COVID Spurs Rising Instability in Malaysia

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

The southeast Asian nation of Malaysia is experiencing its deepest crisis since the Second World War. The country is in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, with over 2.65 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 30,000 deaths. It is being ruled under emergency decree.

More than 30,000 businesses closed permanently in 2020, with more shutting down this year. Many families are in a desperate situation; some are even unable to even feed themselves. Yet it seems politically adrift.

Malaysia has its origins in the Malay kingdoms which, in the 18th century, came under British control. Peninsular Malaya was restructured as the Federation of Malaya, comprising 11 member states, in 1948 and achieved independence in 1957.

Independent Malaya united with the then British crown colonies of North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore in 1963 to become Malaysia. Singapore, with its Chinese majority, exited the federation two years later.

Malaysia’s 33 million people have long been ethnically divided between its indigenous Muslim Malay majority known as Bumiputra (sons of the soil), some 70 per cent of the population, and a strong overseas Chinese diaspora of 23 per cent. The latter have been dominant in trade and business since the early 20th century.

The Chinese population has shrunk proportionally from 1957, when it was about 40 per cent. There is also an Indian minority.

Polarization over ethnicity and religion has afflicted Malaysia for decades and powerfully shaped its electoral politics. Since the country’s independence, its ethnic Malay majority has enjoyed a constitutionally protected special status, while minorities have been treated as second-class citizens.

This ethnic conflict remains unresolved. Should the state be a “Malaysian Malaysia” or a “Malay Malaysia,” with a Malay supremacy worldview?

While Malaysians are concerned for their immediate welfare, politicians have been involved in a continual tussle for power. The country has seen three prime ministers over the last three years.

Political instability took hold when the opposition Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope, or PH) defeated the incumbent Barisan Nasional (National Front) government, which was led by the scandal ridden prime minister Najib Razak, in the 2018 election. In 2020 he was sentenced to 12 years in jail after being convicted in a multi-million dollar corruption trial.

 

The Malay dominated Barisan Nasional coalition had been in power for 60 years. The change of government generated much hope and excitement from supporters, who saw the possibility of a new era in Malaysia.

The PH supporters had been waiting decades for reform. This was the most inclusive, secular government in the country’s history. Many thought that long-time former prime minister Mahathir Mohamed, who had joined forces with them, would usher in a new political era.

But Mahathir stalled on reform. It become clear that he had simply used the PH as a vehicle to remove Najib from power.

In February 2020, Mahathir himself suddenly resigned from office, bringing an end to the PH experiment and allowing Home Affairs Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to cobble together a Malay-centric government, incorporating many members from the defeated Barisan Nasional.

The new Muhyiddin government appeared illegitimate to many. At the same time, the PH opposition, now led by Anwar Ibrahim, tried to topple it.

Anwar had been released from jail after the 2018 general election with a pardon, after having been sentenced in 2015 to five years imprisonment after a conviction for sexual misbehaviour.

This political manoeuvring came to a head when besieged prime minister Muhyiddin resigned in August, with King Al-Sultan Abdullah appointing Muhyiddin’s deputy prime minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob as prime minister.

Malaysia has a unique system, with nine Malay sultans taking turns to assume the role of king every five years.

Debates on identity and Islam have always been at the forefront of Malaysian politics, and the post-2018 period saw nationalist Malay Muslims in the country battling a multicultural cabinet.

Today, far right nationalist groups continue to advocate ethnic Malay supremacy, citing “emergency nationalism,” while Malaysia scrambles to emerge from the pandemic.

Malaysia has now suffered almost two years of political infighting leading to two changes of government.

While COVID-19 case numbers continue rising and hospital resources are being stressed, Malaysia is battling not just the pandemic but also the loss of trust in its current government.

Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.

 

 

 

Malaysia’s Deep Ethnic Divide

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottown, PEI] Guardian

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the most important public policy ever implemented in Malaysia, the New Economic Policy (NEP).

It reconfigured the country’s political economy and created preferential programmes to promote the majority group’s participation in higher education, highlevel occupations, enterprise management and control, and wealth ownership.

Since 1990, the commanding heights of the economy, notably the banking sector, have been in the hands of ethnic Malays.

While everyone agrees that the NEP fundamentally transformed the country, opinion toward its continuing presence is polarized. Advocates assert that the NEP has achieved tremendous success but remains an unfinished business; detractors assert that it has overstayed beyond its expiry date.

Malaysia is a Southeast Asian country of 28 million people occupying parts of the Malay Peninsula and the island of Borneo. It was cobbled together in 1963 when the imperial power, Great Britain, left its remaining colonial possessions in the region.

Most ethnic Malays live on the Malay peninsula, where they constitute some 60 per cent of its 22 million people. The rest are ethnic Chinese, at 28 per cent, and Indians, at 10 per cent.

Article 160 of the constitution defines a Malay as someone who is a Muslim, speaks the Malay language, and adheres to Malay customs.

The states of Sabah and Sarawak have a population of six million, mainly Indigenous peoples such as the Dayak, Dusun and Kadazan.

Peninsular Malaya suffers from deep ethnic divisions. In 1969, widespread ethnic riots broke out after a disputed election, and thousands died. The country was put under emergency rule and parliament was suspended.

In 1971 parliament was restored, and the government decided that the cause of the riots was the economic disparity between Malays and non-Malays.

The Malay share of corporate wealth back then was estimated to be less than three per cent, and the Chinese 34 per cent, with the remainder said to rest in foreign hands. The professions were also dominated by non-Malays, while Malays mostly ran the civil service and the security services.

This divide was a real and largely deliberate consequence of British colonial rule, which imported both Chinese and Indians to help run the economy under the theory that they would be easier to control.

After the country became independent, many Chinese and Indians stayed, using their existing skills, prior advantages, and personal and family connections to become dominant in many nongovernment sectors.

To remedy this situation, the government promulgated the NEP in 1971. It had two main aims: to eradicate poverty regardless of race, and to “restructure society” so that all ethnic groups would be represented in every profession and throughout the economy.

The Malay community was legally given a 30 per cent minimum share across all economic and social spheres, with quotas imposed to ensure that it was represented in all professions. Many government procurements and licenses were reserved for Malay businesses. An affirmative action program like the NEP would “correct” a historical inequality.

As the 1970s wore on, the feeling rose among the Malay establishment that they wanted to reconstitute Malaysia as a Malay state. As the NEP set aside billions to promote the Malay community via direct subsidies, the elite quickly found that almost anything could be justified in the name of “Malay rights” and “the Malay Agenda.”

The new ethnic basis of the Malaysian economy and society in turn gave rise to an official national narrative in which the Malays were the indigenous people of Malaysia and thus entitled to certain benefits, while the Chinese and Indians were unofficially “pendatang,” or “newcomers.”

This all-encompassing ideology became widely known as “Ketuanan Melayu,” meaning Malay supremacy. In administrative terms, the government labeled Malays and other Indigenous tribes as “bumiputera,” a term meaning “sons of the soil.”

The ongoing transfer of wealth from non-Malays to Malays over the past 50 years received an added boost when select Malays were given opportunities to own large corporations via the privatization of state assets in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Malay “businessmen” who profited hugely from the NEP soon became wholly dependent on government contracts and patronage, to which they now felt entitled. Non-Malay businessmen who wanted government contracts

relied on business model which required a joint venture. But the company was in fact run by the non-Malay (usually Chinese) operators.

One important and intentional side effect of Malaysia’s economy has been the use of the NEP to enrich Malay nationalist political parties. They expect Malay businessmen to donate to them, especially during elections.

For many Malaysians of Chinese and Indian origin, the best possible solution is to move to another country. Since the introduction of the NEP, it is estimated that more than two million Malaysians, at least 90 per cent of whom are non-Malays, have emigrated. Those who leave are usually the most educated and talented.

But the working class and the poor among them have had to cope with a life of abject poverty and marginalization.

 

Australia’s Worries Grow as China Expands

 

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

The Solomon Islands saw anti-government riots in late November. The protesters, from the island of Malaita, opposed a 2019 decision to end ties with Taiwan and establish links with China. This led to an independence referendum last year which the national government dismissed as illegitimate. 

Australia and the Solomon Islands have a 2017 bilateral security treaty and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has deployed peacekeeping forces to the Islands.

This is no surprise. Security is the largest component of the Australian-South Pacific set of relationships. Many of these initiatives fall under the Defence Cooperation Program and the Pacific Maritime Security Program, through which Australia has conducted patrol boat and associated equipment transfers to partner countries.

This has aimed at boosting their ability to monitor sovereign resources like fisheries, as well as to generate maritime intelligence to be shared with Canberra. Australia also participates in the annual South Pacific Defence Ministers’ Meeting, which deals with shared security threats. The area is Australia’s “Arc of Instability.”

Australian security forces have conducted multiple regional interventions in recent decades, particularly in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville province. Australia has partnered with Papua New Guinea on the modernisation of a naval base on Lombrum Island, binding that country closer to the Australian security agenda.

Canberra also frequently conducts humanitarian work. The South Pacific is disproportionately exposed to drought, cyclones, floods, large waves, and volcanic activity. The Australian military lifts supplies and personnel to offset the effects of these disasters. Free-trade agreements also link Australia to ten South Pacific nations.

But some states are uncomfortable with the Australian-led status quo, particularly given the political and economic influence it entails. Fiji, a major trading partner and source of foreign investment for Australia, has been a central figure in this discontent, arising from that country’s troubled relationships with the international community.

It was expelled from the Commonwealth in 1987 following a series of coups and was only readmitted in 1997. More recently, Australian sanctions were applied in the wake of the 2006 coup installing the current leader, Frank Bainimarama, into power, and Commonwealth membership was suspended again in 2010 following failures to host elections there that year.

Consequently, Fiji has pursued greater independence in its foreign affairs and has sought to broaden relations with external powers, particularly China. Beijing is now a large donor to the island country, as well as a signatory in various cooperative aid and security-related programmes.

Beijing’s no-strings-attached approach to aid has ensured that it has become an increasingly important aid, economic and diplomatic partner not only with Fiji, but also with countries like Kiribati, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. This worries Canberra, given China’s increased naval assertiveness in the South China Sea.

When Morrison became Australia’s prime minister three years ago, he insisted that the country could maintain close ties with China, its largest trading partner, while working with the United States, its main security ally. “Australia doesn’t have to choose,” he insisted.

That is no longer the case. Following years of sharply deteriorating relations with Beijing, after Canberra blocked Chinese investment from several sensitive areas and Beijing imposed economic sanctions on a variety of Australian exports, Australia recently joined the U.S. and Great Britain in the creation of a new security pact, to counter China.

The new alliance, announced on Sept. 15, is the most significant security arrangement between the three nations since World War Two. It will let Australia build nuclear-powered submarines, using technology provided by Washington.

Australia will become just the seventh nation in the world to operate nuclear-powered submarines, after the U.S., Britain, France, China, India and Russia.

This might be seen as a modified version of the now-defunct eight-nation Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, which was dissolved in 1977, after the Vietnam War.

It would also be “inconceivable” for Australia not to join the U.S. should Washington take action to defend Taiwan, Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton said on Nov. 13. “This is about giving the Australian Defence Force a capable edge in the region,” according to Richard Maude, at Asia Society Australia.

China has condemned the AUKUS agreement as “extremely irresponsible.” It accused the three countries of a “Cold War mentality and ideological prejudice.”