What 'The Economist' has to say about Malaysia

Malaysia's election upset

Anwar overturns the apple cart

Mar 13th 2008 | KUALA LUMPUR
From The Economist print edition

A new political game—and the players struggle to work out the rules

AFP

THE bravest face the government can put on it is a crestfallen one. The result of the election of March 8th was “a huge setback”, admits Khairy Jamaluddin, a leader of the youth wing of the United Malays National Organisation, UMNO, which dominates the coalition that has ruled Malaysia since independence. The reason for Mr Khairy's gloom may not be immediately apparent. He won his seat. UMNO is still much the biggest party in the federal Parliament, where its coalition, the National Front, has a thumping majority (see chart). The Front still forms the government in eight of Malaysia's 13 states. But the huge swing against it has shaken Malaysia's rulers and put in doubt the system of racially-based politics on which their power depends.

Before the election only one state, Kelantan, in the relatively backward north-east of the peninsula, was in opposition control. Now bigger and richer Penang, Selangor, Perak and Kedah have fallen. And at the centre, the Front lost the two-thirds parliamentary majority it has enjoyed since 1969. This matters in practical terms since the Front can no longer override legislation passed by the states or amend the constitution. Hundreds of constitutional changes—mostly trivial, but some that strengthen the power of the executive branch—have been incorporated into law since independence in 1957. More important still was the symbolic impact of losing its two-thirds majority. The prime minister, Abdullah Badawi, knowing he could not repeat the landslide he achieved in 2004, had set this as the electoral winning-post. He fell eight seats short.

The swing against him partly reflects the high hopes of four years ago. After 22 years of rule by the abrasive and authoritarian Mahathir Mohamad, Mr Badawi was seen as more conciliatory and more committed to tackling corruption. He has indeed offered a less acerbic style. But few believe corruption has lessened. Instead, there has been a series of ugly scandals. And the high-flying Mr Khairy, Mr Badawi's son-in-law (and a former intern at The Economist), has become what one observer calls a “walking, talking, boasting” symbol of nepotism.

Chinese Malaysians (25% of the population) and Indians (8%) turned against the Front's ethnic-minority parties. Indians are especially disgruntled. M. Manoharan, an ethnic-Indian lawyer, was elected to the state assembly of Selangor, despite being detained without charge under the Internal Security Act after a street protest last November. He was elected in a predominantly ethnic-Chinese constituency.

Minorities' faith in UMNO was dented when party leaders waved the kris, a traditional Malay sword, at conferences in 2005 and 2006. The implicit threat of violence to protect Malay interests recalled bloody race riots in 1969, which followed a strong opposition showing at the polls. Fears remain that UMNO supporters might stir up trouble. But despite some inflammatory text messages spread by mobile phone, Malaysia has remained admirably calm.

Many Chinese Malaysians have tolerated the New Economic Policy (NEP), introduced in 1971 to redistribute wealth to the poorer Malay majority, as a guarantor of communal harmony at a time when all ethnic groups were getting richer. Now even some Malay voters appear to have turned against it, seeing it as an excuse for cronyism and corruption. Some voted for the opposition, a loose alliance of three parties, which called the NEP obsolete and, on taking power in Penang, has started to dismantle it, saying its provisions will not apply to state-government contracts.

The forging of this alliance is the other reason for the opposition's breakthrough. The biggest Malay opposition party is the Parti Islam Se-Malaysia, known as PAS. Traditionally it called for Malaysia to become an Islamic state. This deterred non-Muslims from voting for the opposition at all. In this election, however, PAS toned down its Islamist rhetoric, and teamed up with two secular parties—the Democratic Action Party, whose base is predominantly Chinese, and the People's Justice Party, the PJP, led by Anwar Ibrahim. Mr Anwar is a former deputy prime minister, who spent six years in jail after falling out with Dr Mahathir.

Still banned from public office until April (one reason the election was held this month), Mr Anwar is now in practice leader of the opposition, as well as of Malaysia's first truly multiracial party. A number of successful PJP candidates, who include Mr Anwar's wife and daughter, have offered to make way for him in a by-election. But his coalition will be fractious. It is already squabbling about forming a government in Perak. And he says attempts have begun to lure away PJP members in the hope of restoring the government's two-thirds majority.

For his part, Mr Badawi has so far ignored calls for his resignation, coming most bitterly from the man who installed him as prime minister, Dr Mahathir. But he may well face a challenge at UMNO's general assembly later this year. In his favour, the obvious successor, Najib Razak, the deputy prime minister, is just as closely implicated in the scandals. But Mr Badawi seems unlikely to last beyond the next election. Chandra Muzaffar, a political scientist at the University of Science Malaysia in Penang, compares him to Cory Aquino in the Philippines and Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie in Indonesia, both liberalising successors to long-serving strongmen, who were derided as ineffectual and turfed out. From the point of view of Malaysian democracy, if not of Mr Badawi, it is a rather encouraging analogy.