by Khoo Boo Teik
When the past catches up with us in our lives, it often does so as a shock. Rarely do we feel such a shock more greatly than when we head for new directions thinking we have left behind old problems and obsolete ways of doing things. Such, when they reappear, make us wonder if we are more than mere captives of circumstances or creatures of habits that die hard.
In the life of a nation the past doesn't just catch up but it continually haunts. And it never haunts more eerily than when people look to a future freed of age-old taints and stains only to find that new visions quickly surrender to ancient ambitions, passions and suspicions.
The result is people are left feeling that 'nothing has changed'. It is a sinking feeling that many Reformasi supporters will have known in the light of Parti KeADILan Nasional's recent turmoil.
The turmoil was apparently fueled by discontent over several issues that deservingly or otherwise revolved around keADILan deputy president, Dr Chandra Muzaffar.
Teluk Kemang And The Webmasters
Some time before nomination day for the Teluk Kemang by-election of 10 June, Chandra was reported to have threatened his party's withdrawal from Barisan Alternatif if keADILan was not picked to contest the by-election.
Around then, too, there were murmurs that Chandra opposed a proposal for keADILan to merge with Parti Rakyat Malaysia, apparently an idea that had substantial support within keADILan.
Ahead of the Teluk Kemang by-election, another issue surfaced when the webmasters of five Reformasi sites waged a 'campaign of reflection' on the future of Reformasi by 'blacking out' their sites for several days.
While some of the sites' regular visitors agonized over this 'information hunger strike', it leaked out that the webmasters meant to accuse Chandra and keADILan secretary-general, Mohd Anuar Tahir, of 'not adhering to Anwar Ibrahim's instructions'.
In the event Chandra denied having issued an ultimatum to BA. The keADILan-PRM merger is being explored. No webmaster clarified what Anwar's instructions were. KeADILan's Ruslan Kasim lost in Teluk Kemang (although he slashed Barisan Nasional's 1999 majority by 40 per cent).
Marina's Allegations
All that didn't prevent a further controversy from erupting on 26 June when malaysiakini.com published a letter from Marina Yusoff to Chandra.
Marina had just resigned as keADILan vice-president for 'health and business' reasons. Were her letter recent and brief, the matter might have stopped there. Even its complaint of 'too much time (being) wasted by those jostling for power and undermining each other' might have been read as a well-intended warning from someone who had party interests at heart.
But Marina's letter was dated 13 January 2000 and 'anonymously received' by malaysiakini five months later. Each of the '12 points' in the letter was a pointed accusation against Chandra.
Marina's letter alleged that Chandra had misrepresented things to Anwar Ibrahim and ignored Anwar's 'written instructions'. The letter also claimed that Chandra had 'harassed' keADILan president, Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, packed keADILan's Political Bureau with Chandra's supporters and turned party meetings into 'monologues'.
KeADILan's Handling
Ten days before the appearance of Marina's letter, malaysiakini carried an interview with Chandra by Ahmad Lufti Othman. In that interview Chandra spoke of problems concerning keADILan but made no reference to Marina. Chandra was overseas when Marina's letter was published. He has since written a letter to Marina, and released a statement replying partly to her charges.
KeADILan tried to rise above this incident. Wan Azizah described it as a 'personal matter' while the party's general assembly elected without any fuss a new vice-president, Zainur Zakaria. KeADILan vice-president Tian Chua was earlier reported to have said that some quarters were trying to undermine Marina's position, but more recently said only that the party's supreme council hadn't taken a stand on the issue.
On the whole, however, the controversies retained an air of mystery not cleared by a sufficiently transparent handling.
Such an omission in our political climate was an open invitation to Malaysians (habitual consumers of conspiracy theories) to sniff out hidden hands, secret agendas and ulterior motives. Sure enough, detractors of both Chandra and Marina rushed letters to malaysiakini, some attacking the former and others denouncing the latter.
Remain Healthily Sceptical
What are less impetuous outsiders, concerned Malaysians or Reformasi supporters to make of these developments?
They can, of course, condemn the webmasters for colluding in a form of internet tyranny to oust from keADILan people they deemed to be 'insufficiently dedicated to Anwar's cause'.
Alternatively they can dismiss Chandra as a party autocrat who abuses his 'idealism' to preach 'moral principles' that more properly belong to a non-governmental organization and not a political party battling for survival.
Or they can suspect Marina of timing the release of her letter to inflict maximum damage on keADILan in return for personal benefit (either related to business or her prosecution for sedition).
For the moment, however, what we have is a classic Malaysian political spectacle wherein opponents trade accusations and 'refutations' without anyone offering incontrovertible evidence to prove the correctness of their position.
Not for the first time, Malaysians should resist the temptation of accepting either that 'there is no smoke without fire' or that 'if you fling enough mud, some of it will stick'. If the Anwar affair taught us nothing else, it should have taught us to be healthily sceptical of unproven accusations and premature verdicts.
Political Change and keADILan's Birth
About keADILan's turmoil, it is likely we won't know 'the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth'. So help
us God, it would be tragic if we now despair that ours is a society that can never change for the better.
KeADILan's continued existence contains one small truth about our recent past: Political change is attainable even if the process is imperfect and produces parties and politicians who mix bits of a better future with bytes of a lousy past.
Recall that keADILan was born in crisis, weeks before Anwar's first trial ended with his conviction. The party's leadership was hastily assembled. Its membership was unsystematically recruited. Its direction was ambivalent.
KeADILan had a broad leadership mix of ex-UMNO politicians, NGO activists and Anwaristas of different shades. It couldn't help being ideologically non-unified and largely untested. The combination of dissimilar figures meant that different agendas were bound to contest for priority and emphasis.
KeADILan's membership, nominally multiethnic, was mostly Malay and young, full of initiative and energy. Except for those who left UMNO, they were generally unaccustomed to party politics. Their organizational affiliation, if any, tended to be with Islamic groupings such as Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia and Jemaah Islah Malaysia. Their ideological convergence was summed up in the popular slogans of 1998-99: Justice for Anwar! and 'Undur Mahathir!'
Until BA developed its Joint Manifesto and People's Budget, KeADILan lacked a coherent programme. If there was one, it was based on a relatively loose understanding of Reformasi as contained in Anwar's Permatang Pauh Declaration.
This programme was constantly pulled in two main directions. Everyone knew there would have been no Reformasi without Anwar. Everyone also knew Reformasi couldn't go places if it didn't go 'beyond Anwar'.
Organisation Stresses
These characteristics of leadership, membership and direction brought keADILan its main strength of a popular base but also organizational stresses and ideological differences.
Given time to overcome its teething problems, keADILan's leadership might have developed a reliable framework for resolving such difficulties through skillful diplomacy and compromise. But the party had to face a general election within months of its existence.
In the past, some parties were able to construct viable organizational structures and efficient electoral machinery 'at the last minute' around large breakaway factions or even whole and tested parties.
The core of Parti Melayu Semangat '46 in 1990 was the Team B of the United Malays National Organization. In 1984, Parti Bersatu Sabah was formed from a big splinter of Parti Berjaya. In 1969, Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia was built around the United Democratic Party, cohesive remnants from Labor Party, and politically experienced trade unionists.
KeADILan enjoyed no such advantage. The reputedly large contingent of 'Anwar's boys and girls' in UMNO didn't defect in as large a number as some had expected. Other than ABIM leaders perhaps, the NGO activists who boosted keADILan's leadership could summon few troops. Numbers aren't everything in politics, but party structures and networks can't be built out of spirit alone.
Add these factors to the pressures of the time. Mix in personal ambitions. Throw in 'different agendas'. And one can imagine patience wearing thin and tempers fraying at meetings that quickly turned into heated quarrels.
Hence Marina's account of keADILan's squabbles over seat allocations and candidate selections for the November 1999 general election is plausible even if one doesn't want prematurely to judge her role and culpability as well as those of the individuals named in her letter.
History, not Despair
Had Anwar been free, things might have turned out differently. Anwar could have used his personal stature, experience and the enormous sympathy for his predicament to unify the disparate elements, differing agendas and divergent loyalties in keADILan's leadership and membership.
But Anwar was in jail, rendered almost incommunicado, and permitted to emerge only in court. He couldn't have run a political party. Beyond being BA's rallying point he couldn't have been a source of instructions, written or otherwise, on strategy and practical details of agenda-setting or problem-solving.
The rest, as people like to say, is history. Even so, is it a history that should drive anyone to despair?
Looking back, what was BA if not keADILan writ large in the circumstances of 1999? Like
keADILan, BA found ways for a diverse opposition to cooperate. Like keADILan, BA was sustained by high levels of public debate and political consciousness.
BA's limited gains in November 1999, like Reformasi's incomplete progress, indicated directions for political change which few had imagined possible after BN's landslide victory in April 1995.
Managing Dissension
No political party is immune to internal differences, personal disagreements, and periodic quarrels.
Has there been a Malaysian party that in its early years didn't suffer turmoil similar to keADILan's? Just recall Onn Jaafar's exit from UMNO, Lim Chong Eu's departure from the Malaysian Chinese Association, and Gerakan's split.
Each of these incidents, far worse than what's happened in keADILan so far, happened under conditions far more favourable than those which attended keADILan's birth.
I'm not trying to put a touchy-feely spin on keADILan's present troubles. Those are genuine enough, and more may come. If, for example, the keADILan-PRM merger takes place, no one should be so na�ve as to think that the merger will only shower synergy but not bring its share of internal differences and dissension.
But disagreements within a party's leadership aren't resolved if those who leave as well as those who stay can cite nothing more worthy of quarrel than 'personal motives', 'hidden agendas', 'outside interference', and all manner of fitnah and tohmah.
Haven't we seen enough of that in the Anwar affair?
When keADILan was born it promised a breath of fresh air to blow away the stench of the Anwar affair which had reached 'beyond UMNO' into the very bowels of our political institutions.
KeADILan embodied a vision of a future that could break with what had become an unbearable past. That was what attracted the young and the old, politicians and activists, Anwaristas and concerned citizens to Reformasi in the first place.
The truly critical question, therefore, is what will become of keADILan after this bout, and who knows how many more bouts, of turmoil.
New Perspectives on Democracy
KeADILan leaders should be uncompromisingly realistic if they don't want to render themselves irrelevant to future politics.
Support for keADILan came mainly from the Anwar affair. Yet it came more deeply from new perspectives on democracy, reform and social justice in Malaysian society that are opposed to old ways of manipulative politics and authoritarian leadership.
KeADILan's significance is its insistence thus far that the way forward for Malaysian society is a multiethnic politics founded upon those new perspectives. To translate significance into reality, the party faces genuinely difficult tasks of providing a popular programme and an effective organization within BA's framework.
If keADILan is to perform these tasks satisfactorily and achieve real advances for Malaysian society, the 'party of reform' must find creative means to institutionalize mechanisms for resolving differences. Only then can the party avoid the spectre of each instance of dissension ending in spitting, smearing and bloodletting.
Either that, or the tensions between the new and the old in keADILan will turn uglier and uglier before resulting in the party's self-destruction.
