A
new democratic era in
Malaysia By Ioannis Gatsiounis
KUALA LUMPUR - The Malaysian government's
authoritarian instincts were finally checked by
democracy at Saturday's highly anticipated general
elections, where the long-ruling Barisan Nasional
(BN) government suffered one of its worst poll
results in its 50-year history of uninterrupted
rule.
The BN won a mere 51% of the popular
vote, down significantly from the 64% it notched
at the 2004 polls, securing only a simple majority
rather than the two-thirds of parliamentary seats
it had sought. When the dust settled, opposition
parties, which rode a wave of popular discontent
about government corruption and neglect, won 82 of
222 parliamentary seats, 37% compared with the 9%
previously held, and wrested control of four
states - Kelantan Perak, Kedah, Penang and
Selangor - while bolstering
their
hold on the northeastern state of Kelantan.
The new parliamentary equation will
effectively curb the BN's ability to amend the
constitution, including over issues related to
citizens' rights and the role of religion. The
opposition's strong performance came despite
allegations of BN vote-rigging, stiff restrictions
on political expression and assembly, and a
pro-government bias in the state-influenced print
and broadcast media. At around 2 am on Sunday,
Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi and his deputy
Najib Razak appeared dazed before a blitz of
camera flashes, with Abdullah meekly announcing,
"We've lost, we've lost."
The main
opposition parties, including the multi-racial
Keadilan, the People's Justice Party (PKR), the
Democratic Action Party (DAP), and the
Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) all exceeded
expectations at the polls. Malaysian voters had
until now tolerated corruption and
authoritarianism among its leaders in exchange for
relative social and economic stability.
On
Monday, Malaysian stocks fell the most in a
decade, with the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index
dropping 135.60, or 11%, to 1,160.59 at 4:15 pm
local time after an hour-long trading suspension
ended. The suspension followed the index falling
by the 10% limit. Brokers said there was concern
that the government's public spending program
might be stalled.
Over the weekend, voters
apparently sent the message that they now want a
more sophisticated approach to nation-building and
governance. "The people have expressed in no
uncertain terms that they want accountability,
transparency, and the rule of law," said Anwar
Ibrahim, de facto leader of the opposition
People's Justice Party (PKR).
A swing away
from the BN was widely expected among Indian and
Chinese voters, who have felt increasingly
marginalized by a long-standing affirmative action
program known as the New Economic Policy (NEP),
which benefits the majority Muslim Malays over
minority Chinese and Indians, and the more
assertive role Islam has been given during
Abdullah's term.
The Chinese-majority
state of Penang fell to the opposition Democratic
Action Party (DAP) after 36 years of BN rule and
several BN Indian leaders, including long-time
cabinet member Samy Vellu, lost their seats. Less
anticipated, however, was the large deflection of
Muslim Malay voters to the opposition camp. The
United Malays National Organization (UMNO), which
leads the BN coalition, has long fashioned itself
as the protector of ethnic Malay interests.
It had until now maintained political
support by instilling fears, reiterated in the
run-up to Saturday's polls, that a vote for the
opposition would divide and weaken the nation.
However, many Malays proved undaunted, joining
hands with Indians and Chinese to punish
Abdullah's administration for failing to tackle
corruption, crime and inflation.
BN was
routed in the Malay-majority states of Kedah and
Kelantan, while in many areas Malay support for
UMNO was not much more than 55%, according to
Ibrahim Suffian, program director of the Merdeka
Center for Opinion Research. That significant
numbers of Malays, Chinese and Indians voted for
the opposition, despite the UMNO's fearmongering
claims, will lessen the likelihood that discord
will play out along racial lines.
It is
not clear whether and how UMNO will respond to the
democratic setback. The tendentious party has been
known to react unkindly when its stranglehold on
power has been threatened. In 1999, for instance,
when PAS won the rural eastern state of
Terengganu, then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad
later deprived the state of development funds. He
also restricted publication and distribution of
the party's newspaper Harakah. After enacting its
revenge, the UMNO won the politically contested
state back in 2004.
Voter rejection of the
BN this time is more encompassing, not only
cutting across racial lines but also along rural
and urban ones. The results also signal to
Malaysians - long trained to think otherwise -
that they possess the ability to check official
abuses.
Abdullah in the hot
seat After the resounding setback,
some believe the UMNO's first order of business
may be to pressure Abdullah to resign - perhaps
opening the door for his deputy Najib to take over
the party's leadership. A spokesman for Abdullah
said he has no plans to step down, and on Sunday
senior UMNO leaders met at the premier's official
residence to show their support for him. He was
swiftly sworn in as premier on Monday morning
through UMNO's and the BN's simple majority.
Yet even Abdullah's resignation would not
necessarily restore the UMNO's and BN's
legitimacy, which the opposition has in the past
pointed out is manufactured by opportunistic
gerrymandering. The ruling coalition's Indian and
Chinese component parties are now widely seen as
UMNO tokens, with their leaders cushioning their
positions at the expense of their constituencies.
The UMNO, meanwhile, has in many voters'
eyes become synonymous with mediocrity, feudalism,
racism and patronage. The party's young rising
stars were expected to adopt a more progressive
approach, but to many they have become
indistinguishable from the old guard, which in
turn has eroded public confidence in the UMNO's
ability to reform itself. Mahathir, for one, has
accused Abdullah's son-in-law and UMNO deputy
youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin of being emblematic
of this trend and said that he "played a big role"
in the BN's losses over the weekend.
It's
perhaps telling of the mood in Malaysia that
Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin - dubbed the
"misinformation" minister by the opposition - lost
his parliamentary seat in Kedah, while the popular
critical blogger Jeff Ooi won the Jelutong
parliamentary seat with DAP. The government had
leveraged the traditional media it tightly
controls to report that Malaysia is an economic
miracle, respected by the world and breezing
toward developed country status under visionary BN
rule.
Web portals and blogs like Ooi's,
however, have exposed Malaysians to the country's
less flattering realities and awakened many
Malaysians to the fact that becoming a developed
country will require replacing the political
culture of mediocrity and impunity.
Saturday's results may pave the way for
that shift. Both the opposition and the BN will
feel the pressure to perform: the opposition has
been given a precious opportunity and the BN can
no longer take the public's allegiance for
granted.
Incoming chief minister of Penang
and DAP secretary general Lim Guan Eng's sober
victory address to reporters on Sunday morning
suggested that he is not underestimating the hard
work ahead.
Opposition icon Anwar,
meanwhile, said he plans to start assisting the
opposition to form governments in the states it
now controls. A politically motivated corruption
charge prevents him from running until next month,
though it is expected that another member of the
party - perhaps his daughter, who won a seat and
has expressed some reluctance to enter politics -
will step aside so he can contest in a
by-election.
New winds of democracy are
expected to blow through Parliament as well, where
the BN's dominance had in the past all but turned
the legislative branch into a rubberstamp of the
executive. Dissenting voices will now be harder to
ignore in Parliament, which under a previously
unassailable BN majority lacked a culture of
debate and accountability.
As opposition
leaders hailed Saturday's results, the streets of
the capital Kuala Lumpur have been eerily quiet -
as perhaps they should be out of respect for the
country's still fragile social balance and during
what amounts to a traumatic moment for some in a
society that is not accustomed to genuine
democratic change. If the BN and citizenry handle
the transition gracefully, Malaysia will have
taken an all-important step in its political
development.
Ioannis
Gatsiounis, a New York native, is a Kuala
Lumpur-based writer.
(Copyright 2008
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road,
Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
