POLITICS-MALAYSIA: Grumblings Signal Awakening from Social Apathy

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Anil Netto

PENANG, Malaysia, May 18 1998 (IPS) - It was a rare sight: about 300 angry residents from a typical middle-class residential suburb near Kuala Lumpur publicly protesting after going without piped water for eight days.

The group, which included senior citizens, professionals, homemakers, and the disabled, carried banners and placards slamming the authorities for their inept handling of a water shortage that has led to prolonged rationing in the capital.

An elderly man, with a clenched fist punching the air, held a placard that read “Where’s Our Water?” A little girl raised another piece of cardboard above her head with the words “2020 Without Water?” scrawled on it – in a sardonic reference to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s ambitious blueprint for Malaysia to achieve developed nation status by that year.

The protest wouldn’t have raised eyebrows in any other democratic society. But in Malaysia, public disaffection is rarely expressed openly, largely out of fear of the possible repercussions and out of sheer apathy towards social issues.

But something strange is happening in Malaysia today. Murmurs of discontent, once confined to coffee-shops, are gradually surfacing. A series of crises – economic, social, and environmental — has hit ordinary Malaysians in many different ways.

The result: more and more Malaysians are gradually waking up from the slumber of social apathy that they had sunk into for almost a decade.

“A lot of people are grumbling,” says Chong Eng, deputy secretary-general of the main opposition Democratic Action Party. It’s a far cry from the ebullience and confidence that many Malaysians displayed when the economy expanded by about 8 per cent annually for almost a decade, he said.

In the 1995 general election, at the height of the economic boom, middle-class Malaysians voted in droves for the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, which clinched a record landslide win with close to two thirds of the popular vote.

Times have changed. Officials forecast that the economy will grow by only 2-3 per cent this year. And they could be wrong – their previous estimates for 1998 have been way off the mark. More conservative analysts predict that the economy will contract instead by two per cent.

Though the country is still recording close to full employment, a prominent trade unionist predicted that up to half a million Malaysians could be thrown out of work, an estimate that the government immediately challenged.

Where Malaysians once chose to remain silent as long as they were not immediately affected by social problems, today they cannot ignore what is happening around them.

The smog (euphemistically referred to as ‘the haze’ or ‘low visibility’ here), the water crisis, the economic crisis – the effects of all these are clearly visible and have hurt Malaysians in some way or another.

The slump in the stockmarket – along with a corresponding slide in unit trust values – has wiped out a huge chunk of the savings that many Malaysians had invested in shares in the hope of securing higher returns.

Dubious investments by the Employees Provident Fund, a compulsory retirement fund for workers, have led to the lowest dividend in 22 years for contributors who are mostly from the working class.

The weaker ringgit has put many Malaysian parents in a tight spot: they can no longer afford to finance their children’s education overseas. Those whose children are already abroad face huge problems in continuing to support their studies.

That’s not all. The weaker ringgit has pushed up the prices of imported food and pharmaceutical items, putting them out of the reach of many Malaysians. Prices of essential food items and hawker food have shot up.

Social activists used to complain that Malaysians were generally an apathetic lot. But that is slowly changing. “People are feeling the effect of the price increases,” says political activist K Gunabalan. “It is only when they are directly affected that they will react.”

“Generally, I think they are very angry,” agrees Chong Eng. But not many of them know how to effectively channel their grievances, she told IPS. Elections are not due until early 2000.

Some have organised themselves though. A Citizens Health Initiative, for instance, has mobilised dozens of groups and individuals, including those involved in the medical profession, against impending moves to ‘corporatise’ or semi-privatise state- run general hospitals. They fear that corporatised hospitals will hike fees and make it less affordable for the poor to receive medical treatment.

Even Malaysia’s pro-establishment newspapers seem to be treading new ground, albeit very cautiously.

Human rights activists here were surprised recently when the New Straits Times prominently published a letter from the president of the National Human Rights Society of Malaysia, Raja Aziz Addruse, accusing the police force of being ‘trigger-happy’ when they confronted suspected armed criminals. The police, which comes under the Home Ministry headed by Mahathir, strongly denied the charge.

The same newspaper also carried a feature article on May 12 that questioned the wisdom of corporatising state-run universities to improve the quality of education and to cut costs. The article argued that promoting critical thinking and academic freedom in the halls of learning were far more important factors in raising educational standards.

Despite the rumblings of discontent here, outward protest “is still low key,” says Gunabalan.

Analysts here are watching events unfold across the Straits of Malacca, where Indonesian President Suharto is being pressured by an angry nation to step down. If Suharto falls, the murmurs on this side of the Straits are likely to grow louder.