathir lashed out at an influential Chinese lobby group called Suqiu (Malaysian Chinese Organisations Election Appeal Committee), calling it extremist and equating it with communists and a violent Islamic cult which staged an armed revolt earlier this year.

Suqiu earlier had lodged a 17-point appeal which touched on a range of issues including human rights, women's rights, corruption and environmental concerns. Its most controversial request was to "take steps to abolish in all aspects the bumiputra/non-bumiputra distinction". (Bumiputra refers to indigenous races, mainly Malays, who enjoy special privileges in a wide range of economic, social and educational areas).

Dr Mahathir's National Day outburst sent shockwaves across the country, especially among the Chinese community because the government had agreed to give an audience to Suqiu prior to the general election. Although the government made no commitment to accepting any of the appeals made by the group, the meeting was seen as a very conciliatory gesture. Suqiu has the support of over 2000 Chinese organisations across the country.

Some observers attribute Dr Mahathir's unexpected attack on Suqiu to a misguided attempt to unite the Malays (by giving them a common "enemy" to rally against). As if to add insult to injury, just a few days before the Lunas by-election, Dr Mahathir told the Chinese community it should be grateful to the government for saving Chinese businessmen during the Asian economic crisis.

Most Chinese found this statement highly insulting because it was mainly well-connected Malay businessmen who received the most help from the government during the economic crisis. Analysts believe Dr Mahathir's comments prior to the Lunas election upset the Chinese enough to cause them to vote for the opposition.

Many would have thought that Dr Mahathir would have learned his lesson and back down on these issues, but no. In line with his belligerent character, he refused to retract his National Day statement about Suqiu.

In his recent Christmas message, Dr Mahathir promised to take "firm action" against any attempts by any quarters to "destroy our racial harmony by playing on sensitive issues like religion and race".

Suqiu has issued a statement saying it respects and supports all the fundamental principles of the national constitution, particularly "the special positions of the Malays and natives of any of the states of Sabah and Sarawak". Therefore, it said, any interpretation of the contents of Suqiu's appeals should be based within this context. The group, however, has not withdrawn its appeals.

A Malay lobby group known as the Federation of Peninsular Malay Students (better known by its Malay acronym, GPMS) also has threatened to hold a 100,000 member-strong protest rally unless Suqiu withdraws its appeals. Opposition leaders openly have questioned whether the GPMS would act without the tacit approval of Dr Mahathir's United Malays National Organisation (Umno), the leading component of the National Front ruling coalition government.

Lim Kit Siang of the opposition Democratic Action Party (a component of the Alternative Front) has said there are "powerful forces" within Umno "who do not want the Suqiu controversy to end and miss the opportunity to escalate ethnic tensions to create a crisis atmosphere to justify a repetition of another Operation Lalang".

He was referring to a government crackdown in 1987 following racial tension between some Malay and Chinese groups. More than 100 people were arrested under the Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without trial. Among those detained were many of Dr Mahathir's political opponents, including the Democratic Action Party's Mr Lim who was held for nearly two years.

While the GPMS and Dr Mahathir are busy berating Suqiu (and indirectly, the Chinese) the Alternative Front is reaching out to the group.

"What Suqiu demands is reformation," said Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, the wife of former deputy prime minister Anwar and president of Keadilan (another component party of the Alternative Front). She urged the people not to condemn the Chinese before reading Suqiu's 17-point appeal, and said that her husband had earlier this year expressed how proud he was of the more than 2000 Chinese organisations for putting forward all their concerns to the government.

The next general election is still four years away and that is a long time. Perhaps by then, the Chinese community will have forgotten all the insults hurled its way this year. But, it is unlikely that Suqiu will be disbanded any time soon. It will keep the appeals alive, and the opposition, if it is smart, will not let the matter die off either.

Another important point to consider is that by 2004, there will be a whole new group of young voters who did not get the chance to participate in the last general election. If the voting pattern of new voters in Lunas is anything to go by, the government will be hard pressed to win them over.

So, is this whole Suqiu mess going to be Dr Mahathir's Waterloo? The answer is a definite maybe. But it depends on so many other factors, in particular whether the Alternative Front can tone down the Islamic fundamentalist image of its key component, the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party.

But, by hitting out at the very community that helped keep him in power during the last general election, Dr Mahathir is doing himself no favours. Perhaps Keadilan deputy president Chandra Muzaffar put it best when he said that it is not the Chinese who should be grateful to Dr Mahathir, but rather it is Dr Mahathir "who should be grateful to the Chinese".