Poison-pen letters grip Malaysia

Poison-pen letters grip Malaysia

By David Chew

KUALA LUMPUR (JP): As the United Malays Organization (UMNO),
Malaysia's leading political party, makes preparations for its
triennial elections in October, a perennial problem is slowly
emerging from the shadows to once again become a thorn in the
party's flesh.

This is the notorious Poison Pen letter or "Surat Layang"
which has reduced many UMNO leaders to sheer exasperation and
despair.

"How do you deny such trash, because if you do, you lose
credibility. But if you don't there is always the danger that a
lie repeated often may start to look like fact," laments a
prominent UMNO leader.

The party has yet to come up with an effective strategy to
deal with the hate mail's crippling blow, despite the latter
being around for the past 25 years when they were first
reportedly mentioned. They have the habit of making their
presence felt only during the UMNO polls. Their exit at the end
of the polls is as quick and dramatic as their appearance at its
beginning.

Poison pen letters, spewing venom, are written with the sole
aim of discrediting their victims, who are mainly UMNO members
vying for positions in the party. As UMNO leads the ruling
National Front coalition government of Malaysia, top party
leaders also hold important ministerships with a lot of
opportunities to dispense patronage to supporters.

Often the poison pen writers target a certain leader or
leaders as their object of hate and make all sorts of allegations
against him or them, for instance misappropriating funds or
accepting bribes, having a string of extramarital affairs and
behaving like a dictator.

Because they do not need to prove these allegations, the
writers either do not sign their names or use pseudonyms.

No one knows who they are. Which explains why the police have
been unable to take any action against anyone for the simple
reason that no one has been caught red-handed writing or
distributing poison pen letters.

But speculations are rife that the writers may be overzealous
supporters of lower-ranked party leaders who are privy to
important decisions made by top leaders and know their activities
only too well.

There is also a possibility that anyone who harbors ill will
against UMNO, including outsiders, can write and circulate the
letters in an attempt to cash in on the intra-party squabbling
among UMNO members. It is like fishing in troubled waters.

How did poison pen letters emerge a quarter of a century ago,
take on a life of their own and assume a present-day notoriety in
the circles of UMNO, the party which represents the overwhelming
majority of the politically-dominant Malays in Malaysia?

The menace has much to do with personal envy, ill-feeling or
dissatisfaction, according to UMNO leader, Megat Junid Megat
Ayob.

Describing how "contagious" poison pen letters could be,
Megat, who is also the deputy home affairs minister, said: "All
it takes is for one person to write a poison pen letter and it
will trigger off a chain reaction."

When they first emerged 25 years ago, poison pen letters were
crudely written in a style meant for ordinary rural Malays --
farmers, fishermen, petty traders, teachers, civil servants --
who form the backbone of UMNO's political support. They could be
handwritten or typed in simple Malay (Bahasa Malaysia),
cyclostyled in their thousands on cheap paper and freely
distributed in the Malay kampongs.

Over the years poison pen letters have undergone a
sophisticated change -- moving in tandem with the transformation
of UMNO from a rural-based party to one which also enjoys wide
support among prominent Malay businessmen and millionaires.

The hate mail is now produced using computers and laser
printers, often with colorful charts and doctored photographs.

The letters are printed on high quality paper. In addition to
polished Bahasa, they are also written in good English, a move
aimed at urban Malays who received their tertiary education
overseas. To ensure that their message is received quickly, the
poison pen letters are faxed.

The most prominent poison pen letter appears to be one named
Surat dari Kota (Letter from the City). It is mailed to UMNO
members nationwide from Kuala Lumpur, and contains allegations of
corruption, power abuse and malpractice among UMNO leaders.

The nature of the poison pen letters may be fascinating,
indeed some of their contents could even be humorous. But no one
can deny that their intent is simply malicious.

Often they depict a particular candidate contesting a position
in the UMNO elections as the main subject of their message
against the background of popular themes like corruption,
morality and nepotism.

All possible sordid details of his personal life and pursuits
are deliberately dragged in, irrespective of whether these are
based on rumors, hearsay, half-truths or lies.

Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, a favorite target,
reportedly received the most number of poison pen letters among
top UMNO leaders in the last party triennial elections in 1993.

He told the assembly then of how one poison pen letter
suggested that not only was he, a Moslem, having an affair with a
non-Moslem Chinese girl, but he had also benefited immensely from
his friendships with business tycoons in his capacity as finance
minister.

It can be politically disastrous for any Moslem leader to
associate with non-Moslems of the opposite sex in his private
life.

Anwar remarked half in jest and half in exasperation then:
"Poison pen letters cannot only destroy the party. They can also
destroy a marriage. The same letter was sent to my wife."

Other top UMNO leaders have lamented the hate mail as the dark
side of Malay culture where customs and tradition require that
criticism against errant leaders be done constructively and in
the proper forum, in this case UMNO meetings.

UMNO's president and the Malaysian prime minister has
described the way poison pen writers operate as more sinister
than that of Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister of Hitler. He
said if they had legitimate grievances against party leaders and
the government machinery, they should come out into the open
instead of being "cowards with dubious intentions".

Mahathir may be right on that score. But the ghost writers are
also shrewd and intelligent strategists who will never accept his
challenge to come out into the open. They prefer to conduct a
guerrilla kind of warfare which takes maximum advantage of the
open -- and vulnerable -- position of their victims and hitting
them hard with the full knowledge that they cannot hit back.

The writers need not have to prove the validity of their
accusations. All they need do is raise doubts as regards the
credibility of their victims. These are usually candidates in
party elections and the objective of the hate mail is to ensure
that they lose.

The fate of the poison letters depends very much on their
audience. If they choose to ignore them as trash, then the hate
mail will die a natural death in no time. Although not all the
rumors spread by the hate mail are true, not all of them are
entirely false either. Which partly explains why many in their
intended audience still believe what they say.

Poison pen letters have survived for 25 years. It looks as if
they are still a long way in meeting their Waterloo -- if ever.
They will continue to raise their ugly heads and cause many
headaches and heartaches to their victims in many more UMNO
meetings to come.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Singapore.