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The main issue in Sanggang is the MB

By MGG Pillai

No less than the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, insists the Pahang mentri besar, Dato' Seri Adnan Yaakob's obscene sign on nomination day for the Sanggang state assembly by-election, is perfectly all right: he was only responding to opposition taunts. Just like the Prime Minister's famous prime time TV tutorial on masturbation after He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost was transmogrified from revered leader to National Enemy No. 1. (It does not matter, of course, that both should have been charged in court under the Minor Offences Ordinances; but they could not be; they are not from the Opposition.) So, when the UMNO secretary general, Tan Sri Khalil Yaakob, forces an election issue every where else but in Sanggang by complaining of the opposition distributing photographs of Dato' Seri Adnan's "perfectly legitimate" obscene sign to schoolchildren, UMNO becomes a laughing stock nationwide and ignored in Sanggang. Remember, the obsence sign is "perfectly legitimate" but should not be distribute them to school children; it would only politicise the children, you understand.

But Dato' Adnan Yaakob is the issue in Sanggang. Not just for his obscene sign nor for his wriggling buttocks routine, but he as an UMNO personality and mentri besar. He was not whom UMNO Pahang wanted, but He Who Thinks He is Lord Of All He Surveys insisted it be none else. This is UMNO's political difficulty. With the opposition occupying eight of the state assembly's 38 seats, and the National Front' papering over UMNO's internal fissures, worse now than at any time in the past, the Sanggang by-election is as much a test for UMNO as for Dato' Adnan Yaakob. It was he who wanted to re-open the award of a huge tract of land in Bukit Tinggi to Bolehland's international business man of unquestioned repute, when Tan Sri Khalid was mentri besar. It was not. But it was yet another creative attempt to get UMNO accept him as their leader, not by fiat but by his own standing.

The edge is with the National Front; a third of the electorate are non-Malays, with their pronounced procilivity to back the government in return for vague, unspecified but subsequently ignored promises of communal redress. But a National Front victory would raise questions of Malay representation. This should not have been. But the Elections Commission regularly gerrymandered the electoral rolls to reduce non-Malay constituencies, a tactic that worke so long as the Malay united behind UMNO. In the three East Coast largely Malay states, PAS swept to power in two and garnered half or more Malay votes in the November general elections. UMNO therefore has to be returned in Sanggang on Saturday if it is to convince itself that the November election results in Pahang was a freak one. But if it does with non-Malay support, the issue rises afresh. The Prime Minister hibernates during the campaign, awaking occasionally to insist upon a democracy in Pakistan which he would not countenance in his own country. His absence dissembles the National Front campaign, and strengthens the opposition effort. He had spent too many years establishing his dominance that any relaxation of that devalues in his absence.

PAS's immense success in Pahang, as in Kelantan in 1990 and Trengganu in 1999, is aided by the federal control of UMNO state governmentss. PAS capitalised on this and campaigned on the state taking control of its rights. They were not blatant about it, but one could see the trend. No political party can sweep the state as PAS did in Kelantan in 1990 and Trengganu in 1999 without gross dissatisfaction with the government. UMNO went to sleep in the two states, and not just there. Otherwise, how could the Opposition be returned to parliament with 60 additional seats if its total votes had increased by just one per cent more? In an election where the National Front should have dominated, it is PAS which has. The newspapers, besides reporting on federal and state election bribes to the voters of Sanggang, have ministers and senior UMNO officials decrying the opposition over that obscene sign.. But short of Dato' Seri Adnan's unqualified apology, which he would not, it is not about to go away. For whether the National Front retains Sanggang or not, Dato' Seri Adnan is the issue. If not, the pressure within Pahang UMNO for him to resign would escalate; if it does, the ice he walks on becomes so thin that he could disappear even if he against expectations becomes UMNO's darling in Pahang.