Malaysia's Svengali
comment In the era before the inception of web news portals in the late 1990s and, a few years later, of socio-political blogs, political judgment in Malaysia hinged on knowledge of the facts behind the published news.
Unless you were an insider – and that too, depended on which particular circles you hobnobbed with – you had to engage in intelligent conjecture about what was really going on, with a subscription to the Far Eastern Economic Review to put the mosaic together.
comment In the era before the inception of web news portals in the late 1990s and, a few years later, of socio-political blogs, political judgment in Malaysia hinged on knowledge of the facts behind the published news.
Unless you were an insider – and that too, depended on which particular circles you hobnobbed with – you had to engage in intelligent conjecture about what was really going on, with a subscription to the Far Eastern Economic Review to put the mosaic together.
Otherwise, you were dependent on what the powers-that-be felt it was safe for you to know, via publications whose renewal of annual licences relied on compliance with the Home Ministry’s concept of news management.
There was none worse as home minister than Ghazali Shafie, who held a Svengali-like influence over his domain. (Svengali was the villainous hypnotist in George du Maurier’s 1894 novel ‘Trilby’.)
'King Ghaz' died on Sunday at the age of 88. Between the early 1970s and the mid-1980s, he was a member of the cabinet, holding the portfolios of special functions, information, home affairs and foreign affairs.
As home minister, he showed an early feel for the art of manipulating the news. One instance was when he paid a sympathy visit to victims of a fire at the low-cost Pekeliling Flats in Kuala Lumpur in 1971.
Aware of the presence of news photographers, Ghazali - who could mime warmth perfectly for the cameras - hugged the nearest victim as the flashbulbs popped. As soon as the photographers’ attention was diverted, he dropped the victim and proceeded to the next photo opportunity.
A man of vaulting ambition, Ghazali had his eyes on the top posts in Umno but his arrogance prevented his chances of anything beyond an ordinary seat in the party’s supreme council.
Ambition thwarted
How a man of his obvious intelligence could not see that his arrogance would make him unpopular with Umno’s delegates - then mainly from the teaching profession - remains one of the mysteries of his career. Had he been less arrogant, he would surely have occupied one of the three vice-presidential slots by January 1976.
That would have been the springboard to the deputy premiership, because he was the preferred candidate of newly-elevated premier Hussein Onn (right) who had taken over following Abdul Razak Hussein’s death on Jan 15, 1976.
As Hussein dithered over the choice, incumbent vice-presidents Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, Ghafar Baba and Dr Mahathir Mohamad combined to tell him that the candidate, by tradition, should come from their ranks.
Hussein took three months to make a decision. In that period, Ghazali remained confident that he would be Hussein’s choice as deputy prime minister.
Ghazali’s friends had even prepared a celebration in his honour at the Lake Club in Kuala Lumpur on the evening of the intended announcement in April 1976. But Mahathir was picked instead.
A host of intellectuals, including academician Syed Husin Ali and journalist A Samad Ismail, would pay the price in detention under the Internal Security Act for thwarting Ghazali’s prime ministerial ambitions.
In the 1970s, the pretext for these manifestations of repressive power was the need to halt communist plots.
These days the search for ‘bogeymen’ is covered not by the need to check for ideological, but sexual, deviancy - as in allegations against Anwar Ibrahim.
In Ghazali’s time and now, the exercise of repressive power is conducted under the guise of piety, by persons who are anything but respectful of the same.
TERENCE NETTO is a former journalist.
