(Photo: Australian Institute of International Affairs)
Here’s an article I’ve written based on my presentation at the AIIA ACT Branch on 23 May, where I discussed Dr Mahathir’s historic election victory and how the winning Pakatan Harapan coalition flipped the ‘China threat’ on its head, separating in their campaign narrative the external ‘Big’ (or really mainland) China from local Chinese that are part of Malaysian society.
Flipping the Chinese Threat: How the Malaysian Opposition Won
Wan Azizah will serve as Malaysia’s first deputy prime minister. Photo: Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images
In the wake of an unprecedented opposition win in Malaysia on Wednesday, voters are concerned about whether or not Najib will respect the decision of the public as he said he would in a remarkable concession speech that sounded less like conceding defeat and more like trying to buy time. Read my essay published in Inside Story for more details!
Malaysia’s Day on Edge
Having won the most seats, the opposition parties endured twenty-four hours of suspense. Was the old government working on plan B?
“We’ve asked the sultans not to be on the wrong side of history,” a Pakatan Harapan candidate told me in a posh cafe in Kuala Lumpur in February. “They should not emulate the Indonesian royalty during the Indonesian revolution,” he continued, referring to East Indies rulers who sided with the Dutch on the eve of Indonesian independence. “We are very confident. Very confident.”
I sensed his confidence was genuine, and it was vindicated on Wednesday this week when a surge of public support for Harapan, the opposition coalition, overwhelmed all the obstacles built into Malaysia’s electoral system — a system that has tipped the scales in the government’s favour in contests with successive opposition coalitions over the past six decades. The result will also deliver another important first for Malaysian society, a woman deputy prime minister, Wan Azizah. (Azizah’s husband, Anwar Ibrahim, is still in prison and was unable to run.)
Despite stating repeatedly that he will not be seeking revenge against vanquished prime minister Najib Razak and his allies, Malaysia’s new leader, Mahathir Mohamad, had to wait for most of Thursday to get an audience with the King. Only then was he sworn in and able to form a new government. The ceremony finally took place at 9.30 last night in Kuala Lumpur. Najib tweeted his congratulations and an assurance that he would assist in a smooth transfer of power.
Campaign image by Invoke Malaysia circulating Whatsapp asks: “Quiz: Between these two uncles, which one gets a GST exemption?” Photo: Inside Story
Today Inside Story published an essay I wrote on the presence of ‘China’ and the ‘Chinese’ in the Malaysian general election, for which the official eleven-day campaign started this weekend. The government’s line is that the opposition, whose Democratic Action Party has a large ethnic Chinese membership, represents a risk of the Chinese takeover of Malay Muslim, and therefore Malaysian, sovereignty. The opposition parties are working to flip this argument so it hurts Barisan instead, by pointing to the external Chinese threat it argues resides in the People’s Republic of China, and its rise in the region.
One Malaysia, Two Chinas
Malaysia’s official eleven-day election campaign kicked off this weekend as candidates presented themselves for nomination ahead of voting on 9 May. The Merdeka Centre and other pollsters are predicting a win for Najib Razak and his ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front) coalition, hardly a bold prediction after thirteen similar wins stretching back to Malaya’s transition to independence in the mid 1950s. What makes this election different is a focus on the role of two Chinas — the Big China of development loans and foreign policy deals and the local Chinese community, which tends to support the opposition.
As it does at every election, the government has shaped the contest to minimise competition from the opposition parties, this time grouped in a coalition called the Pakatan Harapan, or Alliance of Hope. The short campaign and the weekday vote is designed to keep turnout low; revised electoral boundaries carry on Malaysia’s rich tradition of malapportionment and gerrymandering; and a new “fake news” law is clearly intended to constrain political discussion by Malaysians on social media and in the foreign press.
Not surprisingly, Najib himself has predicted an increased majority, not least in a recent interview with Bloomberg, his first with a foreign media outlet for more than three years. The PM’s boycott of foreign media began when the 1MDB scandal first erupted in 2015 with allegations that a state investment fund led by Najib had lost billions of dollars and racked up billions more in debt. The fund is still being probed in the United States, but similar investigations in Malaysia have found Najib innocent of all wrongdoing, and his UMNO party, which dominates Barisan Nasional, has closed ranks around him. Electorally and institutionally speaking, Najib appears to have his bases covered, at least within the country he leads.
The mood, meanwhile, wavers somewhere between indifference and insolence. When I asked political observers and insiders in Kuala Lumpur about the election recently, they responded with sighs and eyerolls before sharing their views. Beyond the capital, seasoned observers are reporting unusually silent audiences at the usually lively opposition campaign rallies known as ceramah, their faces unreadable. But this subdued reaction hasn’t stopped Pakatan’s campaign from circulating images of well-attended events accompanied by images of empty chairs at Barisan ceramah.
At one of Barisan’s events, to which taxi drivers were coaxed with a promise of free fuel cards to the value of 800 ringgit (a bit less than half the average monthly wage), the crowd declined to be stage-managed by officials, kicking over barriers and heading for the counter. Nobody seems to be performing as expected, except when they lament the spiralling cost of living. Food prices have soared, and the price of the widely eaten kembong — Indian mackerel, now seen as a cost-of-living bellwether — has more than doubled since 2015.
Griffith Review has unlocked an essay of mine that it first published in 2017, discussing the South Australian state government’s desire to internationalise SA – both economically and culturally – by stepping up its engagement with Asia. It also explores how well-intentioned, but ultimately clumsy, attempts to be more ‘intercultural’ reveal the government’s lack of cultural fluency and an unhelpful and patronising tendency towards ethnic reductionism.
‘SO WHAT? THERE’S no story here,’ the marketing consultant snapped down the phone. ‘I mean, bloody hell, the premier’s forever banging on about Asia, and everybody’s heard it all before.’
Welcome to South Australia, a state working hard to internationalise itself so that it might survive its painful economic ‘transition’ now underway. As part of this effort, Premier Jay Weatherill is, indeed, forever banging on about Asia.
Like other state and federal leaders, Weatherill has made it part of his job to talk up Asian engagement in a way that reflects the region’s transformation over the past forty years. As a result, the word ‘Asia’ now carries new meanings in Australian public debate, shifting from simply a place where cheap goods and workers can be accessed to a place where the world’s new rich also happen to live, ready to buy our stuff and invest in our economy. On a national scale, our economy is already so deeply enmeshed with Asia that the region can no longer really be thought of as ‘foreign’, thanks to increased trade, investment and migration to Australia.
The marketing consultant had obviously written up this sort of thing too many times before. Still, I needed her to do it again. I was convening an event called InterculturAdelaide, a policy outreach day in the Ninth International Convention of Asia Scholars that Adelaide hosted in 2015. I was serving on the conference organising committee as secretary of the Asian Studies Association of Australia.
The government of South Australia had provided strong support for the event, via direct grants and indirect subsidies, and even some help with marketing. The premier spoke on the keynote panel I hosted, and issued a call for South Australians to move beyond a basic passive tolerance for cultural diversity to embrace ‘interculturality’. ‘Citizens of an intercultural society,’ Weatherill said, ‘would be open and outward looking in their orientation to the world.’ They would aim to ‘truly understand different cultures and beliefs’, including with the peoples and cultures of Asia in particular, and ‘seek to engage with these cultures on various levels’. This engagement would underpin not only our successful pursuit of economic goals, but also allow us to develop an ‘ethos’ guiding positive relationships with each other.
The premier, along with others on the state’s political scene, is serious about encouraging such forms of engagement. Nevertheless, a certain economic reductionism can often creep in to the South Australian discussion about Asia – especially in its corporate and bureaucratic registers. This reductionism is directly related to the state’s economic problems, which, for decades, have been accompanied by a demonstrable demographic decline. As part of its campaign to internationalise, South Australia is looking for more new migrants, drawing in part on its international student pool, and is prepared to offer sponsorship in order to retain them. As a result, the fastest-growing migrant groups in this state are Asian, and SA has begun to display a pattern of cultural diversity – along with an increasingly Asian profile – that is broadly similar to that of the nation as a whole.
Unlikely allies: longstanding opposition figure Wan Azizah (left) with former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad (second from right) after Malaysia’s opposition named Mahathir as its candidate for prime minister (Photo: Fazry Ismail/EPA).
Today Inside Story published an essay of mine on the rise of Mahathir Mohamad to leader of the Pakatan Harapan coalition opposition parties at the age of 92. I discuss Malaysia’s current political faultlines and why Mahathir is now allying himself with former nemesis Anwar Ibrahim.
“It’s hard to think of a more surprising political turnaround. This week former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad announced that he will contest this year’s general election as leader of an alliance of opposition parties committed to ousting the government of Najib Razak. It was Mahathir who chose Najib back in 2009 to lead his former party, UMNO, and the coalition it has headed since the 1970s, Barisan Nasional. In taking the candidacy, the former PM allies himself with his one-time colleague and later nemesis Anwar Ibrahim, whom he famously sacked from the deputy prime ministership in 1998.
Mahathir, who rose through UMNO’s ranks to become prime minister in 1981, is ninety-two years old. His decision to stand this year has raised questions about the state of politics in a nation where the median age is only twenty-eight. Malaysian and international media outlets alike have reflected the view that Mahathir’s selection to lead the coalition is “laughable.”
For answers to this apparent paradox, though, look not to the nation’s age profile but to the calculus of building electoral coalitions in a diverse nation that still bears the scars of the political battles of the past two decades. Look also to Mahathir’s singular success in building coalitions over even more decades, using a combination of Malay nationalism, an Islamist ethic favouring entrepreneurship and capitalist development, and selective minority representation. In combination with favours for allies and civil and judicial pressure on opponents, his use of these themes has been masterful.
Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad talks to journalists in Malaysia’s administrative capital, Putrajaya, earlier this month. Ahmad Yusni/EPA, selected by Inside Story.
Today, the excellent website Inside Story published my latest essay on the strategy and tactics of Dr Mahathir’s entry into Pakatan Harapan. I discuss the way the opposition parties wish to convert FELDA’s problems into a mini-1MDB crisis for rural voters in critical seats.
I’ve had an essay published in Griffith Review, in a special issue called ‘State of Hope’, focused on South Australia as a testing ground for government-led social reform since the era of former Premier Don Dunstan.
I haven’t been able to participate in any of the nostalgia for South Australia’s past, having only arrived just as Mike Rann was replaced with Jay Weatherill. All the same, my essay addresses contemporary possibilities for new rounds of social reform, in this case in relation to how state governments “manage” the growing cultural diversity of their populations through the policy framework we refer to as multiculturalism.
The essay reflects on my experience organising InterculturAdelaide, a policy co-design workshop I convened in 2015, and of navigating the multicultural arena and the way it insists on assigning non-white Australians within discrete and bounded cultural silos. These silos are then targeted by political parties in their competitive quest to mobilise each cultural “community” as a supportive political constituency. Yet surely a focus on equitable interaction across purported cultural boundaries is a better approach for equipping Australians to navigate their own society and their increasingly multipolar region?
The essay, ‘Intercultural Futures: The Fraught Politics of Multiculturalism,’ is available for purchase from Griffith Review.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. Image selected by New Mandala.
The fourth and final part of my New Mandala series drawing on an interview with former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad can be found below. An abridged version was published in the Canberra Times and syndicated across Fairfax media websites online.
Financial scandals and foreign affairs
If Malaysia’s political impasse breaks, the impact may be global.
“I myself have never wanted foreign interference in our domestic affairs,” former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad declared in late June in his Putrajaya office. “But domestic means of redress have been closed.”
Since I spoke to him then there’s been much debate between Malaysia analysts on whether current PM Najib Razak’s position is safe, and how much longer he can hold on before the cluster of problems now assembled around him ends his political career. Today, the ANU Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs hosts the 2016 Malaysia Update largely focused on this debate.
This is an important question, not only for Malaysia but for Australia. Analysts in Asia continue to argue that Najib is unassailable, based on their analysis of formal UMNO structures and the Malaysian bureaucracy. Mahathir largely concurs in his assessment of Najib’s domestic prospects, saying “the AG [Attorney-General] will not take up the case against him in the court.
Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad speaks at a ‘Save Malaysia’ rally in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 28 March 2016. Photo: EPA/AHMAD YUSNI, selected by Southeast Asia Globe.
I’ve made some comments in the Southeast Asia Globe on Mahathir’s new political party. My comments were:
According to Amrita Malhi, a researcher on Malaysia based at the University of Adelaide, the new party was established to oppose UMNO and current Prime Minister Najib Razak, who is facing allegations that more than $1 billion from state development fund 1MDB was transferred into his personal bank accounts.
“[Mahathir] believes that Najib is using money allegedly siphoned out of 1MDB to pay both his allies and many voters to continue to support him,” she said. “As Mahathir has determined that he cannot possibly outspend Najib, he is moving to convince disillusioned UMNO members to leave and join his new party instead.”
Malhi added that some UMNO party members admire Mahathir and are growing increasingly disillusioned with Najib.
“They feel awkward about defending him, especially before international audiences,” she said, “even while Najib’s allies continue to defend him before the Malaysian public.”
Image: Malaysia’s “redshirts” clash with the police at a recent rally in Kuala Lumpur. Selected by New Mandala.
Part 3 of my Mahathir series for New Mandala is below.
Social cohesion and scandal cycles in Malaysia
Mahathir on the divisions tearing a country, the opposition and politics apart.
“I’m afraid the whole thing revolves around Najib,” former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said last month in his Putrajaya office.“Because of Najib and his attempt to retain his position as Prime Minister, it becomes difficult for any kind of real dialogue or reforms to be carried out.”
Since this interview, negotiations to create a new opposition front in Malaysia have been in full swing. Party leaders have spent the last three weeks issuing statements on policy issues that will determine their chances of success at the next election, slated for 2018.
One key issue is social cohesion in a nation wearied by toxic debates around race and religion.