23 Aug, 2008
Gavin Greenwood assesses how these factors will affect the country's stability
The security situation in Malaysia is therefore deteriorating. The combination of high political stakes, personal animosity, revenge and public anger has already led to a marked increase in tension.
Gavin Greenwood
Jane's Intelligence Review
· The brief arrest of opposition activist Anwar Ibrahim on 28 June and accusations levelled against the deputy prime minister demonstrate the political tension in Malaysia.
· This comes against a backdrop of rising inter-communal tension and growing protests over rising fuel prices.
· Malaysia now faces a protracted period of instability and tension as the country's political elites manoeuvre in the post-March 2008 electoral environment. Political allegations, counter-allegations, ethnic agitation and soaring fuel prices are stirring tensions in Malaysia.
Gavin Greenwood assesses how these factors will affect the country's stability.
Despite being ruled by a single coalition since independence in 1957, politics in Malaysia rarely lacks intrigue. The current political situation is a case in point. Combining both public dissatisfaction with politicking among potential prime ministers, crossing racial, religious and regional divides, and even drawing in lurid allegations of sodomy against the country's leading political activist and involvement in the murder of a prostitute against the deputy prime minister, the political sphere in Malaysia sits uncomfortably with the country's conservative, Islamic image.
In a historical context, today's political turbulence can be viewed as indicative of Malaysia's transition from a country controlled by a political establishment largely unchallenged since independence to a more representative democracy. Nonetheless, the short- and medium-term prognosis for Malaysia suggests a protracted struggle for the levers of power, social unrest and possible communal violence.
Electoral trouble
The current unrest has its roots in decades of ethnic politics and tension, but the most recent indicator of discontent was the 8 March general election. Contested within an electorate where dissatisfaction with the status quo had been growing for some years, the election dealt a significant blow to the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) led by Prime Minister Adbullah Badawi.
UMNO was formed in 1946 to protect Malay rights within the British Malaya Union, and it is this mandate, combined with a Malay demographic majority of approximately 65 per cent of the population, that has ensured UMNO has effectively been the ruling party in Malaysia since the Federation of Malaya gained independence from the UK in 1957. (The Federation of Malaya only included peninsular Malaysia, but this was expanded to include Sabah and Sarawak in 1963, although Singapore seceded in 1965). As the largest party within the Alliance, a coalition formed in 1951 to contest the first Federal Legislative Council elections in 1955, and its successor, the National Front (Barisan Nasional: BN), formed in 1973, UMNO has dominated Malaysian politics for more than five decades.
The BN remains in power; it retained 140 seats in the 222-seat lower house (Dewan Rakyat) in the March elections, but the ruling coalition lost its two-thirds majority for the first time since 1969, and lost control of four states: Kedah, Perak, Selangor and Penang. UMNO lost 30 seats to be left with 79, a decrease of 28 per cent.
The 2008 results stand in stark contrast to the 2004 general elections when the BN secured 199 seats in the 219-member parliament. Crucially, in the 2008 elections, the ethnic Malay majority was divided as the aspirations of the growing urban middle class jarred against the paternalistic and often oligarchic behaviour of mainstream Malay politicians.
This loss of Malay support reflected a wider dissatisfaction with the model underpinning UMNO's success and the current political system, namely the promotion of Malay political and economic hegemony. The Malay political hegemonic policy was the cornerstone of UMNO's manifesto from the party's inception, and was reinforced and widened to include economic preference for the Malays following serious inter-communal violence in May 1969 between ethnic Chinese and Malays that left 196 people dead, according to official figures.
UMNO justified this platform as being the only means to ensure stability within a country where ethnic differences were exacerbated by often parallel divisions of wealth, a position that gained credence after the 1969 riots. The New Economic Policy (NEP) that resulted from the unrest was intended to redistribute wealth and capital from the more entrepreneurial Chinese community to the then largely rural majority Malay population (termed bumiputera, literally 'sons of the soil,' a declaration of Malay hegemony based on their perceived indigenous status). The preferential economic policy operated through large state-backed corporations intended to create and hold the new wealth for the collective benefit of the Malays.
The NEP was a success in terms of these goals: equity held by Malays increased from 2.4 per cent in 1970, the year before the NEP's implementation, to 19.3 per cent in 1990, the year it was replaced by the similar National Development Policy. However, although the NEP succeeded in rebalancing the statistical relationship between Chinese and Malay wealth, while also rapidly creating an extremely rich Malay/Muslim business elite, it failed to reach its target of 30 per cent equity held by the bumiputera, and the figure fell to 18.7 per cent in 2004.
The March elections are widely seen in Malaysia as a rejection of this process by many Malays as well as Chinese and Indian voters, whose electoral preferences are crucial to the survival of an UMNO-led coalition. The 14-party BN coalition won the poll but, for the first time, lost the ability to alter the constitution at will. The BN now has only a 30-seat majority in the federal parliament, making it vulnerable to even a relatively small number of defections to the opposition.
UMNO factionalisation
UMNO's response to this loss of support and authority has unsurprisingly been alarmist. No government in Malaysia has ever been replaced by an opposition movement, and the prospect of this occurring is now a genuine concern to BN's parliamentarians. UMNO's reaction has been to either attack the opposition or engage in self-destructive recrimination, a process that shows no sign of ending more than five months after the election.
UMNO is a party of factions, with loyalties extended first to regional leaders and then to the national leadership. A successful UMNO leader is widely defined by his ability to harmonise the party's various strands by ensuring the benefits of power are evenly distributed and re-election assured. Under former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad unity was achieved through the vision of a modern, industrialised Malaysia and the huge infrastructure projects that underpinned this aspiration. His successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, sought to realign national priorities away from such grandiose projects by emphasising the values of education and deepening the country's agricultural base.
Although such an emphasis is crucial to promoting long-term stability, it failed to impress those government members who had relied on more material projects to advance their and their constituents' interests. As a result, Abdullah's position within UMNO was being challenged even before the March election result.
Since March, the mood in UMNO has oscillated between hysteria and a desire to punish those who many party members saw as responsible for the election loss. This placed Prime Minister Abdullah under intense pressure. On 9 July, Abdullah appeared to buckle by announcing that he would step aside for his deputy and defence minister Najib Razak in mid-2010.
Whatever Abdullah's motives, the effects of his decision has been to shift attention from himself to Najib and a likely reprieve for Abdullah from being ousted at the UMNO annual General Assembly towards the end of 2008. The assembly has traditionally been more important in defining the country's mood than a general election as the outcome of the polls were previously a certainty, while the currents and tensions among the Malay elite are often obscure.
Allegations and accusations
While Najib would appear to be a well-qualified candidate for the next prime minister - he is the eldest son of Malaysia's second prime minister and nephew of the third – his status as heir apparent has been shaken by extraordinary allegations.
The allegations surround the death of Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu on 19 October 2006. Altantuya was shot twice and her body destroyed with C4 explosives. In a statutory declaration issued on 18 June during his trial for sedition, Raja Petra Kamarudin, founder and editor of the website Malaysia Today, claimed that Najib's wife Rosmah Mansor was present at the disposal of Altantuya's body. A second statutory declaration issued by private investigator Perumal Balasubramaniam on 3 July 2008 claimed that Najib had had a sexual relationship with Altantuya and introduced her to his aide, political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda. Razak Baginda is currently on trial for abetting the murder of Altantuya, which he denies. This second declaration was retracted the following day. On 5 July, Balasubramaniam's nephew filed a missing person's report for his uncle, who had apparently disappeared with his family.
Najib and his wife have denied any involvement in Altantuya's death or having any relations with her, and no charges have been brought against either. Nonetheless, the allegations, combined with the ongoing trials of Razak Baginda and two of Najib's former bodyguards, chief inspector Azilah Hadri and constable Sirul Azhar of the police Special Action Unit, for the murder, have damaged his political credibility. Perhaps the greatest representation of this loss of influence came from former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who wrote on his website in July that Najib would not succeed Abdullah.
In response to this dire situation and the allegations, Najib has not only denied any involvement but also claimed that the alleged links to the murder case are a "desperate attempt" by leading opposition activist Anwar Ibrahim to divert attention from lurid accusations made against him.
These allegations, although very different, reflect the personal animosity that exists in Malaysian politics. On 28 June, in between the two statutory declarations, a 23-year-old aide to Anwar, Saiful Bukhari Azlan, claimed to have been sodomised by the opposition activist. Sodomy remains a criminal offence in Malaysia, one of approximately 75 countries to criminalise the act.
The allegations, which Anwar denies, have historical relevance in Malaysia, since the same allegations were made in 1998 when Anwar, then deputy prime minister, was launching a popular movement against then prime minister Mahathir (known as the reformasi movement). Anwar was convicted on charges of corruption in April 1999 and sentenced to six years' imprisonment, and on charges of sodomy in August 2000 and sentenced to nine years' imprisonment. In September 2004, an appeal court overturned the sodomy conviction, but the corruption conviction barred him from formal political activity until 14 April 2008, one month after the latest elections.
Apparently fearing for his personal safety, Anwar took refuge in the Turkish embassy for 24 hours on 30 June. He was subsequently arrested on 16 July, but was released without charge the following day. Charges were formally laid and denied on 7 August, with Anwar released on bail.
Personal power struggle
The near-simultaneous allegations against Anwar and Najib give the impression that the two are involved in an acrimonious power struggle in order to prepare themselves for Abdullah's succession. In response to the sodomy allegations, Anwar pledged on 1 July to "seize power" by the 16 September anniversary of the formation of Malaysia in 1963, with the support of BN defectors. This situation is of concern to UMNO politicians, not only because this would entail the loss of position and prestige, but also the fear of retribution he may administer to those he blames for his original fall from power and subsequent imprisonment.
Anwar's importance to the opposition is significant. He remains a symbolic figure of resistance to the government, and given his previous multi-ethnic reformasi movement, perhaps the only individual seen as capable of uniting disparate opposition parties under one banner (currently the Pakatan Rakyat bloc). Without Anwar, it is extremely unlikely that the constituent parties of Pakatan Rakyat, left-leaning, ethnic Chinese-based Democratic Action Party, the urban Malay-based Parti Keadilan Rakyat (People's Justice Party) headed by his wife Wan Azizah Wan Ismail and the traditional Muslim-based Islamist Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) that draws much of its support from rural Malays, would survive long as an opposition front.
Fears among UMNO politicians that the cross-ethnic support for Anwar could unseat the party for the first time since independence are heightened by a rising sense of ethnic grievance and economic issues that cut across all communal lines. The government's decision to reduce fuel subsidies in June led to price rises of more than 40 per cent in some cases. Soaring oil prices were matched by sharp rises in food and staples, with inflation projected to reach a 10-year high this year. The frequency of protests against rising fuel prices, which appear incomprehensible to many Malaysians given the country's position as a net oil exporter, has also increased.
Security situation
The security situation in Malaysia is therefore deteriorating. The combination of high political stakes, personal animosity, revenge and public anger has already led to a marked increase in tension. This has the potential for the political crisis to spill over not only into civil unrest but also into inter-communal confrontation. Emphasis on ethnicity and religion has served to keep Malaysia's various communities from finding common cause along class lines. Although tensions have eased since the late 1960s as more Malays entered the urban workforce and more people enjoyed greater prosperity, racial sensitivities remain a powerful and dangerous issue.
This was demonstrated in the first half of July when two MPs from a small party in the East Malaysian state of Sabah reiterated their support for a Pakatan Rakyat no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Abdullah. Both MPs are non-Malays and the implication that they could be involved in unseating a Malay premier brought immediate threats, some bordering on racist incitement.
Similarly, demonstrations in November 2007 by ethnic Indians against the government's affirmative action policy drew approximately 10,000 protestors. The police, fearing unrest, used tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd.
Beyond communal violence, the more likely outcome remains large-scale protests and possible civil unrest united behind a resurgent reformasi movement. In such a situation, it is unclear whether the security forces would respond as robustly as they did to the ethnic Indian demonstrations in November. The police, who have been inculcated in the need to maintain order at almost any cost, show signs of struggling to enforce the same degree of control over the now largely Malay fuel price protestors as they have in the past with other ethnic groups. Police and military personnel are overwhelmingly recruited from the Malay community, and there are doubts about their willingness to use extreme force against their ethnic kin and co-religionists.
Outlook
Given the complexities of ethnic, racial and personal politics in Malaysia, the current inimitable political situation poses a range of threats to the stability of the country. A weak prime minister, a duelling deputy prime minister and opposition leader, economic unease and a history of communal conflict are a potent mélange of instability. The political crisis is set to create greater tension that will heighten the risk of a confrontation between the principal actors of UMNO, Abdullah, Najib and Anwar.
Moreover, it is now hard to see how a compromise could evolve that will end internal UMNO feuding, provide Abdullah with a stable platform for the remaining years of his premiership, restore Najib's reputation to enable him to serve as a prime minister-in-waiting or deflect Anwar's determination to try and topple the BN government and take power.
Malaysia is not yet near a crisis; the government remains in control and UMNO may yet be able to retain power by absorbing opposition forces or eliminating the threat from Anwar, as it has done before. Further, colonial-era legislation, such as the Internal Security Act that allows for rolling, two-year detentions without recourse to a trial, will enable suppression of some opposition voices in the country. Nevertheless, the bitter and multi-faceted political struggles that have engulfed Malaysia, combined with latent ethnic resentment and a worsening economic environment, mean the risk of civil unrest and political turbulence is higher now than at any stage since 1969.
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