(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
A white Himalaya Crocodile Hermès Birkin handbag, allegedly purchased by Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor for US$380,000 (RM1.5 million) (Photo: Christies)
My Twitter musings on the value of handbags have ended up included in an article by Zurairi AR in the Malay Mail, which dissects the meaning behind the expensive handbag collection of Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, the wife of the former Prime Minister, Najib Razak. A massive collection of handbags, jewellery, cash, and other items was discovered during police raids on Najib’s home and those of his family members.
Former and current Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Photo: AIIA.
On Wednesday 23rd May at 6pm, I’ll be giving a talk at the Australian Institute of International Affairs (ACT branch).
I’ll share my thoughts on how the Pakatan Harapan coalition led by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad managed to win a historic election victory, through a carefully crafted campaign narrative of a multiracial people defeating a corrupt government that was ready to mortgage the nation to China.
You can buy tickets to see my talk from the AIIA website.
Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur (Photo: David McKelvey/Flickr)
The Interpreter has published an article of mine that analyses the immediate post-election situation in Malaysia; as the country adjusts to a non-Barisan Nasional government for the first time, many decisions must be made by the new Harapan coalition government over how to implement the reforms Malaysians have shown they want. The defeated UMNO Party’s next moves are yet to be determined, while Malaysia’s new leader Mahathir Mohamad has announced to the world that Malaysia is open to most foreign investment. Mahathir is also moving fast to reinstate an investigation into now resigned UMNO leader Najib Razak’s connection with the 1MDB scandal, preventing Najib from leaving the country on the weekend.
Malaysia: what now?
Malaysians have rejected Barisan Nasional so overwhelmingly that the electoral system designed to protect its rule has been overcome. The party received its lowest popular vote in history, around 36%, and won only 79 seats in a 222-seat federal parliament.
The once multiracial coalition has been stripped back to 54 seats held by core party United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), with another 13 held by United Bumiputera Heritage Party (PBB), UMNO’s partner in Sarawak state. There is barely any representation left from its other component parties, including the Malaysian Chinese Association and the Malaysian Indian Congress.
On Sunday night, police cordoned off defeated former prime minister Najib Razak’s street, after Malaysia’s new leader Mahathir Mohamad stopped him from leaving the country on the weekend. Mahathir is moving fast to reinstate an investigation into Najib’s connection with the billions of dollars missing from Malaysia’s 1MDB development investment company.
The rout has been comprehensive. Before the election, however, Malaysians weren’t prepared to give their voting intentions away without a lot of careful prompting. Read more
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.
Photo: East Asia Forum
Today East Asia Forum has published an op-ed that I wrote (which initially appeared as an essay on Inside Story) on the opposition’s narrative of Big China and reminding voters about the 1MDB scandal.
One Malaysia, two Chinas
The Merdeka Centre and other pollsters are predicting that the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition will come out on top of Malaysia’s election on 9 May. This is hardly a bold prediction after 13 similar wins stretching back to Malaya’s transition to independence in the mid-1950s.
One thing that 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. On Facebook and the encrypted carrier WhatsApp, the fracturing of Malaysia’s biggest and once-stable voting bloc — the nation’s majority Malay Muslims — is evident in debates raging in text and video about who is to blame for cost-of-living pressures: China or the Chinese?
Photo: McKay Savage/Flickr
Today I was part of an expert panel alongside Dr John Funston, Dr Ross Tapsell, and Ms Diana Anuar (Discussant and Chair) discussing how each party will run their campaigns in the buildup to Malaysia’s 14th General Election; my focus was on how China has become central to the election.
The panel was covered by New Mandala here.
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.
Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s former prime minister and now opposition leader (Photo: Bloomberg).
Today I was quoted in an article by James Massola on the coming Malaysian general election, which I predict will be called before June 8 (Anwar Ibrahim’s release date from jail) so that Anwar and Mahathir are denied the chance to campaign together as the 1990s ‘dream team’.
Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Wan Azizah, wife of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim stand together during a political opposition alliance meeting in Shah Alam, Malaysia (Photo: AP/TPG).
Some of my comments have been included in The News Lens in an insightful article by Kean Wong. Wong discusses the coming Malaysian election, and the country’s quest for a new national narrative, as well as including some of my points from a recent public forum hosted by New Mandala and ANU’s Malaysia Institute titled GE14: the polls, the money, the stakes. The forum also featured Ibrahim Suffian of the polling and research company the Merdeka Center, Prof Edmund Terence Gomez of Universiti Malaya, and lawyer Fadiah Nadwa Fikri of youth group Malaysia Muda.
A short extract of my points from Wong’s article is below, and I encourage you to read the full, rather excellent piece here.
It’s this reimagining of narratives that lie at the heart of the campaigns of GE14, said Dr Amrita Malhi at the forum. It’s a process of building the trust that Ibrahim Suffian said his recent polling found to be lacking, in different ways for different communities across the peninsula. Dr Malhi said both BN and PH strategists are framing the GE14 contest as a race to secure the new middle-class legacy of the 1990s, when the majority Muslim-Malays emerged with its urban middle classes, when Malaysia was a byword across the ummah for a nation developed equitably.
”This time, I’d argue that again there’s an even greater level of nostalgia, and an even more explicit ramping up of the nostalgia level in producing a new narrative of where the nation is going to go,” Dr Malhi said. ”And this time, it’s moved forward…they’ve moved the glory days to the 1990s. And it’s exactly the time before the economic crisis. And I’ve heard this put to me very explicitly by opposition strategy people: to talk about 1993–1996 in particular, the glory days of the Mahathir–Anwar team, before the struggles from 1997 and the financial crisis in 1998 began, and before this polity began fracturing and going in every single direction from 2008. Now this, I hear being referred to in PKR circles for example as a superb time, Malaysia at its peak.
”As the campaign heats up, I think the line is going be: let’s go back to this period in terms of the good times, the ’easy inter-ethnic interactions.’ Notice the ’easy inter-ethnic interactions’ is moving forward by a decade each time. Doesn’t matter: sometime in the past it was easy. That’s the main point. But, with the proviso as well there has to be institutional reform to ensure that the original dream team can finish only their good work and now their bad work.”