Reform storm gathers in
Malaysia By Simon Roughneen
KUALA LUMPUR - Almost 10 months after
security forces forcibly broke up an electoral
reform protest in the national capital, a chaotic
repeat looms. The Malaysian government and city
authorities will attempt to close off the city
center square where activists hope 100,000 people
will gather this weekend to seek sweeping changes
to the electoral system.
The rally
organizers, known as Bersih (Malay for "clean")
3.0, are a coalition of non-governmental
organizations and rights groups who say they want
Malaysia's electoral laws amended. Opposition
members of parliament allege that tens of
thousands of irregularities persist on the
electoral register, while Bersih has dismissed the
election commission as toothless and called for
the election commission to resign. The rally is
being held ahead of anticipated snap polls later
this year.
During a Bersih rally last July
9, more than 1,600 people were
arrested and scores
injured, including opposition leader Anwar
Ibrahim. Police fired tear gas and water cannon at
tens of thousands of peaceful protestors at
various locations in Kuala Lumpur. The crackdown
hit Prime Minister Najib Razak's reform
credentials and signaled his United Malays
Nasional Organization (UMNO) party's resistance to
meaningful electoral reform before the next polls,
which must be held by April 2013.
The
stage is set for new clashes. Kuala Lumpur Mayor
Ahmad Fuad Ismail announced on Thursday that
Dataran Merdeka, or Independence Square, will be
closed from 6 am Friday to 6 am Sunday after Home
Affairs Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said
protesters had refused offers that four stadia
elsewhere in the city could be used for the rally.
Cynthia Gabriel, director of SUARAM, a
human-rights organization and part of the Bersih
3.0 steering committee, told Asia Times Online
that the protesters should be allowed to convene
at the square. "This is a last-minute effort to
make it as difficult as possible for us
logistically to hold the rally," she said. "We
have promised that the protest will be peaceful,
and in any functioning democracy the right of
citizens to stage a peaceful rally is enshrined in
law."
The government's move is being seen
as a test of Bersih's resolve. "Merdeka Square is
a matter of principle - backing down at the last
minute will obviously cause confusion and also a
loss of momentum," said Greg Lopez of Australian
National University. The rally comes almost a
month after the Malaysian government proposed 22
electoral reforms that Bersih considers
insufficient. Political analysts believe
Saturday's rally could take place less than six
weeks before parliamentary elections that might be
held on June 5.
Gabriel said "only the
issue of indelible ink has been addressed" (which
would prevent voters from casting a ballot
multiple times) in the proposed electoral changes.
She and other Bersih leaders advocate that an
election not be held until the latest possible
date, allowing the government sufficient time to
pass and implement more substantive reforms into
law.
Beginning in September 2011, Najib's
government announced a series of reforms,
including of the repressive print media codes and
notorious Internal Security Act (ISA) that allowed
for indefinite detention without trial.
The changes "underline my commitment to
making Malaysia a modern, progressive democracy
that can be proud to take its place at the top
table of international leadership", said Najib,
speaking on the eve of celebrations marking the
founding of the modern Malaysian state in 1963.
However, opposition member of parliament
Dzulkefly Ahmad of the Pan Malaysian Islamic Party
(PAS) dismisses Najib's reform drive. "What the
big print gives the small print takes away," he
told Asia Times Online, suggesting that the reform
announcements were more about electioneering than
substantive change.
Electoral
maneuvers Analysts believe that a big
turnout on Saturday could influence whether the
government calls the elections soon. If the
lockdown succeeds in keeping supporters away from
the rally, a low turnout could give the impression
of a waning desire for political change and
thereby spur the government into holding an early
snap poll. Under present laws, the government
needs to give only a week's notice before holding
an election, giving the opposition little time to
prepare a nationwide campaign.
The
UMNO-dominated Barisan Nasional (BN, or National
Front) ruling coalition has governed Malaysia
since independence. The present opposition
coalition led by Anwar Ibrahim, a former UMNO
insider, achieved its best-ever result in 2008,
denting the government's two-thirds parliamentary
majority for the first time in the multi-ethnic,
multi-religious state.
Around 60% of
Malaysians are either ethnic Malay or other
"indigenous" groups and are mostly listed as
Muslim. Another 25% are ethnic Chinese and 7%
mostly Tamil-speaking Indian-Malaysians. Party and
voting allegiances have not traditionally been
cast on strict ethnic lines, however, with UMNO
and PAS competing for the "Islamic" vote and with
separate Chinese-dominated parties in both the BN
and opposition coalitions.
Earlier in the
week, the Kuala Lumpur mayor slammed Bersih as an
opposition front, something the protesters have
consistently denied. "It is a natural consequence
that opposition parties back any civil society
drive for free and fair elections," reasoned
Bersih organizer Gabriel "as the perceived
cheating in any poll would be disadvantageous to
them".
On Friday, government-linked media
played up opposition senator Tunku Abdul Aziz's
description of Bersih as "irresponsible" for
refusing to back down on the rally venue. The
Democratic Action Party (DAP) representative's
comments highlighted that despite government
claims Bersih and the parliamentary opposition are
not locked in a seamless alliance.
Indeed,
the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (People's Alliance)
coalition itself is an unwieldy amalgam of Anwar's
centrist Keadilan party, the secular
Malaysian-Chinese DAP and the sharia
law-favoring PAS, whose divergent interests are
perhaps only held together by the prospect of
displacing BN from power.
Asked if the
opposition could win in a free and fair vote,
member of parliament Ahmad said, "I don't know,"
conceding that "Najib is making himself look so
earnest with all these reforms."
Looking
ahead to eventual elections, Yang Razali Kassin of
the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies
at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University,
said BN would go all out to win back its
previously held two-thirds majority and the four
out of 13 federal states lost to the opposition in
2008.
"In that sense, the opposition will
be on the defensive," he said. The prime
minister's popularity has jumped after recent
increases to civil service salaries, one-off cash
transfers to low-income families and recent reform
announcements.
After the negative response
to last July's crackdown on the Bersih 2.0 rally,
analysts believe it would be counter-productive
and counter-intuitive for the government to back a
similar crackdown on Saturday.
However,
Home Affairs Minister Hussein was by early Friday
speaking of the proposed rally as a security
issue, hinting that a repeat of last July's
crackdown was possible if Bersih tried to access
Independence Square.
For now, political
analysts feel that the governing parties are well
placed to win any upcoming election. "The real
issue is how big will BN win," said Lopez, adding
that the opposition had failed to make inroads
into the government's voter-heavy stronghold of
east Malaysia, where the election could be won or
lost.
Simon Roughneen is a
foreign correspondent. His website is
www.simonroughneen.com.
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