16-31 January 2002

Harakah (Front Page)

The BN supports polygamy for non-Muslims!

What passes for political debate in Malaysia is an irrelevant discussion on matters that are thrown, like a bone to a dog, and let the pariah dogs of the community fight for it. So, it was not unusual that the Peoples' Progressive Party -- in which the three words, jointly and severally, is a fiction -- should throw that bone.

It wants to be seen as a mover and shaker of the Malaysian agenda. So, at its recent annual assembly, its youth leader, Mr T. Murugiah, provided just that: polygamy for non-Muslims. Its women's leader thought it a great idea and would welcome her husband to take another wife.

The women's groups and non-governmental organisations are horrified, and rushed in to the kill. Newspapers carried a range of views from the people what they thought of this politically incorrect suggestion. Even the minister for women's affairs, Datin Shahrizat Jalil, could not contain herself from attacking it.

While it lasted, it diverted attention from the larger issues of the day, that it was more important to discuss a non-issue as polygamy for non-Muslims, than if in the light of UMNO's political predicament it would not be the right time to release the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, from prison to save its skin.

But in this inconsequential debate, the larger issue is ignored. No Barisan Nastional leader, from the Prime Minister done, came to tell Malaysians Mr Murugiah was talking through his hat. Even his party leader, Dato' M. Kayveas, did not rein in his youth leader for talking nonsense. (But when he himself speaks nonsense most of the time, how could he rein in others who do?)

Polygamy for non-Muslims is a non-issue. The Civil Marriages Act was made law only years after it was passed and only after this vexatious problem was ironed out. But the government did not think it right to point this out. When it did not, one must assume that what Mr Murugiah said is universally accepted by the Barisan Nasional.

It highlights a little spoken view of Malaysian politics: that the political agenda is dictated by BN. It does not take long for the DAP to comment on any statement the BN makes, almost like a performing seal, so that public debate is devalued.

The opposition's failure is its inability to put forth a consistent policy. They are not a government-in-waiting, but a group of political parties unable to distinguish the needs of their own programmes and of a desirable unity to make the electors believe they should be given a chance. Its gains reflect not its own competence but the BN's travails and problems.

And for a very good reason. It is the fear within the National Front or BN, and especially UMNO, that the solid non-Malay support it now has might wither away, and it must find new incentives to keep it on its side. As usual, these things are not thought through. The reality struck in only after the fact that whatever they said would damn them. So, Dato' Seri Dr Ling Liong Sik of the MCA (Has he only one wife?) kept quiet; so Dato' Seri Dr Lim Kheng Yaik (ditto); Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu (ditto), and others (ditto) decided on discretion as the better part of valour.

So, the highminded and high falluting discussion of a few days vanished into thin air. No one talks of it now. The PPP got its name in the newspapers so that Malaysians now have ample evidence of an irrelevant flea in the Barisan Nasional's tail.

It somersaults like a performing monkey to make itself relevant and it seems to be ignored even by those in the National Front who think highly of it in public.

But the PPP is a chameleon like its name: The Seenivasagam brothers turned their Perak Progressive Party into the People's Progressive Party. The present leaders seem intent on turning it the People's Polygamous Party or even the Polygamous Progressive Party. It does not matter which. A monkey is always a monkey. Or to put it another way: a leopard cannot change its spots. -- MGG