Malaysia after regime change - PAS and Islam

As Malaysia prepares for its 13^th general elections, due no later than April 2013, the long-standing competitive authoritarian regime will face one of its most difficult tests. The 2008 elections dealt a surprise blow to the incumbent Barisan Nasional (BN), and ever since, Prime Minister Najib’s government has struggled to protect its now-fragile majority. After four years of renewed opposition activism, rumours of defection from UMNO (the United Malays National Organisation), and the recent acquittal of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysians will have the chance to vote the BN out of office once and for all.
In a post-BN Malaysia, observers will closely monitor the role of Islam in public life. Much of what happens will depend on the shape of the government that follows. In terms of the composition of a post-BN government, two outcomes seem most likely: (1) a multi-ethnic Pakatan Rakyat-based (PR) coalition in which PAS (Parti Islam SeMalaysia/Pan Malaysian Islamic Party), PKR (Parti Keadilan Rakyat/People’s Justice Party), and the DAP (Democratic Action Party) all participate, perhaps along with one or more East Malaysian parties; or (2) an UMNO-PAS “Muslim-Malay” coalition, again perhaps involving the cooperation of one or more East Malaysian parties. Either way, PAS—an explicitly Islamic party—will be part of the government.

That PAS would advocate for a greater role for Islam in Malaysian public life is undeniable. PAS describes its goals as follows:

• Memperjuangkan wujudnya di dalam negara ini sebuah masyarakat dan pemerintahan yang terlaksana di dalamnya nilai-nilai hidup Islam dan hukum-hukumnya menuju keredhaan Allah. [Fighting to create a society and government that is run according to Islamic principles and the laws which please Allah]
• Mempertahankan Kesucian Islam serta kemerdekaan dan kedaulatan negara. [Defending the sanctity of Islam alongside independence and national sovereignty.]

The prospect of PAS in government alone is worrying for those many Malaysians (both Muslims and non-Muslims) who express concern about the Islamisation of Malaysian politics and society. Moreover, a PR-based government would struggle to balance PAS’s goals with the DAP’s largely non-Muslim constituency. That would make an UMNO-PAS alliance all the more attractive to PAS, while UMNO, whose membership is not restricted to Muslims but is overwhelming Muslim anyway, would likely not hesitate to return to power with a new coalition partner.

Questions about PAS after the BN may reflect the concerns that many non-Muslims in Malaysiahave about the role of religion in public life, and Malaysia’s Hindu minority in particular has cause for grievance on this account. But this obscures the corrosive effects that six decades of ethnic partisanship have had on the prospects for Malaysian democracy. It is a mistake, in other words, to focus narrowly on PAS, or broadly on Islam itself, when anticipating Islam in a post-BN Malaysian political order. Doing so confuses the potential consequences of PAS in government with the factors that have contributed both to PAS’s popularity and to the current state of Islam in Malaysian public life.

PAS itself has not played a major role in the Islamisation of Malaysian politics or Malaysian society. Rather, it was Malay politicians in the pre-independence period (the very same group that went on to found UMNO) who enshrined Islam in the constitution and legally defined Malay-ness with reference to Islam. This was done not in the name of Islam, but to protect what were perceived to be “Malay interests” (see for example A History of Malaysia, pp. 256-257). After independence, with communism illegal, social democracy discredited (through its historical affiliation with a largely Chinese opposition party), liberalism cast as antithetical to Malaysian values, multiculturalism or pan-ethnic solidarity discouraged through the party system, and the bumi/non-bumi split underlying every aspect of social and economic policy, the only “Malay” alternative to UMNO’s Malay platform was PAS’s Islamist platform.

Today, in a society in which economic function and demographic characteristics such as urbanisation no longer distinguish Malays from non-Malays as easily as they once did, core issues such as religion have a new importance for voters whose political identities are constructed through an ethnic framework.

The strategic logic of political competition in Malaysia’s plural society therefore rewards parties seeking Malay votes when they appeal to the characteristics that define Malays in opposition to non-Malays. It should not surprise anyone that when Malay voters find UMNO politicians wanting, they are likely to vote for the only opposition party whose political outlook has not been labelled as “un-Malaysian” for the past half century.

Facing this, non-exclusivist opposition parties such as the DAP and PKR have struggled to transcend the ethnic paradigm in Malaysian politics. The choice for non-Malay, non-Muslim voters has been whether to cast their lot with their own regime-allied (and ethnically-constituted) parties, the “un-Malaysian” multiethnic opposition, or the Islamist PAS.
The fundamental challenge for public life in a post-BN Malaysia is not Islam, it is ethnicity’s dominant role in defining Malaysians’ political identity, and this challenge is just as pressing today as it would be if a new government with PAS comes to power following the upcoming elections. Of course, PAS’s explicitly religious goals are important to note, but there are few things that it could do in government that are not already within UMNO’s capacity today.

UMNO has presided over—and its campaign messages and public policies have encouraged—the rise of Islam in public life. It is tempting today to see what Judith Nagata called the “reflowering of Malaysian Islam” as merely a local instance of a global Muslim awakening, but this misses the very politics of Islamic politics in Malaysia.

In the Malaysian context, the rise of religion is the unavoidable consequence of the politicisation of ethnicity. A PAS-led government might go further than the BN has in prosecuting perceived insults to Islam, or in expanding the domain of Islamic family law, but such worries already mark Malaysian public life. The religious issues facing Malaysia are far deeper than the ruling party’s religious outlook, and having PAS in government is best understood as the outcome of decades of social change and religious conflict rather than a possible independent cause of future religious tensions.

It is reasonable to wonder what Malaysian politics would look like with an avowedly Islamist party like PAS in government, but as always, the meaning of Islam in Malaysian public life cannot be separated from the dominance of ethnicity in Malaysian politics.

The “solution” to the “problem” of Islam in Malaysian politics—if one believes that Islam is indeed a problem—is the same as the solution to many of the other issues that face contemporary Malaysian society: a post-ethnic movement (not merely a multi-ethnic one) in which Malaysians identify, assemble, and act as Malaysians rather than as representatives of ethnic groups in a zero-sum competition for power and resources.
This is what many hope that a PR government would mean, and in rhetorical terms, that is what Najib’s 1Malaysia campaign promises. A recent article in the Economist suggests that many young Malaysians would welcome such a post-ethnic politics. But they will have to wait, for Malaysian politics as BN-versus-PR restates the ethnic politics framework without moving past it.







Thomas Pepinsky is assistant professor of government at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY,USA. His work focuses on comparative politics and international political economy, with a special focus on contemporary issues in island Southeast Asia. His interests include the politics of finance, authoritarianism, Islam, and finding a way to move Ithaca to the tropics.

Tahniah Selangor - Budget 2012

Keadilan mengalu-alukan Belanjawan Selangor 2012 yang bertemakan Selangorku: Hasil Negeri Untuk Rakyat yang dibentangkan Menteri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim.

Bagi pihak Kepimpinan Pusat Parti Keadilan Rakyat, saya mengucapkan tahniah kepada kerajaan pimpinan Tan Sri Khalid yang berjaya meningkatkan hasil negeri serta memastikan pengagihan khazanah negeri secara adil dan prihatin. Anggaran peningkatan hasil cukai (8.23%) dan hasil bukan cukai (40.12%) untuk tahun 2012 menampakkan pengurusan ekonomi negeri yang menjanakan pembangunan yang cukup pesat.

Dengan peningkatan hasil yang cukup baik ini, kerajaan negeri tidak bertindak berbelanja secara tidak wajar. Sebaliknya, simpanan tunai kerajaan Selangor kini telah mencecah RM 1.2 bilion - jumlah tertinggi sejak 28 tahun. Pengurusan wang yang beramanah ini adalah bukti komitmen Pakatan Rakyat terhadap pemerintahan berintegriti yang tidak berbelah bagi.

Jumlah simpanan wang ini harus dibandingkan dengan hutang kerajaan persekutuan yang telah mencecah RM 400 bilion. Jumlah hutang ini amat membimbangkan; tanpa reformasi yang mendalam, Malaysia mungkin akan menghadapi masalah yang sama dengan negara-negara Eropah yang berdepan dengan krisis ekonomi yang cukup parah.

Tidak seperti kerajaan sebelumnya, kerajaan negeri Pakatan Rakyat pimpinan Tan Sri Khalid berjaya menghentikan ketirisan dan rasuah dahulu yang merugikan rakyat sehingga ratusan juta ringgit. Sebagai contoh, apabila Pakatan Rakyat mengambil alih pada Mac 2008, tiada sebarang rekod berkenaan hutang RM 391 juta Syarikat Talam kepada kerajaan Selangor. Walaubagaimanapun, pimpinan baru kerajaan negeri yang meneliti setiap aspek pengurusan wang rakyat berjaya mengenalpasti serta mengutip balik wang yang dihutang oleh pihak swasta kepada rakyat.

Hasil pembasmian ketirisan dan rasuah, ratusan juta ringgit berjaya dijimatkan dan dibelanjakan balik demi kebajikan rakyat. Bagi 2012, kerajaan Selangor akan menyambungkan segala inisiatif kebajikan di bawah program Merakyatkan Ekonomi Selangor, serta menambahkan lagi RM 300 juta (hampir 15% belanjawan sepenuhnya) di bawah Geran Selangorku untuk meningkatkan lagi dana untuk meringankan beban ekonomi rakyat.

Kita mengalu-alukan semua progam kebajikan ini yang memanfaatkan rakyat yang menghadapi cabaran ekonomi yang semakin perit. Sasaran bantuan negeri termasuk rakyat berpendapatan rendah di kawasan bandar dan luar bandar, golongan petani dan nelayan, serta orang kelainan upaya.

Program kebajikan kerajaan Selangor bersifat menghakupayakan rakyat supaya mampu berdikari, bukannya bersifat pertolongan 'one-off' sepertimana yang dilaksanakan oleh kerajaan persekutuan. Pendekatan ini menunjukkan komitmen Pakatan Rakyat untuk memastikan setiap rakyat berpeluang mencari pekerjaan bermaruah dan pendapatan yang mencukupi serta setara dengan kos sara hidup.

Keadilan mengucapkan tahniah kepada kerajaan negeri Selangor dan Menteri Besar Tan Sri Khalid atas kejayaan dalam pengurusan hasil negeri untuk rakyat dan harap kerajaan persekutuan akan meneladani pendekatan yang memprioritikan rakyat ini.

Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail ia lah Presiden Parti Keadilan Rakyat

Another Malaysian By-Election

A longtime dissident returns to the tricky job of leading UMNO efforts in Kelantan

The result of Malaysia's 12th by-election to occur since tumultuous national elections in 2008 is in practical terms irrelevant. Whether or not Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) retains the state seat of Galas on Nov. 4 by-election will make no difference to the Islamic party's control of the state legislature.

But it will be a test of the influence of the United Malays National Organisation's most distinguished internal dissident, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, and his calls for sweeping reform of Umno. Galas is part of Razaleigh's federal parliamentary constituency and is centered on his home town of Gua Musang in the south of the state. And, together with a federal seat by-election on the same day, the election is expected to play a role in whether Prime Minister Najib Razak will go to national polls in early 2011.

But interpreting the Galas result will not be easy. The 73-year old Razaleigh, usually known as Ku Li, is between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand the Kelantan aristocrat knows that his calls for reform of Umno are unlikely to make much progress if the erosion of support for the Umno-led Barisan Nasional ruling coalition that was seen both in the 2008 federal election and in subsequent bye-elections is stemmed or reversed.

On the other hand Razaleigh has no choice but to support his own party and the candidate he himself chose in this local election. Recognizing his difficult position, Razaleigh has been playing down the significance of the election. But there is little doubting the attention it has been getting in the media because of him.

Ministers in the government that Razaleigh relentlessly criticizes have been trooping to Gua Musang to kiss his hand and try to shore up Barisan support among the voters. They too doubtless have mixed feelings, one the one hand needing to show Umno making a comeback, on the other worried about the enhanced reputation Razalaigh may acquire should Umno poll well here but not elsewhere.

Razaleigh, once billed as bapak ekonomi or "father of the Malaysian economy" for his role running Pernas, which was created to encourage Malay-controlled businesses in 1975, as well as creating the national energy company Petronas and then as Finance Minister, but who has been out of power since narrowly losing to Mahathir in 1987, may have little clout in today's UMNO or following in its higher echelons. But his stringing criticisms of corruption in the Barisan and of Umno's hypocritical attempts to compete with PAS on religious issues have found a ready audience in a wider community. For all of Prime Minister Najib's talk of his 1Malaysia slogan, many in Umno continue to pander to more extreme views of Malay and Muslim supremacy that are being peddled by the chauvinist Perkasa movement and aided and abetted by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Razaleigh's criticisms of the Barisan have been getting plenty of media coverage, a privilege not so available to opposition parties.

The odds are certainly stacked against a national comeback by Razaleigh. Yet in the event that Anwar Ibrahim ends back in jail at the same time the opposition still does well in the election, moderate elements from all races might look to him as representative of an older and more tolerant version of UMNO as existed, at least in many minds, before Mahathir's reign.

What is far from clear is whether the voters in Galas, and particularly the Chinese (20 percent) and Orang Asli (aboriginals, 16 percent ) who deserted the Barisan in the last election come back to it. On the one hand both are known to respect Razaleigh personally and like his inclusivist views on racial and religious issues. On the other hand the Chinese may have yet to be convinced that at the national level the 1Malaysia slogan is more than rhetoric, or that the Malaysian Chinese Association is a credible member of the Barisan.

As for the Orang Asli, traditional Barisan supporters, they have been wooed by a state government which promises to prevent further shrinkage of their traditional lands as a result of acquisitions by members of the Kelantan royal family and other well-placed persons.

As it controls the state government, PAS itself has been buying loyalties through grants of state lands and has been vigorously attacking the federal government for its denial of the Kelantan state government's proper share in oil royalties. This ill-conceived Mahathir-era punishment for electing an opposition government does UMNO no favors. But at least Razaleigh is not tainted by it. As the author of the 1974 legislation that provided for a royalty to the states he has backed Kelantan's claim against the federal government.

However, Nov. 4 will test whether support for Razaleigh overrides deep national dissatisfaction with the Barisan, which Razaleigh himself believes shows no signs of abating. Indeed within Umno there are now those who think that it could lose control of the majority of state governments.

But others believe that Najib has sufficiently steadied the Umno/Barisan ship that he can look to an election in the first half of 2011, perhaps to coincide with state elections due next year in Sarawak. The economy is doing well enough thanks to high oil, rubber and palm oil prices – and government spending. There have been no major racial incidents such as Hindu temple destructions and cow head displays to upset minorities.

Anwar is preoccupied with his legal problems and without him the opposition has no unifying focus. So the issue is whether people will just vote against the Barisan rather than for the opposition. An election two years before one is due would be a risk for Najib, but even modest success would strengthen his position in Umno and in particular make it less difficult to translate the One Malaysia slogan into policies.

However, reading the results of the by-elections will not be easy given the Razaleigh factor in Galas and that politics in ethnically diverse Sabah, as in Sarawak, are not necessarily a guide to what happens in Peninsular Malaysia. So whatever the result, the significance of a by-election involving just 11,553 voters may be debated long after Thursday.

Asia Sentinel.com