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Malaysian General Election 2004 Special
A transition and two elections Between the general election and the UMNO election, Abdullah has two choices
In 1981, Mahathir entered the Prime Minister’s office with a ‘slamming of doors’ followed quickly by major policy changes. Abdullah has quietly slid into power, as if everyone needed a pause after the breathlessness of the Mahathir era. The contrast is suggestive. With Abdullah, the style is the substance. And it’s an unobstrusive style, as if the very fact of the Mahathir-Abdullah transition was already its drama. To be ‘his own man’, Abdullah had to ‘de-Mahathirize’ the political system, the administrative framework and the policy regime. He has done so discreetly, offering a reassurance of more continuity than change, and of subtle change rather than an overhaul. Good governance If there’s been any drama at all, it’s been supplied by high-profile media coverage of measures aimed at improving ‘governance’. There were compelling reasons for Abdullah to begin with governance issues. Foreign direct and portfolio investment increasingly demand ‘good governance’ and ‘best practices’ that Malaysia, being chronically dependent on foreign capital, can no longer ignore. Disadvantaged by the changes in investment flows and directions, Abdullah’s government, unlike Mahathir personally, can’t dismiss ‘governance’ as a foreign obscenity. Abdullah’s most important ‘governance’ move was to postpone the billion ringgit double track railway project controversially awarded to MMC-Gamuda shortly before Mahathir retired. It was also time to balance the budget and show fiscal prudence. Previous budget deficits were too widely associated with Malaysia Inc.’s ‘mega projects’, bailouts, rescues. Of course, one shouldn’t miss some of the the politics of the postponement: Abdullah had to avoid diplomatic and trade fallouts with India and China with a possibly adverse impact on Indian and Chinese voters in the next election. ‘Good governance’ translates popularly into ‘anti-corruption’. First came the exposés: the award of thousands of taxi permits to an individual; suspected collusion of Customs officers in the import of luxury cars without payment of duties, arrest of the head of a Malacca state government corporation for suspected bribery, removal of a bankrupt from a Malacca district council. Then came charges against Eric Chia and Kasitah Gaddam. Low-level targets were followed by prominent figures. Suddenly, it seemed like the public was being prepared for a concerted anti-corruption drive that was underway. Popularity of "anti-corruption" As yet, there’s no cause for celebration but good reason to raise questions. What has the anti-corruption drive produced beyond sound intentions and good public relations? Has any corruption case been decided in court? Has the government really overhauled its tender system to make it transparent? Are federal or state projects no longer awarded to politically connected companies? In short, will Abdullah push his campaign all the way to clean up the high-level politico-corporate networks of money politics, corruption and ‘bad governance’? If he tries, the heavyweights of those networks will treat his ‘governance reform’ as a threat. They will see it as an Abdullah agenda of curbing potential rivals and establishing his own alliances. ‘Anti-corruption’ is not just popular. It indirectly responds to Reformasi’s attacks on corruption, cronyism and nepotism. An anti-corruption drive lends a gloss of freshness to a leader whose regime is otherwise ‘old’ and ‘inherited’. Abdullah must consolidate his own position while two elections loom – the general election and the UMNO election. Maybe that’s why an anti-corruption drive, which reaches the highest politico-corporate levels, if it’s coming at all, hasn’t come yet. 11th general election
Plainly, if the BN couldn’t do worse than what happened in 1999, it can’t do worse now than in 1999. Economic conditions are not as exciting as media hype about a ‘red hot recovery’ and a ‘runaway KLSE’ would have us believe, but we’re not plagued by the uncertainties of 1998-99. New seats were added and constituencies realigned across the country except in Kelantan and Trengganu. After Mahathir’s departure, Abdullah’s government avoided controversy and provocation. Indeed, some things that help the BN are never changed. All through the long festive season, the BN machinery was directed to keep the voters in ‘feel good’ mode! All over the country, roads are being re-surfaced that don’t need it or should have been resurfaced some time ago. Soon schools and communities and individuals will receive grants and awards and assistance. This weekend (28 February/1 March), the police plan to hold mock ‘riots’ in Penang – of all places! – in security exercises which, we are assured, have nothing to do with the election. No such advantages of the politics of ‘feelgood’ and of ‘fear’ accrue to the opposition. While campaigning, the opposition will find facilities closed to them, media blackouts and grossly unfair treatment. But DAP and PAS broke the Barisan Alternatif’s historic unity. Since then, DAP has not shown fresh ideas for reversing its successive defeats by MCA and Gerakan. PAS’s strategic mistake of staking its advance on its so-called ‘Islamic State’ alienates potential allies who remember PAS for defending a ‘democratic state’ in 1999. In Sabah, PBS rejoined the BN, and the opposition was erased. In Sarawak, there’s no opposition to benefit from the deregistration of SNAP and PBDS. Whether there will be a backlash against the BN will be known by election time. There, as elsewhere, the opposition will rely on its core loyalties, local discontent over BN complacency and insensitivity, and some degree of sympathy to see it through. Malay politics UMNO will target to win the new parliamentary seats allocated to the party, regain some seats in Kelantan and Trengganu, and beat back the PAS-Keadilan combination in Kedah. Elsewhere, UMNO defeated PAS in 1999 and won’t lose that edge now. Strategically, UMNO will seek an outright majority within BN and improve its share of the Malay popular vote. UMNO will take such electoral gains as evidence of its recovery of legitimacy among Malay voters and its dominance in BN. To that extent, the 11th general election, more than previous ones, will be fought over ‘Malay politics’. It is a state of Malay politics that has gone ‘beyond Anwar Ibrahim’. There is still empathy for Anwar, and Keadilan remains the heir to Reformasi dissidence. But the revolt over Anwar’s maltreatment has been so repressed and burnt-out it won’t sustain a new wave of Malay recalcitrance. Despite alarmist or exuberant predictions, PAS is unlikely to improve on its 1999 results. PAS is still strong in Kelantan where UMNO’s internal weaknesses may be decisive. There is solid oppositionist sentiment in Trengganu partly because of the shabby Federal treatment of the state over petroleum revenues and the Sekolah Agama Rakyat. Hence, PAS can hold its own in the Malay heartland. Of course, one can regard PAS’s issuance of its Islamic State Document indirectly as its acceptance that the party can’t win significant non-Malay or non-Muslim support. By the same token, that attests to PAS’s confidence that it can’t be quickly overturned by UMNO in matters Islamic and where the non-Muslim vote is negligible. Despite talk of Abdullah Badawi’s religious credentials, UMNO can’t retrieve its lost legitimacy by seeking to ‘out-Islamize’ PAS. But PAS can’t better its 1999 result by trying to ‘out-politicize’ UMNO in other matters. Thus, a stalemate of sorts is likely. Core constituencies and social priorites Abdullah’s preparation for the election disengages from Mahathir’s post-1999 Malay-bashing. UMNO has been repairing its damaged ties with the Malay grassroots and the Malay-dominated civil service – two overlapping sources of dissident Malay voters during Mahathir’s final years in power. Abdullah is ploddingly reasserting UMNO’s traditional agenda of protecting Malay ‘social priorities’. He delayed the risky move to list Felda on the KLSE. He dismissed the EPF’s unofficial proposal to disallow its contributors to withdraw part of their contributions prior to their retirement. Abdullah introduced a RM200 million ‘tuition’ scheme to help 500,000 poor pupils to cope with the change from teaching Science and Mathematics in Malay to English. The same scheme was an indirect reward for schoolteachers whose services and contributions have not been lauded in recent years. These are ‘plebian’ initiatives. Yet they are consistent with the media blitz on Abdullah’s ‘gentility’, ‘religiosity’ and ‘rusticity’. They help him to re-orient the government towards matters of rural development and social priorities with NEP overtones – namely education, health care and housing – that used to define UMNO’s relationship with its core constituencies. It’s even possible, before the election, that Abdullah will undo Mahathir’s hostility towards the Sekolah Agama Rakyat and strike a compromise over Federal Government funding. The Sekolah Agama Rakyat may do little to ‘contribute to national integration’, to use official phraseology, but they become to many Malays what the ‘independent schools’ are to the Chinese community. Vehicle and mandate For Abdullah, the significance of the election is obvious: his vehicle for securing a national mandate since he emerged as Mahathir’s deputy by default. Indeed, Mahathir was reported to have said that Abdullah ‘should not be here’ – a reference to Abdullah’s purge from the Cabinet after Team B’s defeat in 1987. Between the general election and the UMNO election, Abdullah has two choices. A respectable UMNO performance in the former will arm Abdullah with his ‘own’ national mandate before the party election. He himself needs to be elected President. Then he may be able to ‘fix’ his preference for a Deputy President with behind-the-scene compromises. Or he can follow Mahathir’s tactic in 1981 of ‘democratically’ leaving the election of the Deputy President to the UMNO General Assembly. In either case, UMNO’s thorny problem of picking an ‘anointed successor’ hasn’t been solved yet. Najib Tun Razak’s appointment as Deputy Prime Minister doesn’t guarantee his asendancy. If UMNO’s history is any guide, the UMNO Deputy President’s post, not yet Najib’s, may once more be the site of fierce fighting. If that happens, for this brief tale of two elections, there may merely be a lull before a storm. Now e-mail us and tell us what you think. Your comments might be published in the Letters section of our print magazine, Aliran Monthly. Alternatively, post your comments to the message board. | |||||||||||||||
Will Abdullah push his campaign all the way to clean up the high-level politico-corporate networks of money politics, corruption and ‘bad governance’? If he tries, the heavyweights of those networks will treat his ‘governance reform’ as a threat.
