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PAS : KE ARAH PEMERINTAHAN ISLAM YANG ADIL
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MALAYSIA
Business Be Blessed
Malaysia's Islamic Party has found a unique route to
power: Be soft with the dogma and kind to businessmen.
Its success is worrying the ruling party, Umno
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By S. Jayasankaran/KUALA TERENGGANU
Issue cover-dated April 27, 2000
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IF THE ISLAMIC PARTY is to be believed, not much has
changed in the five months since it took over the
state government in Terengganu, on Malaysia's east
coast. In the state capital, Kuala Terengganu, beer is
available in supermarkets and private hotels, and at
least four shops in Chinatown sell bah kut teh, a
pungent pork-rib soup. Indeed, some restrictions have
been relaxed: Pig-rearing, long banned in the state,
is now allowed.
A free hand for business and a surprising degree of
tolerance are what some leaders of the Islamic Party,
or Pas, would have Malaysians believe are bedrock
principles of Islamic rule. Trading dogmatism for
populism, Pas has scrapped residential-property taxes
in Terengganu, and a proposed tax on non-Muslims was
hastily dropped after Chinese opposition parties
complained. The new state government appears to be
winning the confidence of local investors.
All this has some members of the ruling United Malays
National Organization worried that Pas will find wider
appeal among non-Malays, who comprise almost 40% of
the country's 22 million people. The Islamists swept
to power in Terengganu, and held onto neighbouring
Kelantan, in nationwide polls in November, giving them
control of all of the northeast of Peninsular
Malaysia. The enthusiasm with which Umno trumpeted its
recent victory in a small by-election in neighbouring
Pahang only served to remind Malaysians of Pas's
growing strength.
But many Malaysians are uneasy over what's perceived
to be Pas's brand of creeping Islamization.
Terengganu's new chief minister, Hadi Awang, comes
across as an Islamic firebrand fond of thundering
speeches offering people a passport to paradise if
they support Pas. He has twice tried, and failed, to
get a bill passed in the federal parliament mandating
the death penalty for Muslims who renounce the
religion.
"How different is Pas from the regimes in Afghanistan
or Pakistan?" asks Zainah Anwar, a Muslim activist in
the federal capital, Kuala Lumpur. "Deep down, they
are just as inflexibly obscurantist."
How different are they? Meet Pas Vice-President
Mustafa Ali, looking dapper in a brown safari suit and
dress shoes-no Islamic robes or wispy goatee for him.
An executive councillor, Mustafa is the de facto No. 2
in the state government. His English is clear and
precise as he jokes with Kenny Chua, a businessman
from Kelantan. "Look at the colour of my shirt,"
laughs Chua. It's light green-the colour of Pas.
Mustafa, chuckling appreciatively, pats him on the
back.
Leaders like Mustafa represent the party's new face.
Oil-rich Terengganu has given Pas an unprecedented
platform of wealth from which to launch the greening
of Malaysia. "We will administer Terengganu as a model
state," Mustafa says. "People will notice and the
effect will snowball."
People also noticed when, after Pas won Kelantan in
1990, its government tried to introduce a harsh
Islamic criminal code. Drafted with the help of Hadi
Awang, the code prescribes stoning for adulterers,
amputation for theft and the nonrecognition of women
and non-Muslims as witnesses in Islamic courts.
Despite this seemingly extremist agenda, non-Muslims
voted overwhelmingly to keep Pas in power in Kelantan.
In Terengganu, Pas is assiduously courting non-Malays,
who comprise 6% of Terengganu's one million people,
and it's doing so through the promotion of business
and investment. Pas has preserved Umno's pro-business
policies and promoted a new culture of transparency
that it hopes will resonate with voters fed up with
decades of patronage and opaque government. "The
government has retained about 90% of previous
policies," says a senior state official who declined
to be identified. "But what's different now is that
the papers come down to us for our opinions, and not
with a decision already made, where we just function
as implementers."
Pas has scrapped the previous government's two most
prestigious projects, a 300-million-ringgit ($79
million) sports complex and a 130-million-ringgit
mosque-a brave move for an Islamic party. But in
general, in the business community, the sense is that
Pas has changed little else. Most businessmen seem
pleased. If opinions like Lin Tzu Keng's are any
indication, Umno and its leader, Prime Minister
Mahathir Mohamad, should worry.
A serious-looking Taiwanese, Lin invested over 20
million ringgit in a furniture plant in Terengganu in
1998. His company, Latitude Tree, employs 400 locals
and rang up 35 million ringgit in exports last year.
Has anything changed under Pas? "The government
officials are the same," he says. "So are the
policies, the procedures. No matter who is running the
government, it doesn't make a difference to us."
Timber magnate Low Kian Chuan is head of the state's
Chinese Chamber of Commerce and admits he didn't vote
for Pas in the elections. "They know but they don't
hold it against me," he says. Things are "so far, so
good." He sums up the Chinese position: "We adapt to
changing circumstances."
Low has had no problems adapting. "Their rules are
only for the Muslims, we respect that," he says of
restrictions such as those that confine alcohol sales
to non-Muslims, by non-Muslims. "They are pro-business
and that's fine with us," he adds. "And let's face it,
the flights are full, nobody's worried, tourists are
still coming." What about the new ban on gambling? Low
shrugs: "It isn't part of Chinese culture."
In Terengganu, the business-friendly approach makes
sense. The state boasts the nation's second-highest
per-capita income, though it has unemployment and
poverty rates-8% and 10%-that are way above national
averages. That's partly because the state retains only
5% of its oil wealth: The rest goes to national oil
company Petronas. Still, oil contributes 90% of the
state's annual revenue of 600 million ringgit.
Mustafa, who oversees state finances, says that's more
than enough.
To consolidate this wealth, Pas intends to stop
investing in failed projects like the loss-making
Perwaja steel plant, which is 19%-owned by the state
government and has debts and accumulated losses of 10
billion ringgit. The federal government in Kuala
Lumpur claims Perwaja, a Mahathir brainchild, can be
turned around, but Mustafa thinks otherwise. "We've
lost hundreds of million of ringgit there," he says.
"Let KL run it if they want to. We won't put any more
money there." Also being axed is Gunawan Iron & Steel,
in which the state government has a 30% stake and has
invested 90 million ringgit.
Another plan is to bring greater transparency to
logging, which contributes 16 million ringgit in
yearly revenues. Open bidding for logging concessions
will replace the clubby negotiated-tender system.
Awarding concessions to the highest bidder rather than
a selected one is expected to triple lumber revenues.
The Pas government has also inherited a business
empire comprising land, hotels and three listed
companies, one of which holds the Malaysia, Singapore
and Brunei franchises for the A&W fast-food chain.
Good relations in business may smooth the way for
other agendas. Pas recently succeeded in convincing
local supermarkets to enforce dress codes for Muslim
women, as well as gender-segregated checkout lines.
Leaders have proposed dress codes for all Muslim
women.
But Mustafa Ali promises that the government won't
regulate the private lives of Muslims in order to
enforce Islamic strictures. "We will never force
anyone to do anything," he says. "Everything is
voluntary. Everything will be by education."
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