POLITICS-MALAYSIA: Change Taking Root, If Slowly, Says Book

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Anil Netto

PENANG, Jul 8 2003 (IPS) - The winds of political change seem to be sweeping through Malaysia and for the first time, according to a new book that says the Malay middle class are increasingly involved in the movement for greater democratic reforms and, in turn, challenging the government.

In the just-released book ‘New Politics in Malaysia’, edited by Johan Saravanamuttu and Francis Loh Kok Wah, both professors at the Science University of Malaysia, a string of writers explain the sweeping changes that the era of ‘reformasi’ has ushered in the last five years.

”For the first time,” observed Saravanamuttu, ”significant numbers of the Malay middle-classes were involved in the reformasi movement”.

"This is because these more independent Malays had contact with the grassroots through Muslim-based organisations," said Saravanamuttu. "The movement is also drawing support from low-income Malays in both rural and urban areas," he added.

Reformasi, a clamour for wide-ranging reforms, began in 1998. It was led by former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim after he was sacked by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Mahathir, who critics say feared a political challenge from his handpicked successor at the time.

In September 1999, Anwar was arrested under the draconian Internal Security Act and is now serving a 15-year jail sentence for sodomy and corruption charges.

But ‘New Politics in Malaysia’ points out that support for the reformasi movement was also coming from a diverse spectrum of groups, not just those aligned with Anwar and his associates.

Apart from the opposition parties, many other independent groups emerged and made their voices heard as the 1999 general election approached, notes Saravanamuttu.

Among them were groups such as the Women’s Agenda for Change, which demanded that laws be enforced and enacted to further women’s rights and the Citizens Health Initiative, which mobilised Malaysians to oppose the corporatisation of general hospitals.

Human rights groups have in recent years campaigned more vigorously against the Internal Security Act, building broad alliance and networks.

More recently, more localised groups have sprouted to oppose the building of rubbish incinerators and highways in residential areas and to criticise environmentally suspect projects.

This trend ”threatened to unsettle” the Mahathir administration, said the book’s editors.

In the 1999 general election, Mahathir’s ruling coalition, led by his United Malays Nationalist Organisation, prevailed anyway. It retained its two-thirds parliamentary majority, although it managed only 56 percent of the popular vote, a drop from the 65 percent it secured in 1995.

But the book said this victory has since been of little comfort to the ruling coalition, indicating a genuine, if slow change, in the Malaysian political scene.

"It has been alarming for the ruling coalition (after the 1999 election). The Malay votes – which it relied on heavily in the past – were split down the middle with opposition parties like the Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) and Anwar’s National Justice Party (Keadilan) making inroads," the book’s editors said.

Despite drawing strong support from ethnic Malays, who make up majority of the country’s 22 million people, the book’s authors wrote, the ‘reformasi’ movement faced its biggest test in attracting non-Malay interest.

In the November 1999 election, the ethnic Malays were evenly split. The ruling coalition drew from a solid core of non-Malay support, mainly from the Chinese, to romp home to victory.

The book also examined changes in the voting behaviour of the ethnic Chinese electorates.

"Like the Malays, the ethnic Chinese too appeared split down the middle – but theirs was a swing away from the opposition towards the ruling coalition," said the authors. "Where once they had leaned towards the opposition, they had swung towards the ruling coalition by the mid-1990s as the ‘politics of developmentalism’ took hold.”

According to the authors of ‘New Politics in Malaysia’, this type of politics puts economic growth, high living standards and consumerist lifestyles ahead of concerns for social justice and human rights.

According to the book, many ethnic Chinese were drawn toward the economic opportunities that economic liberalisation and privatisation had brought about.

In addition, it said, the government’s move to liberalise higher education and culture and create a new "Malaysian race" won it new admirers among the non-Malays, especially the Chinese.

"The main ethnic Chinese party in the ruling coalition, the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), forged closer ties with the Chinese Malaysian business community and introduced self-help projects such as private colleges and even a university, expanding the number of seats available to Chinese Malaysians," said the book.

Also, local branches of the MCA and another Chinese-based ruling party, Gerakan, were transformed into conduits to deliver public goods. These parties, according to the book, set up service centres and public complaints bureaus, financed by government allocations, to serve the public, especially lower-income Chinese Malaysians.

‘New Politics in Malaysia’ also tackled the issue of Malaysians opting for non-formal political methods to address problems after being made aware of their rights through the reformasi movement.

This, according the book’s other editor, Loh, has fragmented Malaysian society. ”These divisions within the communities overlap with competing discourses and practices, namely those of ethnicism, developmentalism, and participatory democracy,” he said.

Added Loh: "Though ethnicism was a dominant factor in the last election, it no longer overwhelms the other discourses as it used to."

Malaysia’s political system remains heavily stacked in favour of the ruling coalition, but ‘New Politics in Malaysia’ highlights a new hope.

Though it is hard for new, non-formal politics to translate its influence into electoral gains, many activists hope that rising political awareness will make it possible to deny the ruling coalition a two-thirds parliamentary majority in the future.

That would, according to the book, herald the arrival of a two-coalition system – the ruling coalition and the opposition alliance that has been built up just over the last few years. This, in turn, would at last see non-formal politics becoming institutionalised into the formal electoral realm, it said.