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Much ado about Malaysian
shakeup
By Ioannis Gatsiounis
KUALA LUMPUR - A major "shakeup" took
place recently within the ultra-conservative
Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS), when a host of
liberals (by party standards at least) were voted
into top posts, including that of deputy
president. One newspaper said this marked "a major
power shift in the party". Another hailed it as
"the most dramatic leadership change that the
party had seen in decades". Former deputy prime
minister Anwar Ibrahim thought the changes
significant enough to countenance PAS's request
that he lead an opposition coalition.
The
Malaysian political scene has become synonymous
with stagnation. And so any whiff of progressive
alterations to its landscape is often considered
noteworthy, if not by the long-ruling United
Malays National Organization (UMNO), then by just
about everyone else - the opposition, activists,
scholars, independent news commentators and the
rakyat (citizens).
Such
interpretation, however, is usually predicated
more on hope than substance. This was the case
when Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, promising
reform, took over from long-ruling strongman
Mahathir Mohamad in late 2003, and when less than
a year later the courts freed Anwar, Malaysia's
most famous prisoner. The putative reformist has
yet to inject much life into the foundering
opposition.
What, then, is the substance
behind the shakeup that took place last Sunday?
Clearly, PAS wants to reinvent itself. It
has little choice; its survival depends on
reinvention. The party learned a hard lesson when
it was crushed by the UMNO-led National Front
coalition in parliamentary elections last year.
There have been rumblings among PAS's top brass to
reform ever since. The party election results are
the biggest step yet in that direction and suggest
the party is opting for a more pragmatic, less
dogmatic approach.
"We want to offer a new
kind of strategy which includes more engagement -
with NGOs [non-governmental organizations], the
international community, people [in general]"
Nasharudin Mat Isa, PAS's new deputy president,
told Asia Times Online. "We want to open ourself
to dialogue with others and understand others."
It will not be an easy task. PAS has
alienated many people in multicultural Malaysia,
with its narrow, quixotic interpretation of Islam.
Most controversial has been its core aspiration
since the party's inception in 1951: to turn
Malaysia into an Islamic state. (An Islamic state
grants unequal rights to Muslims and non-Muslims.)
The election results give no indication
that the party is going to revise its position.
The 43-year-old Nasharudin predicted that PAS's
approach to the Islamic state issue, ie tone, may
well change, but said the substance of that change
was another matter. "Policy-wise we don't know.
We'll have to look at it."
Nasharudin
suggested that, alas, the Islamic state
controversy has obscured the party's other
platforms. "The media raises [the Islamic state
issue] more than we do. If you follow the [PAS]
presidential speech there was only mild mention of
it."
It is in these other areas that the
new leaders' presence might be felt most. "They
may not insist on the primacy of certain positions
- such as hudud [laws], and [a traditional]
role for women," said Chandra Muzaffar, president
of the International Movement for a Just World.
"That would be a change. But I don't know how they
will fare when put to the test on fundamental
issues involving the Muslim community, such as the
Islamic state, and the current controversy over
needle exchange and condom distribution."
There are three main reasons for
questioning how the new leaders will fare.
First, because the verdict is still out on how
reform-minded the new leaders are. When, for
instance, the ruling Taliban called for the
demolition of ancient Buddhist statues in
Afghanistan in 2001, the new batch of PAS leaders
didn't decry the measure. Indeed, Nasharudin
himself reportedly called for a jihad against the
United States when the superpower toppled the
puritanical Taliban later that year. Some insiders
charge that the new leaders are astute politicians
who understand how to present themselves in one
light to the international community and in
another to their constituency.
Second, assuming the new leaders are sincere
reformists, there is still the dewan ulama
(council of religious elders) to deal with. The
dewan ulama approves or rejects policy
proposals. It is also largely conservative.
Third, policy must be dictated by the wishes
of the rakyat, and to what extent PAS's
core constituency wants change is unclear. PAS's
poor showing in last year's parliamentary
elections did indicate that voters were not in
accord with where the party was headed. (Not even
the PAS leadership's claim that a vote for the
party would lead to a ticket to heaven could win
their votes.) But it must be kept in mind that
Islam in Malaysia is characterized by a peculiar
conservatism; the faithful tend to place more
emphasis on ritual and less on knowledge and
understanding than do those in many other parts of
the Islamic world.
"We do know our
supporters want a more responsive PAS," said
Nasharudin. Beyond that, he said, the verdict was
still out. "Over the next three months we plan to
meet and understand more from people."
It's worth noting that this is not the
first time PAS has sought to reinvent itself this
way. In early 2001, under the headline "PAS seeks
to shed fundamentalist image", the Straits Times
of Singapore reported that PAS "is expected to
reinvent itself during a four-day party assembly
beginning today in a bid to spruce up its image
after years of living under the label of religious
fundamentalism". Obviously that bid didn't fare
too well, or the party would not be back at square
one now.
Nasharudin admitted that
international events were likely to play a bigger
role in what the constituency expected from the
party's attempts at reform this time around. With
many Muslims here convinced that Islam is under
constant incursion by the West, the yearning to
reassert one's identity naturally arises. This
means PAS may find itself having to cater to two
audiences: those who seek a more tolerant,
inclusive and modernist approach to Islam, and an
increasingly less flexible hardline branch.
This is where Anwar could play a pivotal
role. He is dexterous at appealing to
traditionalists and modernists, and certainly the
PAS leadership is glad for his endorsement. Even
Anwar's support, however, may not be enough for
PAS to shake its hardline image.
Neither Anwar
nor PAS's leadership changes have been able to
attract the interest of another crucial opposition
party, the Chinese-based Democratic Action Party,
or DAP. (Chinese account for 26% of Malaysia's
population.) DAP, PAS and the Justice Party
(headed by Anwar's wife) formerly made up a
multiracial coalition. DAP left the coalition
largely because PAS would not abandon its Islamic
state agenda. DAP's leadership welcomes the new
moves within PAS, but say they are hardly enough
to reconsider joining the opposition front. "I
don't want to appear like I'm pouring cold water
on the [developments], but PAS still has a long
distance to go," said DAP's secretary general Lim
Guan Eng. "We want to see action, action that
addresses concerns of most Malaysians."
Until that happens, Lim and many other
Malaysians will continue to see PAS for what it
has long been: an Islamic party with a thoroughly
Islamic agenda in a country in which Muslims make
up but 55% of the population. PAS is inherently a
hard sell.
Ioannis Gatsiounis, a
New York native, has worked as a freelance foreign
correspondent and previously co-hosted a weekly
political/cultural radio call-in show in the US.
He has been living in Malaysia since late 2002.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd.
All rights reserved. Please contact us for
information on sales, syndication and republishing.)
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