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

Malaysia's Fading Opposition

Dogged by disorganization and allegations of sex scandals, the Pakatan coalition looks in trouble

Three years ago the opposition Pakatan Rakyat's victorious sally in the 2008 general election seemed to have Malaysia's governing Barisan Nasional alliance on the ropes. Then only a Cassandra would have predicted that Pakatan's successes would appear so hollow so soon.

State elections in Sarawak loom, supposedly the last campaign for Chief Minister Taib Mahmud, just the kind of long-standing Barisan potentate that Pakatan was supposed to sweep away. Instead, the only question is how big a majority he will win. Few doubt it will be less than two thirds.

Far from charging at the head of his troops, Pakatan's charismatic leader, Anwar Ibrahim, is suspended from parliament and distracted not only by his second, interminable sodomy trial but now also by the allegation that he is the star of a sex tape (by way of variation, with a woman) produced by a trio collectively known as "Datuk T."

If the tide of filth through which Anwar must wade is politically motivated – and whatever the truth of the charges against him, no one believes they stem solely from an earnest desire for rectitude in the private lives of MPs – some of it still sticks. Visiting Kuala Lumpur recently, Anwar's former adviser Ziauddin Sardar told me that as long ago as 1996 he predicted that the then deputy PM's enemies would try to fell him by bringing up sodomy.

"Simply accusing him of bribes, cronyism and having affairs with women was not going to work. Those who know Anwar know he is above such things," said Sardar, now a prominent UK-based critic and commentator. "They had to find something unthinkable, something the Malays had a deep aversion for."

The problem is that while Sardar may declare him "a man of unshakeable integrity," who "cannot be bought, bribed or forced to deviate from the path of honesty," there are plenty who are not so sure. His nemesis and onetime boss, former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, said that Anwar admitted to "affairs with women" in his just-published memoirs, claiming that prior to his ousting, his former deputy told UMNO's supreme council "he had done nothing unusual and insisted that everyone had done such things."

Not all believe the good doctor, of course; nor might they listen too closely to former colleagues in government who remember a not-quite-so saintly figure.

But Anwar's cause was dealt a blow from the home side earlier this year when reports highlighted the fact that although he later changed his mind, the DAP chairman Karpal Singh (subsequently Anwar's defence lawyer), also once accused him of sodomy, raising the issue in parliament in 1997 and asking the government to act against the then deputy PM. Even in liberal circles, observers with no great affection for the BN privately express the strong suspicion that Anwar might have indulged in hanky panky, possibly with both sexes.

These may be the tribulations of one man, but he is the man that matters: the only one who is, or who could be, a prime minister-in-waiting. And they are compounded by, and partly the cause of, those also being suffered by his party, PKR, and hence Pakatan as a whole.

Of Pakatan's three allies, the DAP gives the impression of being fighting fit, helmed by the still dynamic duo of Lim Kit Siang and Karpal, with an array of talent coming up the ranks and of an age to take over if necessary. In particular there is Lim's son, Guan Eng, who is also Penang's chief minister, Karpal's feisty orator son Gobind Singh, and the forensic economics whizz Tony Pua.

PAS, meanwhile, appears to have maintained its grip on its heartland in the peninsula and – important not only in wresting the Malay vote from UMNO but also to encourage non-Malays to overcome their reservations about casting their ballots for a party that used to think the Taliban had a good thing going -- its reputation for probity.

However much they try to paper over the cracks, though, the leftist, Chinese majority DAP and the Malay Islamists of PAS are allies of convenience, not soulmates. They cannot stop themselves from rowing over the extent to which Muslim laws should apply: for instance, PAS-controlled Kelantan's ban on the sale of "un-Islamic" lottery tickets, which the Chinese like to buy. Beyond good governance, their aims are ultimately incompatible.

So, how to keep these two together? This is supposed to be the role of PKR. And this is where Anwar's party is failing badly, struggling to convey what it is for, apart from being a vehicle for its leader's ambitions, and immensely damaging Pakatan Rakyat's effectiveness and chances at the next general election. It has lost a fifth of its parliamentary representation to defections and resignations since 2008, including in January N Gobalakrishnan, whose departure was particularly devastating given that he was a founder member of PKR who had given up a promising career within the Barisan Nasional (he had been Youth Leader of the BN component party, the Malaysian Indian Congress).

Other prominent figures such as former UMNO law minister Zaid Ibrahim, whose initial joining of PKR was hailed as a great coup, and the former vice president Jeffrey Kitingan, have left to start their own parties. When matters of import are in the air, the voice of PKR is drowned out by its own wranglings.

At a ceramah in the Empire Hotel, Subang, last weekend, PKR's communications director, Nik Nazmi, admitted that the party had serious issues with its image. "People don't understand what PKR is about apart from Anwar Ibrahim, that's what they tell me," he said. As for the loss of parliamentary seats, he explained that as PKR only had one MP and one state assemblyman before 2008, "everyone thought we were a lost cause. It was difficult to get good candidates." Of the 31 MPs who were then elected, he said, "some were not good enough. The jokers lost the plot and that's why they defected."

Anwar's daughter, PKR vice president Nurul Izzah, joined him in stressing that the disagreements with which the BN-supporting press has made much hay were a healthy sign. "They are important," she said. "Don't imagine that because the BN appears to have blanket agreement that it is so." They both seemed aware, however, that incidents such as the arguments between PKR and the DAP over seat allocation in Sarawak, in which Tony Pua accused PKR's negotiator of being "a little Napoleon", come across less as vibrant democracy at work than as evidence of a house divided.

The pair made impassioned pleas for PKR to be recognised as a unique driver for change: the first party in South East Asia to introduce One Member for One Vote for internal elections (hence, said Nurul Izzah, while turn out may have been low in last November's vote, 80,000 ballots were still cast "more than in any other party election"); and the only truly multiracial party in the country. "We are multiracial but Malay-led," said Nik Nazmi. "That is the only way you can convince the Malays about multiracialism."

The 29-year-old Selangor assemblyman is impressive, fluent and likeable. He even managed a good joke about how he knew the sex charges against his party leader were false. "I worked for him for two years as his private secretary. I'm quite good-looking, and nothing happened to me!" Nik Nazmi could be a future leader – but he is way too young for now. In terms of the top echelons who should be taking the reins while Anwar has to deal with his troubles, PKR is appallingly weak. Zaid Ibrahim could possibly have filled that role, even if his arrival and instant presumption to prominence put out the backs of veterans. A party with a greater grip on its long-term strategy would not have contrived to lose one of the clearest-eyed analysts of Malaysian politics, whatever the personality clashes his staying might have entailed.

For PKR and for Pakatan Rakyat, much is at stake here. "We have a chance for change at the next general election," said Nik Nazmi. "If not, it might be another 50 years." But the onus is on PKR to prove that is worthy of leading the opposition; otherwise PAS and the DAP may conclude that they are better off concentrating on their own strongholds rather than sacrificing too much for a greater effort that comes to nothing. "We have to improve ourselves," conceded Nurul Izzah. "That's a reality we are facing much more than PAS or the DAP."

Recognising that PKR's report card reads "must do better – much better" is a start. Translating that into action that revitalises the party and gives it the appearance of focus and energy is the hard part. The cause is not lost: BN leaders know that the personal approval ratings of prime minister Najib Tun Razak do not mean that the people have learned to love again the ruling coalition they rebuffed at the last general election. But if the opposition cannot recapture the spirit with which they effervesced only three years ago, their task is going to be to maintain their gains rather than push forward to take Putra Jaya, the nation's administrative capital. Anwar and his party, meanwhile, have become the weakest link. This was not how it was meant to be.

 

Sholto Byrnes is a contributing editor of the New Statesman 

- AsiaSentinel.com

Malaysia's Anwar in Stress, Under Fire

Defections, disorganization dog Malaysia's opposition party

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, under the stress of a long-running trial accusing him of sexual perversion, is under increasing strain as the point man for his Parti Keadilan Rakyat, or People's Justice Party as he continues to be harried politically as well.

"Some analysts would point out that Anwar has to get PKR's house in order," a think-tank analyst in Kuala Lumpur told Asia Sentinel. "There is growing frustration within Anwar's coalition and his own party." In particular, PKR has lost five members of parliament and five statehouse members to defections in the two years since the Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition stunned the Barisan Nasional, or ruling national coalition by breaking its two-thirds hold on parliament. By contrast, Parti Islam se-Malaysia and the Democratic Action Party have only lost one each.

With a number of PKR state assemblymen now wavering and clearly considering defecting, it is possible that the opposition coalition could lose the states of Selangor and Kedah, which they won in the 2008 election. The state of Perak has already been reclaimed by the Barisan although critics say it was through skullduggery rather than legitimate political action.

"Because it is Anwar's party, Keadilan was supposed to be the anchor, but it has been weak from the very start," said a source in Kuala Lumpur. Parti Keadilan is largely made up of young, urban professional ethnic Malays.

"The problem is that Keadilan, like Anwar himself, are mostly ex-members of (the United Malays National Organization) and a lot of them are in there for a quick buck – like Umno itself, I guess. Anwar is bogged down with his legal sodomy case-but more importantly, there is a loss of confidence in his leadership."

What should have given a wakeup call to both Anwar and his colleagues in the opposition Democratic Action Party, which is largely ethnic Chinese, was an announcement earlier this week that Parti Islam se-Malaysia the fundamentalist Islamic party with its roots in the rural northeast, will take in non-Muslim members and even allow them to stand as PAS electoral candidates.

As Asia Sentinel first reported last November, it is PAS that is capitalizing on the situation, rather than the Barisan Nasional, or ruling national coalition. Despite defections, the opposition coalition has won eight of 11 by-elections since the March 2008 general election. The latest was in Sarawak on May 16 when, despite three visits by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak and a cornucopia of educational goodies, voters again turned away from the Barisan, an indication that the Barisan and particularly UMNO continues to suffer from perceptions of corruption and political favoritism to cronies.

PAS's latest move, announced last week, was to allow members of its Supporters Club to become full members of the Islamic party, with the right to attend annual meetings as delegates. The Supporters Club has some 20,000 members, almost all of them Chinese, who have turned away from the Barisan Nasional. According to the think tank source in Kuala Lumpur, PAS may have more Chinese voters than the DAP

The Chinese, says the source, -- an ethnic Chinese as well -- are comfortable with PAS despite the Islamic party's emphasis on fundamentalist Islam because, unlike the Barisan and particularly UMNO, PAS has no designs on the Chinese business community's ownership of the economic sinews of the country. The country's New Economic Policy, in place for four decades, has been designed to transfer as much as 30 percent of the economic activity of the country to ethnic Malays.

"The proof is that we recognize supporters as our official party wing," PAS leader Abdul Hadi Awang told his party's newspaper Harakah Daily. The Islamic party has already placed a non-Muslim in a Terengganu constituency to contest as a PAS candidate.

"Whether this is for real or a political gambit, it is hard to say," the analyst said. "But it does suggest PAS is going after the Chinese vote."

That isn't to say there won't be tension. There are plenty of Islamic firebrands in PAS who detest Chinese dietary freedom – to eat pork and drink beer, for instance -- and lack of discretion in dress for women. There have been attempts by PAS to limit beer sales in some communities. Nonetheless, the source said, PAS may have even wider resonance among voters than the Chinese-oriented Democratic Action Party, another leg of the opposition coalition.

In the meantime, Anwar and Parti Keadilan have come under constant criticism for the quality of the candidates they have fielded and for disorganization and political infighting in the party itself. Abdul Hadi Awang and DAP national chairman Karpal Singh, among others, have urged Anwar to look into the weaknesses in his party that have caused the defections. Anwar has repeatedly spoken of the need to find better candidates.

Anwar has been under a cloud since June of 2008, when a then-24-year-old former aide, Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, filed charges accusing the 62-year-old opposition leader of forcible sodomy. Sodomy in Malaysia is punishable by caning and up to 20 years in prison. The charges have since been reduced from forcible rape to consensual sex, which is still illegal under Malaysian law. The trial has droned on in a Kuala Lumpur courtroom for months, with Anwar's lawyers seeking delay after delay that has frustrated his followers, a growing number of whom say the trial so far appears to have been conducted on its merits rather than the previous sodomy charges brought against him in 1998 that put him behind bars for six years.





AsiaSentinel.com