The Review - Asia Watch

January 2000

Asia Watch

HOLLOW VICTORY: With the ink now drying on the Malaysian election results, it is becoming clearer that Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamed’s comfortable victory was not all it seemed. Asia’s longest serving national leader secured his stated aim of a two-thirds majority but lost ground where it hurts most — in his own Malay heartland in the north. The opposition PAS (Pan Malaysian Islamic Party), some of whose leaders have called for imposing strict Islamic law in Malaysia, won state-level control of both Kelantan and, for the first time, Terengganu, where it won all eight parliamentary seats; a huge shift from the 1995 election, when it won just one seat.

Although the governing National Front coalition, or Barisan Nasional, led by Dr Mahathir’s United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), retained a comfortable parliamentary majority, the combined opposition parties practically doubled their representation in Parliament. More significantly, the election radically changes the make-up of the opposition. PAS, with 27 parliamentary seats, is now the clear leader of the disparate parties that make up the opposition Alternative Front. The largely ethnic-Chinese Democratic Action Party (DAP) received 10 seats, and the National Justice Party, founded this year by Wan Azizah, the wife of Anwar Ibrahim, the jailed former deputy prime minister, won five seats, including the seat formerly held by Anwar.

The governing coalition owes its victory to the pro-government bastions like Sarawak and Sabah on Borneo, Johor in the South and ironically, ethnic Chinese voters (who make up 25 percent of the population) in traditional opposition strongholds. The Chinese opted for the status quo largely because they feared instability and an opposition alliance that included a party whose stated aim was an Islamic state in Malaysia, a prospect that was relentlessly repeated by the government-controlled media. The one Chinese-dominated party in the opposition coalition, the Democratic Action Party, did not fare well, losing the seats of both its leader, Lim Kit Sian (who led the parliamentary opposition for three decades) and deputy leader Karpal Singh.

Most critical is the sea-change in the so-called Malay belt. It was in the ethnic Malay states of the North where sympathy ran deepest for Anwar. His plight galvanised the once-squabbling forces of the opposition while deeply dividing ethnic Malays, many of whom appear to have switched to the Islamic camp. Terengganu is richly endowed with oil and gas fields, which earns the state government over $130 million annually in royalties. Such financial resources will be an extra bonus for the new PAS administration, which may use it as leverage to further Islamise Malaysia and PAS is already talking about increasing its royalty share. Aside from its victories in Kelantan and Terengganu, PAS also picked up new seats in Perlis, a heavily Malay state, and Kedah, the home state of Dr Mahathir himself, where it won more than half the parliamentary seats. In the last election, Dr Mahathir’s party swept all 15 seats.

The split in the Malay community (about 60 percent of the population) is mirrored by UMNO itself. Divided by the Anwar affair and personal rivalries, the conditions in the party are ripe for Dr Mahathir to be challenged later on. Younger party members are less enamoured of his old-style brand of paternalistic rule. It is no small irony that Dr Mahathir began his political career with such pro-Malay zeal that he was expelled from the party he now leads and his 1969 book, The Malay Dilemma, was banned. The book called for political reforms giving Malays privileges over other races. Three decades later, the champion of the Malays has been forced to rely on votes from ethnic Chinese Malaysians, the very people he once accused of being "chauvinists".

Yet, the result could have been much worse for Dr Mahathir. A record number of young Malaysians registered to vote in the past year in the wake of the Anwar affair — some 680,000 compared to a yearly average of 200,000 — but their names will not be placed on the rolls until this year. Numerous allegations of voting irregularities, including deceased persons registering "votes", as well as the Government’s firm control over the media, also suggest that a political ‘level playing field’ would be less kind to the Malaysian leader.

CAT OUT OF THE BAG: Those outside Indonesia are quickly learning that enigmatic new President Abdurrahman Wahid likes to talk freely. In a flurry of international visits since his inauguration, President Wahid called on the Middle East late November and soon revealed that Malaysia would like Indonesia to mediate with Israel on its behalf.

Of course, neither Malaysia nor Indonesia have diplomatic relations with Israel, but Wahid broke ranks just days after he became president to state his interest in developing commercial ties with the Jewish state. According to the Far East Economic Review, he told journalists travelling with him in the Middle East that Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir had asked him to help foster closer Malaysian ties with Israel, too. "They know we are a friend of Israel," Wahid reportedly remarked.

If it is true, it is doubtful whether Dr Mahathir would have wanted his interest made public, especially now that devout Islamists have become his main opposition. Unsurprisingly, a prompt and vehement denial of the claim was issued from Kuala Lumpur, with Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar stating his government’s "strong objection", and that "we never at any time said anything to that effect." He further reiterated that Malaysia has "no intention of establishing diplomatic or commercial relations with Israel." Recent street protests in both Malaysia and Indonesia indicate that the question of relations with Jerusalem will remain a thorny one.

MICHAEL SHANNON