The Politics of Promise
Hooray for Malaysia’s 12th General Elections. So umm, what’s next?
By Chris Chew
Around noon on the Sunday of 9th March 2008, Zainon Ahmad was getting ready to go to work. As the Political Editor of The Sun newspaper got dressed, he spotted his neighbour Mr Lim walking out simultaneously. “I have been eying his house for some time,” said Zainon. “He’s always talked about selling it off and migrating to Australia.” So that day, Zainon struck the usual neighbourly conversation, and popped the question about Mr Lim’s future plans. “When I asked him,” said Zainon, “[Mr Lim] said, ‘Oh sorry la. I’m no more migrating!’ ”
Mr Lim, and Zainon, were certainly not the only people who woke up to rather different Malaysia than the one 24 hours earlier. For the first time since the 1969 elections, ruling party Barisan Nasional failed to retain the two-thirds majority in Parliament, as the opposition coalition comprising PKR, DAP and PAS won 82 of the 222 federal seats being contested. BN also lost four states to the opposition parties, including commercial hubs Selangor and Penang, and were decimated by in PAS-controlled Kelantan.
Yet the numbers don’t even begin to depict the new political landscape that has been painted. A report by The Sun concludes that BN won 30 other federal seats by a mere average of 1,893 votes, including one seat in Sarawak by 51 votes. More stunningly, the analysis suggested that if 10 percent more voters decided to vote against BN, the opposition coalition would have retained a two-thirds majority of 139 parliamentary seats versus 83 for BN. Quite simply, the word “opposition” would have taken on a whole new meaning overnight.
In one profound, previously unfathomable swoop, modern Malaysia added a new date of significance to its chequered history. Alas, the 11 million-voter question now arises: Will anything change now?
DECK THE HALLS
First off, it is important to realise that while momentous, these elections results can hardly be classified as a tsunami, or earthquake, or any other seismic analogy that some quarters were gleefully romanticising it as the morning after. Pakistan’s February elections that saw the party in support of President Pervez Musharraf win a measly 51 of the 332 parliamentary seats available—now that was a tsunami. As political analyst Khoo Kay Peng pointed out in a recent post-election dialogue held in a local university, “Barisan were just eight seats away from retaining the two-thirds majority in Parliament. This was not a political tsunami, but merely a storm in a teacup.”
More accurately, this could be seen as a correction of the gross imbalance that the 2004 elections produced, where BN controlled 90 percent of the Dewan Rakyat. And that alone is a point of note. For one, BN losing its two-thirds majority means that constitutional amendments can no longer be passed without strong deliberation. By some estimates, over 650 amendments have been made to the Constitution over Malaysia’s 50 years of independence (in contrast, the American constitution has had around 30 amendments made in 230 years). At least for the next five years, the cakewalk looks to be a mite sludgier.
The opposition’s capacity to affect legislation goes beyond the Constitution. One of the key processes in Parliament involves the making or repealing of Acts. For this to take place, only a simple majority of all present during a given Parliamentary sitting is necessary for a decision to be made. Take into account the reportedly dismal attendance record of MPs from the ruling party, and suddenly the possibility of pulling back controversial laws such as the Internal Securities Act 1960 or the Official Secrets Act 1972 looks less and less like a shelved fantasy.
RENEGOTIATING THE NEP
Another heated issue that has factored greatly in these elections—pre and post—has been the New Economic Policy (NEP). Officially expired in 1990, its basic tenets nonetheless continued under a different guise, and it was officially reinstated with the Ninth Malaysia Plan (9MP) in 2006. (A mid-term review report on the 9MP to be released on 24th June will address the policy’s effectiveness, among other things.) This affirmative action policy, which guarantees certain economic provisions and advantages to Bumiputras, came under increasing fire from selected quarters of the population for its widespread abuses and encouragement of discriminatory practices and plain laziness. Income inequality in Malaysia is the highest in Asia, and US-based investment bank Morgan Stanley estimated in 2004 that corruption may have cost Malaysians as much as US$100 billion over the past 20 years.
So with new state governments in place, is there room still for such a policy? Opposition de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim has openly promoted the Malaysian Economic Agenda as an alternative that aims to benefit Malaysians based on needs rather than race. In Penang, newly elected Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng took it a step further when he was quoted as saying he pledged to free Penangites of the abuses that had emerged as a result of the NEP, installing an open tender system (though he would later be misquoted by mainstream press).
It is a promising step. And yet, despite such political bravado, the time for complete retraction might still be a while away, and the calls for it rather premature. It remains to be seen whether the NEP’s failures can be corrected when put in the hands of an increasingly accountable government, as this current one has suddenly been forced to become. “Who can quarrel with poverty eradication for all races?” says CPPS chairman Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam, citing the reduction of poverty from 52 percent in 1970 to just over 5 percent as evidence that it just needs a fairer shot at proper execution and implementation in a less opaque environment. And should it be abolished, an equally fair, mutually assuring policy must be put in its place. As Datuk Dr Denison Jayasooria, executive director of Yayasan Strategik Sosial says, “Some form of affirmative action that cuts across the races needs to be there to help those who really cannot compete on their own.”
REMEMBER THE ‘D’ WORD
The shape of Malaysian governance is also beginning to look mighty rounder. Popular historian and political writer Farish Noor recalls the situation in Kota Bharu, Kelantan, where PAS supporters had gathered to listen to the results coming in from around the country. As news of various DAP and PKR candidates winning their respective constituencies filtered in, the air was bursting with euphoria. “There were maybe around 1,000 people there,” recalls Farish. “[As the results came in], everyone cheered. They cheered for Lim Guan Eng, they cheered for Lim Kit Siang, they cheered for Karpal Singh, they cheered for Sivarasa…”
It was a scene any Malaysian fervent about change would have paid to be present at. Yet despite the promise demonstrated that evening, the immediate events of the following week cast suspicion as to whether such unbridled enthusiasm was a genuine show of unity, or a simple celebration of the victories by anyone other than a BN candidate. Days later, the Sultan of Perak appointed PAS liaison secretary Mohd Nizar Jamaluddin as the Menteri Besar, in accordance with the state constitution that requires the chief minister to be someone of Malay-Muslim descent. The decision initially prompted DAP president Lim Kit Siang to order DAP’s 18 assemblymen to boycott the swearing in ceremony (a move he later retracted).
As human rights lawyer and activist Malik Imtiaz Sarwar points out, “Revolutionaries make terrible administrators.” Alas, while the state governments continue to sort out their misgivings, their disputes are indicative of the fears that many voters who put these people into power have. It remains to be seen whether this adhoc front can engage their systems, settle their differences and repay public trust in time before Parliament reconvenes sometime in May. More importantly, a functional, transparent state government could filter downwards towards improved local councils, which have long been perceived as one of the most inefficient and corrupt arms of governance, and perhaps even the reinstallation of local government elections, something that both PKR and DAP have promised to restore.
Keeping promises is something that newly elected parties will have to get used to. Thankfully, that’s where democracy in all its glory can play its part. In the midst of all the triumphant talk about new governance, one cannot forget that there still exists a certain ruling party. For all its gaping flaws and misguided party members, BN cannot be blindly demonised. It remains an essential part of the two-party democratic process, the necessary check and balance to ensure that all that has been promised by the opposition parties will come into fruition (and vice versa). Eternally casting it as the villain would be detrimental to the nation’s long-term political health. “It is not in our interests to see that BN is dead,” says Khoo. “It is in our interests to see that BN is reformed.”
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Arguably, all this speculation about how the Malaysian government will look like can distract from the larger and more critical endpoint: Whether Malaysian citizens can move beyond the insignificant-Asian-country mindset and take their place in setting the global agenda.
For that to happen, a good old-fashioned dose of humility and focus, coupled with a touch of patience, might be the most important changes needed. “Both sides must avoid political grandstanding,” said newly sworn-in senator Datuk Zaid Ibrahim in an interview with MalaysiaKini.tv. “Just get on with the government. Just get on with doing what is right for the people of this country.”
Still, for perhaps the first time since the coining of the phrase in the 1980s, “Malaysia boleh” seems to be a more clarion call than ever. If anything, what these election results may simply have done for Malaysians—like Mr. Lim and Zainon Ahmad—is reinvigorate a sense of hope, and inspire a newfound courage to believe that Malaysia truly can. Indeed, across the world, change has gradually shifted from a fancy buzzword to a genuine, workable concept that is worth the temporary discomfort required to birth it out. As Farish writes on his blog The Other Malaysia, these election results have opened the door so that “imponderable questions can be addressed to all the parties in the country today”, which he later expounds:
“Can the UMNO leadership and membership consider the possibility that one day the president of Umno may be of Kadazan, Bajau, Iban, Penan or Peranakan background?…. Can and will a non-Malay Muslim ever become the president of PAS, chief minister of Kelantan or even assume the highest post of Murshid’ul Am (Spiritual Leader) of the party and its followers?…. would it not be conceivable that one day this country may have as its prime minister or deputy prime minister a Malaysian of non-Malay, non-Muslim and non-Male background?”
Farfetched? Possibly. But if anything, the events of 8th March have turned a generation of Malaysians from doubters into doers, critics into believers, civil rights leaders into national decision makers. And for once, maybe, it is a good time to be a Malaysian.