Youth are protesting high costs of living, unaffordable fuel prices and the continuing reign of the Barisan Nasional party in Malaysia. Credit: Udey Ismail/CC-BY-2.0

By Baradan Kuppusamy
KUALA LUMPUR, Jun 6 2013 (IPS)

They had voted for “ubah” or change. What the youth of Malaysia got instead seems to be more of the same.

“I am deeply disappointed,” said Alex Lee, a 24-year-old student at the Kuala Lumpur campus of Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), a private institution run by the Malaysian Chinese Association, one of the main parties in the current ruling coalition.

“All my friends, relatives and everyone I know said we could vote and change the government - but even though all of us voted for Pakatan Rakyat, we could not." -- Samantha Yow
“We thought people’s power would bring about change. Instead we see the same old government taking office and the same old policies are in place,” Lee told IPS during his shift at a warong (eatery) in the upscale Bangsar suburb of Kuala Lumpur, where he works part time.

Lee is giving voice to the widespread resentment among Malaysia’s urban youth, who, comprising 60 percent of the country’s 13.5 million voters, had thought their numbers would be large enough to bring about the change they so desperately sought at the recent elections.

They had pinned their hopes on the Pakatan Rakyat, a coalition of three disparate parties, as the vehicle of that change. As it happened, though, Barisan Nasional (BN), a coalition of 13 parties that has held the reins for 56 long years, returned to power yet again.

BN went on to form the government on the basis of securing 133 seats in the 222-seat parliament, its poorest showing to date. Despite bagging 52 percent of the larger national vote, PR had no choice but to occupy the opposition benches, given the country’s first-past-the-post electoral system.

In the May 5 election Barisan Nasional won 133 rural seats but lost the popular vote.

Alleging a “theft” of this election, PR leader Anwar Ibrahim has been staging rallies across the country, which dejected youth are attending in droves, numbering well over 50,000 at any given time.

“I had rushed to register as a first-time voter along with my friends in college, and we all supported the Pakatan,” said Lee, who just last week was in the nearby town of Petaling Jaya to attend one such rally that drew an estimated 70,000 people, most them of youth.

“We thought we would have a new beginning. But it’s the same old problems again: high university fees, high cost of living.”

While Malaysia enjoys full employment and provides employment to many foreign workers, opportunities consist mostly of low-paid factory jobs.

Transport, rent and other living expenses account for most of the average monthly salary of roughly 970 dollars. Young people have little to look forward to after they leave school besides working hard just to make ends meet.

Thus, Pakatan Rakyat’s campaign of free education, improved public transport, reduced fuel prices and cheaper cars struck a chord among urban youth.

“This country is for a few rich people,” Margaret Lam, who works with Lee at the warong, told IPS, referring to corrupt practices like granting government cronies Approved Permits to import luxury cars at reduced tax rates, while placing heavy duties on imported vehicles under the guise of “protecting” the local car manufacturer, Proton: the first indigenous-owned and operated automobile enterprise in the country that has long enjoyed government support.

In fact, the Pakatan Rakyat had announced plans to revamp the National Automotive Policy (NAP) if it came to power, by slashing duties on what many people here see as cheaper, better quality cars from abroad. The reforms would have forced Proton to get competitive, rather than rely on the government’s protectionist policies that have buoyed it up for three decades at a huge cost to ordinary people, experts say.

This promise by PR was yet another reason for youth to throw their lot in with the opposition, since many young people were already fed up with the government’s preferential treatment of natives (called bumiputras, or ‘sons of the soil’).

Alan Rajasooriya, who spoke with IPS at a recent rally in Seremban, a city about 60 km south of the capital, said he wants more than anything to see an end to policies that discriminate against descendants of Indians and Chinese.

“There should not be any preferential treatment to natives over non-natives,” he said, lashing out at policies that favour bumiputras by giving them priority in major business deals and government contracts.

According to him, this view finds echo among thousands of other youths who have been taking to the streets. They are also demanding an end to corruption and cronyism.

Rajasooriya and scores of others like him also firmly believe Ibrahim’s accusation that the country’s election commission allowed Bangladeshis, who come to the country as guest workers, to vote, in order to beef up the government’s numbers.

This is something that the election commission denies. However, as a gesture of reconciliation, the new government, under the prime ministership of Najib Razak, has offered to place the body under a parliamentary select committee.

Neither Ibrahim nor the youth are appeased. “All my friends, relatives and everyone I know said we can vote and change the government,” Samantha Yow, another youth protester, told IPS. “But even though all of us voted for Pakatan Rakyat, we could not.”

Now she feels she has no choice but to attend rallies, where she and other frustrated youth “share their aspirations and let off steam.”

The wave of popular discontent has also highlighted the rural-urban divide, with protesters articulating the desires of primarily urban youth.

Ibrahim Suffian, director of programmes at the Selangor-based Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research, attributes this partly to the level of government-controlled media in the Malaysian countryside, where about 30 percent of the population resides and where most people rely on national newspapers and television stations for their information.

Internet penetration of the country is just over 60 percent, and most rural youths have been left out of the digital revolution, unlike in urban areas where social media is a mainstay both for information and entertainment.

While rural voters, mostly farm labourers, along with small rubber and oil palm holders, remained staunchly loyal to Barisan Nasional, young urbanites were forming their own opinions about politics and governance and questioning their own role in the country’s future.

Sadly, this change did not happen fast enough for the PR, as the urban vote bank failed to match the landslide of ballots cast in the rural hinterland.

Experts say youth will most likely play a big part in the major opposition rally planned for June 15 in the capital, but whether or not their protests will amount to change remains to be seen.

It has been over a fortnight since Malaysia held its 13th general election that saw the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition returning to power and continuing its 56-year rule. However, instead of joyous celebration, there are widespread protests on the street.

Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak may have won another electoral battle on May 5, but he is fast losing the war.

Opposition candidate Anwar Ibrahim is seeking to harness the discontent in post-election Malaysia. Credit: Udeyismail/CC BY 2.0

The wave of demonstrations is led by Anwar Ibrahim, leader of the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) alliance, who disputes the election results and claims wholesale fraud. “If not for the electoral fraud on May 5, we would be in Putrajaya today,” he said, referring to the federal administrative centre, 25 km south of capital Kuala Lumpur.

He alleges that “planeloads of Bangladeshis” voted illegally, accounting for the reported record turnout at the elections in this Southeast Asian constitutional monarchy.

Vowing to reclaim the democracy that he says has been denied to the people, Ibrahim has been holding rallies around the country. People are turning up in the tens of thousands at these rallies, a testament to how deep popular disenchantment with the election runs. It is too early to say if this will lead to an Arab Spring in Malaysia, but there is no denying the overwhelming desire for change.

The first such rally, dubbed ‘Black 505’, kicked off in the west peninsular state of Selangor. Held at night at the Kelana Jaya stadium outside Kuala Lumpur, it attracted a crowd of nearly 120,000, comprised mostly of urban youth gathered through social media networks.

It has been followed by several others, the latest being on Friday May 17 at Seremban, capital of the neighbouring state of Negeri Sembilan.

The atmosphere at these rallies is almost festive. The dress code is the black of mourning, broken often by colourful umbrellas as people gather despite the rain. Cries of ‘reformasi’ or reform rend the air, reinforced by the honking of vuvuzelas.

“My family and I had hoped and prayed that all the young people had come out and voted to topple this oppressive government, but instead we were cheated of our victory,” Angelina Tan told IPS at the rally in Seremban, 60 km from Kuala Lumpur.

The 34-year old graphic designer was at the venue with her three-year-old son. “I am here for my son, it is his future we are fighting for,” she said, visibly angry at what she called a “sham democracy”.

Prime Minister Razak and the Election Commission have denied any fraud. The BN, a coalition of 13 parties, won 133 of the 222 seats in the bicameral Malaysian parliament.

The PR emerged the winner in the popular vote, cornering 52 per cent of the total, but ended up the loser given the country’s first-past-the-post system of voting. A legacy of British colonial rule, it ensures that the party with the largest number of seats forms the government.

Hopes had been riding high this election. The BN’s grip over the country seemed to have come loose in the last election in 2008, when it won just 140 seats. For the first time since the 1969 elections, the coalition had failed to win a two-thirds majority – a weapon with which the BN had long been running roughshod over people, according to government critics.

The opposition parties – the secular Democratic Action Party (DAP), the Islamic PAS party and the nominally secular Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), led by Ibrahim’s wife Wan Azizah Ismail – had won 82 seats in 2008.

It was an achievement they were hoping to consolidate this election, for which the three dissimilar parties had come together under the umbrella of the Pakatan Rakyat, which loosely means “people’s alliance”.

However, the opposition managed to increase its tally only by seven more seats, as the BN retained much of the rural vote. It became the deciding factor since the rural-urban weightage in seat distribution is skewed in favour of the former: there are three to four rural seats to each urban seat. And given the BN machinery in rural Malaysia – money, patronage and affirmative action policies – rural voters stayed with the party unlike many of their urban counterparts.

The BN thus won the mostly rural eastern states of Sabah and Sarawak. Together these two states account for 56 seats in parliament, of which the BN won 45. It also did well in the big peninsular states of Johor, Pahang and Kedah and bagged a smattering of seats in other smaller states. It also managed to recapture, with slim majorities, the two states of Perak and Kedah, which had gone to the opposition in 2008.

The marginalised, disillusioned, angry urban voter, however, stayed with the PR. While some of this urban vote went to DAP, a mostly Chinese-based political party with multi-racial representation, urban Malays disenchanted with the BN’s long rule delivered their votes to the PR.

Yet it did not prove enough for the BN to be voted out, something urban Malaysians tired of rising crime, drug culture and corruption were desperately hoping for. Many people are convinced that the May 5 poll was hijacked and there was widespread fraud.

It is this continuing urban discontent that Ibrahim, a former deputy prime minister and finance minister, is hoping to tap into.

“I would have reduced fuel prices, ordered free education and abolished road tolls,” he told the rally at Seremban. These were the promises the PR coalition had made in its election manifesto.

“We will not suffer under the escalating cost of living,” he thundered, to lusty cheers from the crowd.

PAS leader Rosli Yaakob, who was also present at the Seremban rally, told IPS that voters firmly believed that were it not for fraud, the PR would have won the elections. The PAS itself has done poorly compared to the other PR member parties.

He also wanted the Election Commission disbanded because he believes they were party to the alleged electoral fraud. (One prominent charge against the Election Commission is that the indelible blue ink it provided to ensure that no one voted twice was found to rub off quite easily.)

“We also want a royal commission of inquiry, as there was blatant abuse in some of the areas,” Yaakob said, referring to the allegations of vote-buying and use of government machinery for campaigning.

However, despite people’s misgivings, there is thin evidence of outright cheating or ballot box stuffing so far. Dr Jeyakumar Deveraj, MP for the Sungai Siput constituency in Perak state and the only socialist in parliament, conceded as much.

“We were not able to find conclusive evidence of significant cheating during the political process,” he told IPS.

But the “sheer volume of complaints” from the public goes to show how little trust they have in the Election Commission, he added.

He sees hope in the churn that has come in the wake of the election results. “There is a much higher level of citizen activism to preserve the sanctity of the polling process,” he said. It is good for democracy, he added.

And Ibrahim is wasting no time in harnessing this resentment.

Malaysians protesting against an Australian-owned rare earth refinery, that will generate radioactive waste,  are determined to agitate until the project is abandoned.

“It is time to shut down the Lynas plant,”  said Wong Tack chairman of the Himpunan Hijau (Green Gathering Malay) or HHC  that is leading a mass movement against the controversial refinery.

On Feb. 26, the HHC organised its biggest ever mass protest in this coastal town, capital of Pahang state, attracting 15,000 ordinary Malaysians as well as  prominent public figures, including Anwar Ibrahim, leader of the opposition Pakatan Rayat coalition.

Wong Tack told IPS that if the government “continues to dither” the HHC would organise an even bigger protest at Gebeng, site of the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP). The HHC proved its strength in October 2011 when it organised a 2,000-strong rally at the Taman Gelora beach.

According to Wong Tack, Malaysia is seeing a “green revolt” as people truly feared that the plant will produce radioactive thorium waste that would seriously harm the environment and endanger people’s health.

Ibrahim told the gathering in Gebeng that his opposition alliance plans to seek an emergency motion in Parliament to urge the cancellation of the  project. “We won’t sacrifice our culture and the safety of the children.”

Rare earth minerals, used in the electronics industry, find their way into anything from laptops and mobile phones to missiles. Their prices shot up after China, the world’s biggest producer, restricted exports last year.

But processing the rare earth ores mined in Australia will result in the concentration of radioactive elements such as thorium and uranium, which if not properly disposed can prove hazardous to environment and health.

Dr Michael Jeyakumar, a legislator belong to Parti Sosialis Malaysia, a small opposition party Malaysia was already suffering from the dangers of indiscriminate dumping of industrial waste as a result of uncontrolled and rampant industrialism.

“The people have given notice they will be not a dumping ground for radioactive waste by this Australian company,” he told IPS.  “This Lynas project is going to lay waste our land and our health and the health of future generations for mere profit,” he said.

“The government has to listen to the protesters…there is no way the government can justify this act of madness,” he said.

The LAMP plant is due for completion in June and start shipping in ore from the Port Weld mine, in Australia. LAMP hopes to break China’s near  monopoly on world’s supply of rare earth metals.

Once production starts LAMP  stands to generate profits in excess of three billion dollars a year because of the demand for rare earth metals. LAMP has already having signed agreements to supply Japanese firms.

Lynas, which is listed in the Australian stock exchange, saw its stock prices tumble when protestors filed for court action in the Kuantan High Court against government for giving LAMP a temporary operating licence.

Prime Minister Najib Razak, reacting to the Gebeng protests, said the LAMP plant is harmless and that the project is subject to review by a government panel.

Razak said the government was looking for an “isolated region” in the country to store the radioactive waste, thereby admitting that there was a problem.

Thorium, which is radioactive, is already being used to power experimental nuclear reactors in India, where it occurs naturally and in abundance.

Friends of The Earth president S. M. Mohamed Idris said Lynas chose Malaysia to site its plant is because of lax radioactive control laws and the distribution of responsibility among four different ministries and an atomic energy regulatory agency.

“Our Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB) is in no position to handle the Gebeng plant, its mechanics and the technology involved as also the waste produced,” he told IPS.

In June last year the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) undertook  a safety study of the Gebeng plant and recommended numerous measures for Lynas to take including the submission of plans for a permanent disposal facility for the radioactive waste.

While Lynas is yet to follow several of the IAEA recommendations it has managed to obtain a temporary operating licence from AELB and has been given a generous 18 months from start of operations – expected in  June – to come up with disposal plans.

The current plan is to contain the waste in special drums that are to be placed in trenches, at the Gebeng plant.

For many Malaysians the plan brings back memories of the Japanese  Mitsubishi-owned Asian Rare Earth plant in the 1980s that was closed down following  spirited public protest.

The Mitsubishi rare-earth plant was ordered shut, after an increase in birth-defects and leukaemia cases in children of former workers. The radioactive waste, contained in drums had to be dug up and interred in a hilltop site.

Member of parliament for Kuantan, Fuziah Salleh, told IPS that the public is strongly opposed to the LAMP plant out of fear of radioactive poisoning.

“After the Fukushima disaster, last year, they fear damage to their health from radioactive waste,” she said. “Even if the radioactive waste is shifted to a remote, unpopulated site it will remain dangerous for many years. Why bring it here in the first place?”

(END/IPS/AP/IP/IF/EN/HE/CS/CU/NU/AW/CR/HD/BK/RDR/12)

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 26 (IPS) – A plan by the Malaysian government to privatise its public healthcare system and get consumers to pay for it through salary cuts is rapidly turning into a major election issue.

Whistleblower doctors let the cat out of the bag this month by sharing details of ‘Icare’ that the government had shared with doctors and select stakeholders.

Currently, the government pays Malaysian ringitt 34 billion (11.2 billion dollars) annually for a healthcare scheme that it wants to pass on to consumers under ‘Health Care Financing’ that the public and conscientious doctors are opposing.

These doctors are fundamentally opposed to any scheme that requires citizens to pay a part of their earnings – in this case 10 percent of net monthly wages – if the cost of health financing is passed on to consumers.

The existing system, which consists of a network of government hospitals and clinics and caregivers throughout the country, provides cheap, affordable and effective healthcare.

“Why fix something that is working reasonably well,” said Dr. Ng Swee Choon, deputy president of the Private Medical Practitioners Association, a group of doctors opposed to Icare.

“Malaysia has excellent healthcare coverage as nearly 90 percent of the people stay within a five km distance from a government-run clinic or hospital,” he said.

Ng told a Feb. 18 forum that the World Health Organisation (WHO) had acknowledged in its annual report of 2007 that Malaysia had an effective and efficient healthcare system and had rated the service “excellent”.

Currently, 4.7 percent of the GDP is set aside for healthcare, way below the WHO recommendation of eight or nine percent.

“It’s more important to increase the bill of healthcare as a percentage of GDP than to go and change the system,” said another activist doctor T. Jayabalan.

The government is moving away from providing nearly free healthcare to a financing scheme that will be paid for by all citizens, he said.

 The government, however, says healthcare is getting more expensive by the day and believes that a better option is one that is financed by citizens.

“Everybody is entitled to equal healthcare…there won’t be a private or government distinction,” said health minister Liow Tiong Lai of a scheme in which people contribute monthly in return for getting best medical care available.

Currently, those who can afford it patronise the expensive, well-equipped private hospitals that have sprung up all over the country while others make do with crowded government hospitals that are under-equipped and under-staffed.

 Icare is expected to pool resources under the National Health Corporation (NHC) that will foot the medical bills, assign the sick to a doctor and regulate treatment according to a fixed schedule.

Many people are not confident about giving a part of their wages to a government-managed NHC and fear it will be mismanaged and overtaken by cronyism and nepotism, like other public sector outfits.

 “We fear pilferage and that other forms of corruption would overtake the scheme,” said Dr. Michael Jeyakumar, a lawmaker from the small Parti Sosialist Malaysia.

“Right now the government is simply telling the people to wait quietly for them to tell what is best for them,” he said. “This type of top-down policy does not work anymore,” he said.

Health minister Liow came forward last week to say the opposition is spreading “false” details to confuse the public about Icare.

He said the assertion that 10 percent of salary would be mandatory to finance Icare is false. “I myself will oppose the scheme if that is the case,” Liow told The Star daily on Feb. 19.

But neither the health ministry nor Prime Minister Najib Razak have accepted a challenge from the opposition to release all the details.

The government has asked Malaysians not to speculate about Icare and reserve judgment for when the system has been given a chance to develop.

The opposition Pakatan Rakyat has urged the people to vote out the ruling Barisan Nasional or National Front. “The Front cannot be trusted with the people’s money,” said Jeyakumar.

The opposition has rejected Icare as exploitative and is using the issue as campaign fodder for elections that are due by April 2013.

A top-down planning system is the hallmark of the National Front which has ruled the country since independence in 1957 and is dominated by the powerful United Malay National Organisation party.

Moves to privatise state-run public healthcare can damage the National Front which has projected itself as the protector of the socio-economic interests of its main constituency, the rural Malays.

Voters rejected the Barisan Nasional’s hold on power in the 2008 general election when nearly 49 percent abandoned the Front in favour of the incipient Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition led by Anwar Ibrahim, a former deputy prime minister in the Front government.

The Pakatan Rakyat and the National Front are nearly equally matched for a return match in their contest for state power in a general election that is widely expected to be called mid-year.

“Many members of the public are unaware of the implications of the scheme,” opposition legislator Charles Santiago told IPS.

“The federal government argues that Icare will make healthcare more affordable and its delivery more efficient to the public,” said Santiago.

“But they are actually privatising our healthcare services through a social health insurance scheme that will only further burden the people, especially the poor,” said Santiago who has started an awareness campaign in his constituency of Klang, 30 km west of the capital.

Credit:Marwaan Macan-Markar/IPS

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Feb 24 2012 (IPS)

Malaysia’s charismatic opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim is tapping the spirit of the Arab Spring to end the 55-year unbroken rule of the United Malay National Organsiation (UMNO) and its allies in the Southeast Asian nation.

“Malaysia cannot be isolated from what is happening throughout the world, particularly the Muslim world,” said the 64-year-old head of the Parti Kedilan Rakyat (PKR), or People’s Justice Party. “For us in Malaysia these are very reassuring signs: this trend towards democracy, freedom and more accountability in the Arab world.”

His ongoing campaign for more freedom will be tested in Malaysia’s provincial and national legislatures, where the PKR made history in the 2008 polls, winning five state governments out of 13, and 82 seats out of 222 in the national parliament.

But Anwar admitted during an interview in the Thai capital that he faces a formidable challenge, given how UMNO where he was once a rising star has persecuted him since he was fired as the country’s deputy prime minister in 1998 on charges of corruption and sodomy.

He was freed after six years in jail after a court overturned the charges. But fresh allegations were made in 2008 that he had sodomised a former male aide, another case that was overturned by a court in January this year.

Excerpts from the interview follow:

Q: Has your January court victory boosted your political fortunes?

A: It does not make a difference among my supporters because they know the case was based on trumped up charges. But it does make a difference for those who are non-committal or ruling party supporters. They received a daily barrage of news from the media during the case that Anwar is guilty and the judiciary is independent.

Q: Would you prefer a general election early this year? Or when the current parliament’s term runs out in March 2013?

A: It is very likely the elections will be held this year. The massive campaign now by the government suggests that they may go for an election in late March or any time in June. So, we have to be prepared because elections in Malaysia are a mockery of the democratic system. The media is controlled and the campaign period is only seven to eight days – the shortest in the world.

Q: You have emerged as a symbol of a new Malaysia after decades of corrupt and authoritarian rule by the governing coalition. Do voters have a reason for optimism?

A: Although I am not that young (laughs) …, our policies are clear for Malaysia to mature as a democracy. What the Arab Spring people are talking about and the Occupy Wall Street movement is talking about in terms of justice and being opposed to unbridled capitalism that caters only to the very rich and the very few are what we have been articulating.

Q: Does that mean a break from the state-driven capitalism of UMNO?

A: Our economic agenda seeks to offer an alternative to this policy, which I consider obsolete. It only benefitted the rich families, members of the ruling clique and their cronies through contracts and shares. They became billionaires by using the Malay privileges. And they continue to defend this system tooth and nail because of their personal interest.

Q: UMNO’s other defining feature has been its race-based politics. But you head a coalition drawing on many ethnic groups. Is Malaysia ready for your politics seeking to transcend these deep divisions, particularly the Malay majority?

A: It is challenging. I don’t deny the fact that it will be difficult. I have been accused by the governing party of trying to sell the country to the Chinese, or under us the country will be Christianised, and if I attend Hindu functions it has also become an issue. So, they are using these racist lines to attack me.

To be discriminated because of race is something unthinkable and unacceptable in this day and age. I believe the majority of Malaysians can be convinced to accept this view.

Q: What about sodomy?

A: I have said that the law on sodomy is a crime. That does not mean I am pro-gay marriage. As a Muslim I and even the majority of non-Muslims in Malaysia believe in the sanctity of marriage.

Q: You are not the only opposition figure in Southeast Asia who has been harassed by their respective governments. Burma has Aung San Suu Kyi, Cambodia has Sam Rainsy and Singapore has Chee Soon Juan. Why do they fear a vibrant opposition?

A: We have been late in the process of understanding that our countries must mature as a democracy, to respect democratic institutions, respect the right to dissent and the right to freedom. The Arab Spring has been particularly useful for us in the Muslim world in this regard. It has had an impact about the meaning of democracy.

Q: So is it time to write a requiem for ‘Asian Values,’ which was asserted by strongmen like Singapore’s former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew and your former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad to justify authoritarian rule for decades?

A: The notion of ‘Asian Values’ is obsolete. It was never relevant in the first place. It was not even Asian values as we talk about Islamic values. It was a perverted excuse to benefit those in power.

Q: But you were part of the system and benefited from it before you fell out with former premier Mahathir?

A: I cannot absolve myself. But in my speeches I did talk about the condescending view leaders had towards their citizens. Such views have no place in politics today.

(END)

Excerpt: