Husam Musa, particularly in the state legislative term 2004-2008, trimmed and streamlined the procedural requirements for starting up in business in Kelantan - a move that benefited small and medium-sized concerns.
This raft of measures and the acumen Husam showed in rolling them out marked him for elevation, not just in party and state but also at the level of Pakatan Rakyat, an outfit not exactly endowed with riches when it comes to talent among its notables.
Husam’s extra-party prominence has brought on him added fusillades from detractors within PAS who look askance at his supposed closeness to PKR supremo Anwar Ibrahim, regarded by some quarters in PAS as a covert secularist, one adept at using the forms of Islamic discourse to garner support from Muslim activists and turn their extensive organisational network to secular advantage - in sum, the quintessential Erdogan.
“If Anwar can unite the races as he has demonstrated and if he can draw the votes for Pakatan to take power in this country, I see no reason why he cannot be prime minister, especially if the reform agenda that this country so badly needs can then be worked,” opined Husam.
“The way he has been treated since his sacking from Umno is a disgrace to any citizen concerned about how things are done in this country.
"I don’t have to be carry a torch for him to have an opinion like that,” sniffed Husam, his disdain for the methods employed by the powers-that-be against the former deputy prime minister evident in his tone.
Husam’s rising prominence and imputed links to Anwar has had its downside: he has become the target of more than the usual dose of resentment, backbiting and vilification that is the lot of a fast-rising politico, even for one in an Islamist party zealous about keeping its ranks free of the sordid and grubby plays that are the common coin of the political arena.
“I cried,” said Husam improbably, about an incident where his tardiness in paying a RM200 utility bill saw graft busters scouring his home, pouring over bills and documents in search of a speck that could to bring down the high-flyer.
In the line of ulama fire
It’s hard to imagine that Husam, 48, can be a soft touch. A striking looking man with a guardsman’s height and bristling moustache that hints at toughness underneath, Husam, in public encounters, radiates calm and a poise that’s very nearly irenic.
The calm has been buffeted the last few months by petards launched at him on the Internet for his having the temerity to shape up for a position in the party considered as the exclusive domain of ulama for some three decades.
With the announcement earlier this week of his acceptance - following months of playing coy - of nominations to contest the party’s No 2 post, Husam Musa, dyed-in-the-wool scion of ulama, has placed himself squarely in the line of clerical fire.
However, Islam recognises no clergy, so the principle of clerical supersession of the laity in politics is tenuous at best.
That suits Husam’s instincts for he appears to believe that while revelation provides him with the essential truths with which to navigate the world, interpretation of these truths is not fixed.
This must have been what he sensed in an intuitive way years ago when he hastened to his dying father’s side from the airport in Kota Baru where he was to take a flight to Saudi Arabia. Ustaz Musa Yahya was rushed to the hospital after a road accident the same evening of his eldest son’s departure for abroad.
The previous day, after evening prayers the father’s last sermon, written out as usual, dwelt on the subject of death. The homily was in the brief and unadorned style characteristic of Musa senior.
As Husam bent low over his father’s mortally injured body, hoping to speak or listen to a few last words, all he could hear were the muffled gasps of laboured respiration.
Both father and son had been close, more in an intuitive than demonstrative way which is why for Husam, the religion imbibed from his father could never be a matter of rites only, because, as one famous critic of religion observed, the sure way to destroy a flock of sheep is through teaching it incantations, and slipping in with it a certain quantity of arsenic.
To Husam, in all his compelling intellection, notable achievement, considerable valor and not-a-little frailty, it has been a lifelong mission to mind the incantations and watch out for the arsenic that now and then tends to be slipped in.
29/05/09
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