Brendan Pereira on Monday: 'Arrest and jail me' if you dare
New Straits Times (Columns)
18 Sep 2006
Brendan Pereira 

GET ready for some pap between now and the Umno general assembly in November.

It will come pickled and bottled as legitimate concerns and packaged as barbs made in the interest of religion, race and country.

This period will be marked by saturation attacks on Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and will continue as long as the band of malcontents are not rebuffed or exposed for what they are.

Nothing will be sacred or off-limits between now and November.

Every tactic from the desperate to the ingenious will be employed between now and November. Why? Because the agitators have their eyes on the ultimate prize — a return to the corridors of power.

It will be a confusing time for many Malaysians as they seek to separate the wheat from the chaff, as they try to come to grips with the accusations and counter-accusations made by men who once shared a dream and vision for this country.

Perhaps the only way to make some sense of what is going to come next is to dissect and digest what has been said and done over the past few months.

So it has come down to this

After nearly four months of bellyaching and saying that all he wanted were answers from a government that had reversed his policies, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad came clean last week, days after his move to become a delegate to the Umno general assembly ended in defeat.

There was no fudging. No spinning. No doublespeak. Only the truth.

"Either he changes or he steps down," he told reporters, issuing an ultimatum to Abdullah.

For months, the former prime minister dressed up his criticisms of the Prime Minister as words of concern from someone who wanted to know why a clutch of his policies were being changed. He dismissed politicians or newspaper columnists who suggested that he was seeking to unseat Abdullah as off-the-mark.

This is what he said on June 7: "I can’t have him removed. It is for his own party to remove him. For Umno to remove him. I’m not helping or going around campaigning and telling people to please remove this man."

This is what he said on Aug 13: "It’s up to Umno to decide, not me. I have no way of trying to topple the Prime Minister."

Last Tuesday, Dr Mahathir ended the charade and confirmed what most people suspected — that he was looking for regime change.

"Either he changes or he steps down."

From now on, his comments cannot be lightly dismissed as the ranting of a temperamental politician pushed to the edge by failure, caught in the heat of the moment when his disappointment was at its height. He is a politician seeking to use any means to return to power. Nothing more, nothing less.

Imitation the best form of flattery?

Remember 1998. That was the year Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was sacked from the government, arrested and thrown into jail and beaten by the former Inspector-General of Police.

Remember what happened after that? There were street demonstrations, a major split in the Malay community and the government suffered nearly four years of upheaval and discomfort.

Dr Mahathir was assailed on the Internet and attacked mercilessly by the alternative media. Overnight, newspapers sprouted up like mushrooms after rain. Those were trying times for the then prime minister.

Dr Mahathir may still dislike or even hate Anwar, but it is quite clear from recent statements that he has been willing to borrow heavily from his former deputy’s playbook. Think about it. For some weeks now, he has been throwing a challenge to the authorities: arrest me and throw me into jail.

The man who led Malaysia for 22 years knows that there will be a groundswell of unhappiness if he was handcuffed and led away like a common criminal.

He knows that the single act of elite police personnel going into Anwar’s house in Bukit Damansara and taking him away brought heaps of sympathy and support for the former deputy prime minister.

He also knows that locking up a former prime minister could bring irreparable damage to the government, both at home and abroad. More so an administration that has put transparency, justice and the rule of law on a pedestal.

But it will be a tricky period for the government from now on. Days after he was sacked in 1998, Anwar travelled around the country, drawing large crowds.

He ripped into his former mentor, senior Umno politicians and institutions like the police and judiciary.

On several occasions, he charged that the police were zooming in on him, calling on him to halt his nightly backyard rallies and denying him permission to speak in public.

"They are polite but becoming less tolerant," Anwar said. He warned the government that they could not silence him.

Fast forward to last Tuesday.

Despite his election loss in Kubang Pasu, Dr Mahathir said he would not "stop exposing this government’s misdeeds".

"You can try to shut me out but I have got a big mouth. I am going to use this big mouth," he said.

Count on him to keep his word. In the weeks ahead, he will do everything in his power to get arrested.

He knows that the single act of putting him behind bars will do more for his cause of returning to power than any words. At the very least, it will put the man in the seat of power on the defensive.