Ummi is back to haunt Anwar

The re-emergence of Ummi Hafilda Ali, the woman who caused the beginning of the end of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s political career, created a stir on the Merlimau and Kerdau ceramah circuit. It looks like the lady intends to make her presence felt in the months ahead.

THERE is no denying it. Ummi Hafilda Ali still has the ability to make waves wherever she appears. Love her or hate her but you cannot ignore her.

The lady has been the most sensational thing on the ceramah circuit in Merlimau and Kerdau. On Friday night, she was back in Merlimau by popular demand.

There was a buzz of excitement when her silver BMW glided into the compound where the ceramah was being held. As she climbed out of her chauffeur-driven car, a couple of men who looked like bodyguards leapt out of a black SUV following behind.

The lady travels in style but it was quite clear she was not taking chances with her personal security.

And if colours are an indication of mood, then Ummi’s must be on the upbeat. The first time she appeared in Merlimau, she wore a grey jubah-like dress. In Kerdau, she was in a pale green floral gown.

Her encore appearance in Merlimau saw her in a colourful outfit dotted with sequins, a gauzy selendang over her head and lots of bling on her wrists and fingers.

Her skin is still smooth and lily-white but the years have added inches to her hips and she needed reading glasses to refer to her notes.

And she looked rather demure –until she opened her mouth.

Ummi does not mince her words. She looks like a lady but talks like a man.

Ummi is, of course, the woman whose allegations of a relationship between Anwar and her sister-in-law started the downward spiral for Anwar’s political career. One thing led to another and by 1998, Anwar had been sacked as deputy prime minister.

Ummi was the catalyst to Anwar’s fall from grace. At the height of the reformasi period, Ummi was arguably the most hated woman in the country.

But a lot of water has since passed under the bridge and Ummi’s side of the story is now being heard with less emotion and much more objectivity than ever before.

That, she said, has been her purpose of going around – to tell her side of the story which she had been unable to tell in full because people were not ready to listen then.

She is a compelling speaker and has commanded the attention of her audience wherever she has spoken. They are admittedly not big audiences but, as her experiences in Merlimau and Kerdau have shown, the crowds who come to see her have been completely absorbed by what she has to say.

It was not always like this. Years ago, when she tried to explain her action, people would jeer at her and call her names. These days, she holds her audience in the palm of her hand.

People were glued to the spot from the moment she started speaking, so much so that one could feel her audience letting out a big sigh when she stopped, as though they had been holding their breath throughout.

That is the effect of Ummi. It is not only what she has to say, but how she says it. After so many years, her conviction that she had done the right thing is still rock solid.

One can see that she has made it her life mission to expose what she calls the “hypocrisy of Anwar Ibrahim” and his politics.

The other aspect of Ummi’s mission is, of course, her crusade against her elder brother Azmin Ali, the powerful PKR deputy president and Anwar’s right-hand man.

That was what made her both notorious and infamous – the fact that she had dared take on the second most powerful man in national politics and she had gone against her own flesh and blood. It was the stuff of movies but it was happening in real life.

Dramatic story

Many of those now listening to her are hearing it for the first time and it is a very dramatic and emotional story.

Her allegations against Anwar and his alleged love affair with Azmin’s wife Shamsidar Taharin are well known.

But the personal ordeal she had to go through in making the allegations were less known and it had her audience all agog.

She spoke of how police in ski masks and automatic weapons broke through the roof of her friend’s house where she had taken refuge to arrest her and how she was interrogated for hours.

She was placed under house arrest for months after that and at any time, the police would pick her up and take her to a hotel for more interrogation. She was treated like an enemy of the state.

“I was so traumatised. For years after that, I felt paranoid whenever I saw a policeman,” she said.

She was then only 28 years old and very few people believed her story then, not even some of the ministers whom she approached for help.

They would tell her they did not want to get involved because Anwar was too powerful, she said.

Those around Anwar accused her of being paid to topple him, and among those named were Tun Daim Zainuddin and the late Tan Sri Megat Junid Ayob. But when Ummi approached the two men, they also told her they could not help her because they were afraid of Anwar.

She was called all sorts of names – from perempuan sundal (loose woman) to sial (cursed), pelacur (prostitute) and even babi (sow).

For more than three years after Anwar’s fall, she could not go to the shops or even the hair salon because people would verbally abuse her.

This is the reason why she still moves around with a bodyguard, she said, and not because she is “gila glamour”.

“Only God knows what I went through,” she said.

During her talks, she produced what she claimed to be documents of millions of ringgit worth of shares and directorship given to Shamsidar.

On top of that, her ceramah rounds have involved one of the most credible figures in Umno today, Datuk Ishak Ismail, the division chief for Seremban.

Ishak is famous for being a clean politician who has held on to his Seremban post without having to spend money for votes. For that, he can lambast anyone he likes and no one will dare talk back.

“I would not be sharing the same stage as her if I did not believe in what she is saying. After all, I am spending my free time and my own money going around to speak at these ceramah,” said Ishak.

Over the last one week, Ishak has been going around in a red baju Melayu and green sarung which he explains to everyone as “Umno will defeat PAS.”

That’s Ishak for you. He had worn a sarung when he returned from his studies in Britain in the 60s to assure his mother that he had not become a Mat Salleh.

Both Ishak and Ummi have something in common. They say it like it is.

In fact, some people felt that Ummi said it rather too explicitly for a lady, or that she was being very unladylike for a self-professed virgin.

She had no qualms about using crude terms like Al-Juburi (slang for anus), main belakang (play the behind), anjing (dog), insan munafik (hypocrite) and bapa rasuah (father of corruption).

It made the casual onlooker squirm, but the hardcore Umno types loved it and cheered her on.

“She has balls of steel,” said Umno member Zakhir Mohamad who has heard her speak a number of times.

The other thing about Ummi is that she makes no pretence of where she is coming from. She is with Umno all the way and she was in Merlimau and Kerdau to support Barisan Nasional.

Over and above that, she is an avowed Mahathirist.

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was a central point of reference for her and her speeches were interspersed with remarks of how great he is, how much she admired him and how no one else can hold a candle to him.

Her speeches also contained a great deal of paranoia and angst about Jews, the Jewish agenda and Anwar’s alleged association with this group of people.

She ended her speech with the rally cry of “Hidup Umno” and “Hidup Mahathir” and the Umno crowd actually stood up and shouted along with her.

There is also an over-abundance of self-confidence, some would say ego, to her personality that keeps her going after all these years.

She prefers to see it as her duty to stop an “evil man” from coming to power.

“And if I have to sacrifice my brother for the nation, then so be it,” she said.

Ummi said that she felt compelled to emerge again after 2008. The success of PKR and the prospect of Anwar becoming Prime Minister was apparently too much for her.

There is no doubt that she is preparing to go head-on with Anwar again.

She has made no apologies for her often crude vocabulary.

“I have to use rude words because I don’t have any good words for that man,” she said.

She boasted to the Merlimau crowd that when she spoke in Kerdau, Anwar was speaking at a PAS ceramah just a stone’s throw away. She said she had rattled him so much that he only spoke for 20 minutes.

“The mood is shifting. You can see that people want to listen to her,” said a new media journalist who used to work for Suara Keadilan, the PKR newsletter.

Ummi said that she intends to continue speaking out against Anwar from now until the general election because she wants to stop him once and for all.

She is very focused, perhaps even obsessed, that Anwar should not succeed in his politics.

She played a big part in bringing him down 13 years ago when he was deputy prime minister. She is now determined to bring him down from his pedestal as an aspiring prime minister.