The Way Foward For Malaysian Politics

IN THE wake of the recent General Elections in Malaysia in March, Malaysians and foreigners alike are asking the questions: What now? And where will Malaysia head to?

Some have commented on the possibility of the Islamists in Malaysia growing more aggressive, after it became clear that the Pan-Malaysian Islamic party (PAS) had made huge gains in states like Kelantan and now has two states under its control. Speculation aside, it should be emphasised that the real winners in the recent elections were the Malaysian people, who managed to show that they were able to vote across racial and religious communitarian boundaries.

How and why did the Malaysian electorate vote the way they did, and what message were they trying to convey?

After a term in office, the Badawi administration had failed to deliver on many of the reform promises it made when it first came to power in 2004. The Malaysian public seems to have grown tired with the stream of promises of renewal and the creation of a citizen-based Malaysia for all, when it became clear that the Badawi administration was still being run along the lines of Malaysia’s old race-based politics.

The people’s vote of no confidence was not merely directed towards the Badawi government but also to the entire political system and political institutions of the country. So we have to look at how and where the governance model of Malaysia went wrong; and what were the factors that led to it being so radically rejected recently.

Malaysia’s social contract has been revised time and again, and perhaps the last great revision took place in the wake of the May 1969 racial clashes that followed in the wake of the May 1969 elections. During the ‘69 elections, the ruling coalition was dealt with a major blow as the Malaysian public voted for the opposition parties. Since then, successive Malaysian leaders and administrations have tried to fine-tune the Malaysian model of governance to create the much-touted “Malaysian model” of a multi-racial plural compromise system. This was reflected in the racial and ethnic make-up of the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN or National Front) itself, that was dominated by the Malay-Muslim Umno party that was in turn supported by its non-Malay-Muslim partners like the Malaysian Chinese Assembly (MCA) and the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC).

For three decades, Malaysians were told that this was the only system that could work that would reflect the diversity and racial mix of Malaysia. Yet two steady streams of development worked against each other to erode the appeal of this model: The first was the rise of the ethno-nationalist forces in the ruling Umno party itself. Since 1969 to the 1990s, the Umno party slowly but moved even further to the right of the political spectrum with the rise of more and more ethnic and religiously-minded communitarian leaders. The Islamisation race between Umno and PAS during the 1980s and 1990s did little to inculcate the universal values of Islam into the politics and daily life of Malaysians, but did more to up the stakes in the political contest between Umno and PAS instead. During that time, the leaders of both parties were keen to demonstrate their commitment to Islam and Malay-Muslim concerns to an extent that many non-Malay-Muslim communities felt themselves marginalised.

Over the past few years, the pitch and tenor of the Islamisation contest has been raised even further, as has the communitarian language of Umno. With senior Umno leaders constantly harping on the rights and special status of the Malays, the dream of a plural Malaysia seemed to fade into the distance.

The second factor that eroded the appeal of the BN model was the changing nature of Malaysian society itself post-1969. While the leaders of Umno and the BN coalition parties continued to operate according to the logic of race-relations and racial compartmentalisation, they seemed to overlook the fact that Malaysian society was transforming itself: New urban constituencies emerged in the cosmopolitan urban settlements all over West Malaysia, ranging from urban Malay-Muslim youth who were less interested in Islam or notions of cultural supremacy to new non-Malay youth who were more attracted to the possibility of reinventing their identities and places in society.

This, then, is the way forward for Malaysia, though it has to be noted that the new Malaysian politics that is being invented has to take into account the manifold paths that Malaysia could – but didn’t – take in its recent past. It is for that reason that drawing the future road-map for Malaysia would involve a revisiting of its history as well, for that chequered history tells us as much about what Malaysians should not do as well as what they should.