Abdullah's second-chance reform
drive By Anil Netto
PENANG - Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah
Badawi has mounted a rearguard fight to salvage
his leadership in the face of a poor electoral
showing and formidable challenges to his rule,
both from within and outside his United Malays
Nasional Organization (UMNO) party.
The
political opposition made sharp inroads at last
month's general election, winning an unprecedented
five state governments, 82 of 222 parliamentary
seats and nearly half the popular vote. Opposition
leaders now claim that they have lured a clutch of
at least 30 parliamentarians from the ruling
Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition to cross over to
their side, which if true would be enough for the
opposition to seize federal power.
"God
willing, we will be there. If not next month, the following
month, then if not June
or July ... on Merdeka [Independence Day on August
31] or Malaysia Day [September 16]. I think we
should not go beyond that," opposition icon Anwar
Ibrahim was reported as saying, referring to his
prediction that the opposition would be able to
form a new government this year.
Anwar's
comments have set off a political maelstrom here,
sparking a heated debate over whether defections
represent a betrayal of voters' trust, whether the
opposition alliance should press on while it has
the upper-hand and even whether Anwar's bold
claims are credible.
It also raises the
political stakes for Abdullah, who is likely soon
to be challenged for the presidency of UMNO, the
dominant party in the BN. Some of his own party
members have pressed him to indicate a
"transition" period for handing over power to his
deputy and defense minister, Najib Razak. Najib,
however, is plagued by his own political troubles
and has given little indication to suggest that he
favors the kind of political and economic reforms
many Malaysians now hope for.
Tengku
Razaleigh Hamzah, a former finance minister who
once came close to toppling Mahathir Mohamad as
UMNO president back in 1987, is poised to make a
bid for the party's leadership during elections in
December. Meanwhile former premier Mahathir has
added his own political pressure, saying during an
April 18 interview on BBC World's Hard Talk that,
"[Abdullah] must go now because it will take time
to revive the party for the next election."
Faced with such criticisms, Abdullah is
bidding to win back lost ground and implement some
of the original reform promises that catapulted
him to power at the 2004 general elections. At
those polls, soon after taking over UMNO's
leadership reins from Mahathir, Abdullah led the
BN to a landslide victory, winning 91% of
parliament's seats.
Some of those avowed
reforms, including a new commitment to tackle
corruption and abuse of power, were widely seen as
a response to public demands made, sometimes on
the streets through protest movements, during the
turbulent final years of Mahathir's 22-year
authoritarian reign.
Yet disenchantment
over Abdullah's perceived unfulfilled promises,
along with mounting economic difficulties for poor
communities and perceptions of unmitigated
official corruption, were seen by pundits as the
major reasons for the BN's relatively poor
performance at last month’s polls.
Too
little, too late Since then, Abdullah has
announced a series of populist moves and reforms
in an attempt to win back lost popular support.
For instance, earlier this month his government
organized a dinner with the country's Bar Council
to announce the establishment of a judicial
appointments commission to look into the
appointment of judges.
The
checks-and-balances reform marks a departure from
the previous practice of the chief justice
recommending names for new judges to the prime
minister, who would then screen the names before
they were submitted to the country's
constitutional monarch for formal appointment. He
also said the government would make an ex gratia
payment to half a dozen top judges or their
surviving families for their suspension or sacking
back in 1988 when they stood up to Mahathir in a
foiled attempt to preserve judicial independence.
Critics say that Abdullah's speech fell
short of an outright apology and complain that he
has still failed to establish an independent
inquiry into the 1988 crisis, which many pinpoint
as the start of the erosion of the once respected
judiciary’s independence. Others wondered how
independent the new judicial appointments
commission would be.
The embattled premier
has also announced that he will overhaul the
present Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA), transforming
it into a supposedly more independent Malaysian
Commission on Anti-Corruption. Towards that end,
an independent advisory board will be established
for the new commission, which will be charged with
submitting its annual report to a new
parliamentary committee on corruption-busting. The
reforms would also introduce new protections for
whistle-blowers.
At the same time, there
are already questions about how independent the
new commission will actually function in practice.
Abdullah has said that he will ultimately still be
"responsible" for the new anti-graft body and that
he will "advise" on the appointments to its
advisory board. "There's always a minister,
anywhere in the world, responsible for any
institution set up," he was reported as saying.
Meanwhile, home minister Syed Hamid Albar
said the Cabinet would soon consider a proposal to
waive an administrative requirement for local
newspapers to renew their licenses every year, a
measure that critics say has led to
self-censorship by newspaper editors.
In
that direction, earlier this week authorities
decided to renew the publishing permit of the
Tamil language newspaper Makkal Osai, which will
now return to newsstands on Saturday. The move
marked a reversal of a decision earlier this month
not to renew the publication’s license for
allegedly breaching certain licensing guidelines
and threatening racial harmony through its
reporting. In a survey of six newspapers carried
out by an independent media monitoring team during
last month’s election campaign, the paper was
found to have provided the most opposition
coverage.
The government has also now
agreed to issue a publishing permit for Suara
Keadilan (The Voice of Justice), the newspaper
published by Anwar's political party, the People's
Justice Party. The permit will allow the
publishers to sell the publication to the general
public and not confine its sales to party members,
as is normally the case for opposition party
newspapers. The fortnightly paper's circulation
has shot up from 30,000 before last month's
general election to nearly 100,000 at present.
Reform advocates, however, want the entire
licensing provision to be scrapped, along with the
Printing Presses and Publications Act, which
stipulates that the minister's decision on
licensing issues is final and cannot be subjected
to judicial review. They also point to punitive
laws such as the Defamation Act, Official Secrets
Act, Internal Security Act, Sedition Act and other
undemocratic rules and regulations, which
historically have weighed against freedom of
expression.
Zulkiflee S M Anwar Ulhaque,
Suara Keadilan's editor and a political cartoonist
popularly known as Zunar, echoes those calls.
"Instead of saying thank you, prime minister, my
thanks would go to our readers, vendors and
printers, who have been intimidated in the past,"
he told Asia Times Online. "We have been denied a
permit for three years, so his announcement is
three years too late ... These reforms are half
reforms, too late and too little."
It's
yet to be seen if Malaysian voters will agree.
Anil Netto is a Penang-based
writer.
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