Thoughts from London

So who's afraid of John Howard?
Nobody who knows Australian Prime Minister John Howard, or knows of him, would have been the least bit surprised at his supercilious remark about Muttiah Muralitharan the other day.

Howard has a history of racism that predates his emergence as Australia's prime minister in the mid-1990s. But then his racist remarks sit comfortably in a country that has its fair share of bigotry and is becoming increasingly xenophobic, particularly over Asian immigration.

Such bigotry is not surprising either. After all this a country that until the early 1970s was guilty of the obnoxious "White Australia" policy, an official policy under which only those who could prove they had at least 75 per cent 'white' blood in them were permitted to migrate to this distant outpost of western colonialism.

It was only in 1972 that this policy of selective immigration based on racial discrimination was officially ended. But the racist values that such policies inculcated in the Australian mind lay below the thin veneer of multi-culturism.

If Australia's experiments in multi-culturism, so assiduously pursued by those determined to see a genuinely pluralistic society emerge from this melting pot of diverse cultures rather than cling to the forlorn hope of being a part of the west, has not been entirely successful it is because of self-serving politicians like John Howard.

It is they who have always exploited such issues as immigration and asylum seekers to fan latent local fears to win elections. The average Australian is an easy going, gregarious type until the likes of Howard scratch the skull beneath the skin.

Howard's unnecessary and inaccurate remark about Muralitharan, calling him a chucker, was deliberate and conscious. Perhaps the question was even planted by a party faithful. After all what had Muralitharan got to do with Howard's Liberal Party that his name should crop up at a party gathering.

The timing of the remark is as significant as the remark itself. An Australian general election may well be held ahead of schedule. Some Australian parliamentarians attending a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference who I met the other day at a dinner hosted by High Commissioner Faisz Musthapha believe that Howard will call an election by about August though he could go on till early next year.

Doug Parkinson, deputy leader of the government in Tasmania was quite certain that Howard was preparing for an early election. What has that to do with attacking Muralitharan? Well, to judge by the opinion polls the opposition Labour Party has taken a lead over Howard's Liberal-National coalition. The Labour Party's new leader Mark Latham's vigorous campaigning has seen Labour take a significant lead over the Howard government, as a March opinion poll showed.

Since anything is grist to Howard's political mill he has tried to politicise the issue by cashing in on national sentiment. Muralitharan is the world's leading wicket taker, the first spin bowler to do so in a long line of bowlers. It has hurt Australia's national pride because almost every Australian would have wished to see Shane Warne break Courtney Walsh's record.

Worse still, this has been done by a non-white and an Asian too. That is what hurts Australian pride and Howard is a clever enough politician to capitalise on it.

Those who have studied Howard's political history would know what the man thinks of Asians. As far back as 1988, Howard made a controversial speech in which he claimed that Australia was taking in "too many" Asian migrants.

Asian migrants consist of 5% or less of Australia's 20 million or so population. However much Howard might try to cleanse himself of his racist predilections, his silence on crucial occasions speak louder than occasional public postures.

Some might recall that in 1996, Pauline Hanson in her maiden speech as an independent MP, painted an apocalyptic vision of an Australia 'Asianised' by a horrendously short-sighted bipartisan immigration policy.

That speech which whipped up fears of an Australia "swamped" by Asians revived a simmering race debate, arousing passions in the Asian region too.

Australians who condemned such philistine hostility to Asians who had contributed significantly to their society- economically, financially and professionally- expected their prime minister to respond by denouncing such xenophobic rubbish.

But Howard maintained a deafening silence. He refused to condemn the fish-and-chips shop owner who seemed to have more chips on her shoulders than in her restaurant.

The implicit message he sent to the Australian citizenry was that it was acceptable to hurl racist slurs.

At the time he said: "In a sense, the pall of censorship on certain issues has been lifted." Some might say that this is a tribute to freedom of speech. That is no more than an unctuous claim, a puerile attempt to provide a fig leaf of a cover for racism.

Shortly after Pauline Hanson rose in the Australian political firmament, I wrote several columns for the Hong Kong newspaper I worked for denouncing her characteristically boorish attitude to Asians and native Aborigines alike.

Before long two politicians from Australia came to see me and condemned Pauline Hanson. But before long I discovered, they were antagonistic to Hanson not because of her views, but because she had stolen the limelight from their own party that was peddling similar views.

One of them Graeme Campbell objected to Chinese migrants because they helped criminalise Australia. I could not help but point out that if they were indeed criminals they would feel very much at home in Australia, which, after all, started as a penal colony.

Howard called Muralitharan a chucker saying the biomechanics tests in Perth proved it. They did not. It was only the delivery called "doosra" that exceeded the restrictions placed on bowlers. There was no criticism of the rest of his deliveries.

But Howard's observation of course reflects general opinion in Australia that really produced chuckers such as Ian Meckiff. Is it also not strange that all these accusations come from Australians and that they are directed at Asian cricketers? Muralitharan was no-balled by two umpires, both Australians. Graeme Dowling, a New Zealander accused Sri Lanka of ball tampering and even the inquiry into that did not proceed according to the ICC's own rules.

Readers will recall how Australian cricketers tried to fix that superb Pakistani batsman Salim Malik for bribery. But these vociferous Australian politicians are silent when Australian cricketers such as Mark Waugh and Shane Warne are found guilty of much more serious offences that not only violate the ICC rules of conduct but question their moral integrity.

Surely it is more damaging to the game to exchange information for money or take banned drugs. But where were the likes of Howard when such degrading incidents occurred? How like John Howard to clutch at any straw for political survival. The game of cricket and Australian multiculturism would be better off if before long we saw Howard's end.

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