COMMENT Things must be awfully muddled in the state of the nation.

More so when two lamenters of the malady agree the situation is dire but their diagnoses differ and so do their nostrums.
     
Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad recalls a celebrated line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark”, to convey his disquiet over what is happening in Malaysia.

PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang sympathises with those outraged by the verdict in the Anwar Ibrahim sodomy appeal, an outcome its denunciators say is indicative of something terribly wrong with the country’s criminal justice system.

But critics of the ailment are not likely to concur with Hadi’s prescription which is the syariah law.

Mahathir cites as the main cause of the rot strange goings-on in the business and economic sphere in Malaysia.

The acts and deeds of an unspecified few, he argues, give off an acrid stench that has infected business in Malaysia.

Just when many are staggered by the judgment in the Anwar sodomy appeal at the highest court in the land, Mahathir interjects nicely - some would say deviously - to skew the perception of enveloping malaise to the service of his agenda.

Mahathir is always a person with an agenda; only the politically naive would bother any more to infer what it is.

Better to know his modus operandi than to know his goals.

Presently, his manner of proceeding is to lever the outrage at the verdict in the Anwar appeal to achieve his goal.

It takes a certain skill at dissembling, hallowed by a political theorist who lived and wrote his amoral manual in the chaotic Italian states of the 15th century, to exploit the effects of something you are glad to see happen for the advancement of a goal not necessarily compatible with that demanded by the disgruntled.  

No such chicanery can justly be ascribed to the head of the of Malaysia’s Islamist party.

Hadi (right) and much of PAS have been unwavering in espousing Shariah law as a panacea for our afflictions.

They have long avowed the purity of their motives for espousing this cause.

So it’s scarcely surprising that Hadi should take the current outrage at the Anwar sodomy verdict as occasion to push for the desirability - by reason of its justness - of Islamic law.

How marvellously simple would be the way of determining if Anwar had sodomised his sometime aide, Saiful Bukhari Azlan, if the latter had, as per the requisites of Islamic law, to produce four witness of moral repute to the actual deed!

‘Incident’ during central committee meeting

But bad luck for Hadi’s espousal for Islamic law is the incident alleged to have occurred during the central committee meeting of PAS last Sunday.

On the face of it, the matter is of no great import, though some would contend that the violent conduct alleged to have occurred in the course of a meeting of top leaders of a party of Islamic repute cannot be dismissed as trifling.

Still, the incident and the reactions of alleged witnesses sheds a coruscating light on the Malaysian variant of a human condition for which Mahathir has a diagnosis and Hadi a prescription.

The alleged facts, as outlined in a report in The Malaysian Insider, were that at the PAS meeting the presiding Hadi was asked by central committee member Hanipa Maidin (left) if he had seen the demonstration staged by supporters of the president outside the party headquarters.

These demonstrators carried placards and clamoured for the sacking of deputy president Mohamad Sabu and party election director Dr Hatta Ramli.

Hadi was alleged to have denied knowledge of the demonstration, though there are photographs showing him arriving at the PAS office as demonstrators milled around.

Hadi’s denial elicited this retort from Hanipa: “This is the problem when the president is weak and not the president of all.”

This retort irked Hadi’s supporters who demanded Hanipa retract his comment.

It was then that Razman Zakaria, PAS commissioner for Perak, stood up, walked towards Hanipa and smacked him on the back twice.

Only Hanipa commented on the report after it had appeared in Insider.

His remarks were a model of studied ambiguity.

Hanipa termed the report “speculation”, disavowed responsibility to confirm or deny the incident, underscored the impropriety of venting central committee matters in public, made ingratiating remarks about “my friend” Razman, and attested the fortitude of Hadi in facing internally voiced criticisms.

All in all, it was a display of nuanced political statement.

But what of the truth of the incident - did it occur or did it not?

What must have motivated Haipa’s ambiguity? Politics, of course.

What must have been behind Hadi’s denial of knowledge of the demonstration if he had seen it as he arrived for the meeting? Politics, again.

In sum, it is politics that deforms the promptings to truth-telling, just as it is politics that prevents the logic of business from gaining ascendancy over mere political calculation, a situation that menaces economic life in Malaysia, says Mahathir.

Just as the nexus between politics and business, a connection fostered during the 22 years that Mahathir was premier of Malaysia, has debilitated our economy, so has political interference in our judiciary, brazenly done in the instance of Salleh Abbas’s impeachment under Mahathir, has warped our judiciary.

There is no insulation - Islamic or otherwise - against the play of politics on human character and motivation.

Only deductive reason and the courage of honest conviction by individuals and collectives are insurance.


TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.