Malaysia poised for pivotal
polls By Simon Roughneen
Ahead of what reform campaigners believe
will be Malaysia's "dirtiest ever elections", the
long-ruling United Malays National Organization
(UMNO) has engineered something of a clean-up. In
recent months, it has reformed some old and
oft-derided laws, such as allowing indefinite
detention without trial and forcing local
newspapers to apply each year for a publication
permit, a stipulation that encouraged
self-censorship.
UMNO and its allies have
governed Malaysia consecutively since achieving
independence from colonial rule, a longevity not
usually associated with electoral democracies.
UMNO and its Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition
survived the last election in 2008, though it
ceded its two-thirds parliamentary majority for
the first time and lost five out of 13 federal
states to the opposition, a coalition of three
parties led by controversial former UMNO firebrand Anwar
Ibrahim that includes the
Islamic party PAS and the Chinese-dominated
Democratic Action Party (DAP).
While some
in the Malaysian opposition and rights groups have
criticized the recent reforms as piecemeal
electioneering for next year's vote, there are
indications that the government has made some real
positive changes, particularly regarding the
overhaul of certain emergency laws and repealing
the old Internal Security Act, a law which has in
the past been used against the government’s
political opponents.
Noting some
improvements, Amanda Whiting, a law academic at
University of Melbourne who carries out research
on the Malaysian legal system, told Asia Times
Online that "there now cannot be lengthy detention
without trial, there must be a criminal court
process, not extrajudicial detention."
It
remains to be seen whether the "two steps forward,
one step back" reforms will be enough to help UMNO
and its fellow members in the BN (or National
Front) coalition to retain power over the Pakatan
Rakyat (or People's Justice) opposition coalition,
said James Chin, a political scientist at Monash
University's Malaysia campus. He views the reforms
as an appeal by Prime Minister Najib Razak to
voters to stick with the devil they know.
"Najib is trying to say, 'you can have an
UMNO that is trying to reform, or you can opt for
uncertainty with Anwar and PAS'," Chin told Asia
Times Online.
Many of Malaysia's main
political parties held internal conferences in
late November and early December, with the
election foremost on members’ minds. UMNO
delegates rehashed old themes about continuity
while accusing the Anwar-led coalition of being
foreign-funded stooges with an anti-Malay,
anti-Islam agenda.
These were viewed in
some quarters as diversionary tactics. Najib and
UMNO have come under fire of late with renewed
allegations centering around a possible cover-up
of the murder of a Mongolian model living in
Malaysia in 2006 who associated with government
officials, which in turn has been linked to a
kickback scandal involving the government’s
purchase of French submarines.
At times,
the fear-mongering took unwittingly comic turns.
Ibrahim Ali, president of Perkasa, a Malay
supremacist organization with links to UMNO,
suggested that Malays are economically
disadvantaged against non-Malays due to Islamic
law and therefore the government's long-standing
effective subsidization of the Malay population at
the expense of other ethnic groups should
continue.
"Gambling, liquor, entertainment
outlets... how could Malays afford, be able to
compete?" Ibrahim asked, citing businesses
prohibited by sharia law.
But it is not
just pro-government parties that talk up the need
for sharia-based laws. Religion and "race" (the
term used in Malaysia when discussing the
country's three main ethnic groups - Malay,
Chinese and Indian) are potentially divisive
electoral issues. PAS, for instance, has openly
discussed the implementation of hudud, or
Islamic criminal justice, should the opposition
coalition of which it is part win the election.
Such plans are said to alarm the allied
DAP and more broadly Chinese-Malay voters. The
Malaysian Chinese Association, BN's in-house
Chinese party, has told voters that a vote for the
DAP is effectively a vote for more Islamic law in
Malaysia. Ethnic Chinese represent around 25% of
Malaysia's population.
Ooi Kee Beng, a
Malaysian academic based at Singapore's Institute
of Southeast Asian Studies, says that "bread and
butter issues", not race and religion, are likely
to be foremost in voters' minds on election day.
Here the BN incumbents might fare well,
with domestic spending on infrastructure projects,
such as a new metro/rail system in Kuala Lumpur,
helping to buoy economic growth to around 5%.
Populist measures, most recently included in the
September budget, have played well in rural areas,
where two-thirds of the parliamentary seats will
be decided.
Malaysia's low-inflation,
trade-oriented economy has also fared
comparatively well amid the slowdown in major
export markets such as Japan, the United States
and Europe, and a more recent fall-off in exports
to China. The country remains an attractive place
to do business, according to the World Bank's
"Doing Business" report, which recently placed
Malaysia 12th in its global rankings, ahead of
economies like Sweden (13th), Taiwan (16th),
Germany (20th) and Japan (24th).
While the
UMNO-led government has some prestigious backing
for its economic policies, a more sobering
analysis was delivered this month, with global
graft watchdog Transparency International rating
Malaysia as the world's most corrupt place to do
business, based on a survey of 3,000 executives
worldwide. Half of those questioned in Malaysia
reckoned they lost a contract over the past year
due to someone else paying a bribe.
Some
reform campaigners believe that such
under-the-table activities could undermine the
upcoming election. Ambiga Sreenavasan's Bersih
group has twice led tens of thousands of
Malaysians to rally for electoral reforms,
protests that culminated in mass arrests and the
use of teargas against demonstrators across the
usually placid center of Kuala Lumpur.
Sreenavasan said on December 17 that
shortcomings such as errors on electoral rolls had
been ignored by the government ahead of the
upcoming elections - a potential point of
contention should UMNO and BN sweep to victory.
"The 13th general elections will be one of the
dirtiest elections ever seen and we should not
anticipate any change in the near future," she
said at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur.
The elections now look set for April 2013
after speculation throughout late 2011 and 2012
that Najib would call a snap vote to capitalize on
any feel-good factor after the series of political
reforms and populist handouts failed.
"Ultimately UMNO is a giant patronage
machine," said academic Chin. "The budget and the
previous handouts [such as one-time wage
supplements for civil servants and those defined
as 'poor'] is just UMNO using government largesse
to win voters."
Nonetheless, the rise of a
viable and effective opposition has spurred the
UMNO-led government into reform, even if it does
not yet mean a historic change of government is
likely at the upcoming polls. "Whatever happens in
the election, Malaysia has gained greatly from the
rise of [Pakatan Rakyat]," said Ooi Kee Beng.
Simon Roughneen covers Southeast
Asia for various publications and has reported
from Malaysia several times in recent years. His
website is www.simonroughneen.com and he may be
followed on Twitter at @simonroughneen.
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