It may have
been a shock win for Pakatan Harapan in the recent election, but the writing
has been on the wall for Barisan Nasional for more than a decade.
AH, finally, change has come! It was simply
inevitable.
I have been writing for over a decade of the
politically manufactured extremism and intolerance within Malay society and how
the 2006 Umno General Assembly was the turning point when a party that had
prided itself as the bedrock of centrist politics, presented an extremist face
to Malaysians on live television.
The histrionics of race and religion under threat,
the keris waving, and the full display of Malay-Muslim
machismo alienated and scared not just the non-Muslims, but the many moderate
and progressive Muslims in the country. Umno had crossed the line. The
belligerent Umno speakers thought they reflected the mood on the ground, only
to fast discover that the ground had shifted from under their feet, as the
President tried vainly to do some damage control with his closing speech.
By the 2008 general elections, the resounding
victory that then prime minister Abdullah Badawi enjoyed in 2004 based on his
change agenda was overturned. The rakyat inflicted the most crushing blow to
Barisan Nasional. Kedah, Penang, Perak and Selangor fell to the Opposition, and
the ruling party lost its much vaunted two-thirds majority.
It all went wrong within just four short years.
Abdullah Badawi had led Barisan to its greatest electoral victory ever, winning
199 of 219 parliamentary seats in 2004. He promised to eliminate corruption, to
introduce open tendering for government contracts. He regarded the NGOs as the
eyes and ears of the government, he stood up for women's rights and a
progressive Islam that must be re-interpreted to deal with changing times and
circumstances. He promised a kinder, gentler Malaysia and more open and
democratic politics.
While many of us shared in the fifth Prime
Minister's vision of a democratising, transparent and accountable government
and his promise of an inclusive rule for all Malaysians, his failure to deliver
on much of this grand vision and his inability to take charge of his change
agenda in the face of resistance from powerful centres of power within Umno,
within the civil service, the Police, and even within his own cabinet
eventually led to a massive loss of confidence. It was not supposed to be
business as usual. But on the ground, it was much too much of the same thing.
From the endless manufacturing of a siege and
crisis mentality among the Malays to supremacist speeches in the name of race
and religion, from the Lingam tapes to judicial integrity, from rising crime to
rising prices, local development without public representation, political
leaders behaving badly, and allegations of corruption and cronyism that did not
abate...the electorate was in no mood to wait for the promised change to come
or to even acknowledge that some change had indeed taken place.
Anything but Umno
I had written after the 2008 general elections that
the massive public repudiation of Barisan was not just a repudiation of the
prime minister's rule, but of all the corrupt, immoral, authoritarianism of
Barisan politics and governance in its 50 years of domination. The public has
had enough.
That Pakatan Rakyat won votes on a platform of
change from "Ketuanan Melayu" to "Ketuanan Rakyat" and a smorgasbord of
promises to make democracy and good governance work for ALL citizens was beyond
Umno comprehension.
While the new alliance was fast capturing the
shifting mood of Malaysian voters to a new political centre of equitable and
fairer terms of engagement among the citizens, and between the citizen and the
state, and generating excitement among young voters and community groups that
their voices could indeed bring change, Umno members were more preoccupied with
power grabbing in the run-up to party elections in December 2009.
They might win party elections whooping their
"Ketuanan Melayu" battle cry, but they would cause the party
to lose the next general elections, I predicted. The ground had shifted, but
they dug deeper into their bad old bag of tricks of race, religion, money
politics, and self-enrichment. I never understood what was there for MCA,
Gerakan and MIC to stay on with Umno and its intemperate and relentless
stomping and condoning of ethno-religious supremacy that was driving away
Chinese and Indian voters into the waiting arms of PKR, DAP and even PAS. The
mood indeed was anything but Umno.
It was clear by 2008 that Malaysian politics was
taking off into an epochal transformation from race-based to issue-based, I
felt. Increasingly, Malaysians were building new solidarities based on issues,
not race or religion. Be it human rights, women's rights, free and fair
elections, democracy, good governance, anti-corruption, freedom of the press,
detention without trial, death in custody, local government, environment, land
rights, quality education, arts and culture, ... it would be issues that would
bring Malaysians of all ethnic backgrounds together, I wrote then.
So Abdullah was forced into early retirement and
Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak became the sixth prime minister, warning Umno to
"change or perish". He called on Umno members to be the eyes and ears
of the rakyat so that Umno could read accurately the pulse of the nation and
translate that into policy and action. He called on the people to restore the
bridges that brought us together and tear the walls that separated us. He
introduced 1Malaysia and he wanted repressive laws repealed and Umno party
rules to be more democratic.
Regime crisis
That was 2009. But I wrote early on that Najib
might have the dubious honour of being the first Umno President to become
Leader of the Opposition, as I saw no mood for change among Umno leaders and
members. They felt they were the only rakyat that mattered. All they were
preoccupied with was to use the race card to enrich themselves - to get more
handouts and more contracts into their grubby hands.
Almost 11 months after the 2008 elections, Umno
lost a by-election in Kuala Terengganu as PAS, PKR and DAP displayed
unprecedented cohesion and dazzled the voters with their unity, sharing the
same platform everywhere.
It had made no difference to Umno thinking and
strategising that 74% of the Malays in the Kuala Terengganu constituency polled
a week before polling day believed that "Malay political power was
weakened by corrupt and self-serving leaders", while only 17% said it was
weakened by "demands made by the non-Malays".
Umno had become a gravy train for personal wealth
accumulation for most of its leaders and members. The party had so lost touch
with the ground that it no longer cared for public opinion. Their rhetoric of
Malay dominance, and race and religion under threat was delusional when more
and more Malays were rejecting them in favour of a multi-ethnic opposition
promising good governance and equitable citizenship rights.
That a newly cobbled coalition of strange
bedfellows could present a united front and work together as a team and sell
their multi-ethnic agenda to a Malay electorate showed what a pathetic empty
shell Barisan as a multi-ethnic coalition had become.
2009 under the new leadership brought no respite to
the rakyat. Incident after incident piled up and we felt as if the country was
going to implode. Issues on whether one was a Muslim or not, whether a father
who converted to Islam had the right to unilaterally convert his underage
children, the sentencing of Kartika to caning for drinking a glass of beer, the
arrest and prosecution of then former Perlis Mufti for teaching Islam in a
private home in Selangor without a letter of authorisation...the endless
sledgehammer of persecution in the name of Islam went on.
By 2010, the likes of the belligerent Ibrahim Ali
and Zulkifli Noordin had emerged as the poster boys of Umno and the future the
party believed in. It was their voice and those of their ilk that the
government of the day seemed to listen to. Not the voice of Malaysians, who
believe in our founding fathers' vision of a modern, democratic, secular,
culturally pluralistic and inclusive political community.
Contrary voices were either cowed into silenced or
demonised. More demagogues were organised to whip up Malay sentiment against
any attempts to discuss concerns arising from the makeover of the
Constitutional idea of "the special position of the Malays" into
Malay supremacy.
The idea of Ketuanan Melayu sits uncomfortably among many
Malaysians, be they Malays, Chinese, Indians, Ibans, Kadazan-Dusun, Bajaus,
Orang Asal, Eurasians.... It is a racial supremacist idea, a far cry from the
simple reality that Malays as the majority population of this country will
naturally be the politically dominant group.
And a far cry from the constitutional notion of the
"special position of the Malays" which legitimised affirmative action
as a temporary special measure to enable a historically disadvantaged group to
catch up.
Obviously, Malaysia had entered into another
"regime crisis". The NEP-era political phase and governing mechanism
exhaled its last breath on March 8, 2008.The Opposition had still not coalesced
into a viable trusted alternative with a common political vision of Malaysia.
The Barisan Nasional government showed no resolve to deal with the concerns and
contestations over matters of race and religion, and human rights and fundamental
liberties. This pessimism about the future of Malaysia continued to corrode the
body politic and the public sense of well-being.
By mid-2010, I pronounced in this column that Umno
was beyond redemption. It had regressed into a dinosaur, too huge, too old, too
fossilised in its ways to be able to adapt to new conditions. The sense of
privilege and entitlement was too entrenched for Umno members to ever want to
change.
While UMNO politicians and Perkasa pointed fingers
at other races as a threat to Malay political survival, the Malays themselves
saw something else. A Merdeka Centre survey revealed that 70% of Malays felt
that the main threat to the Malay political position in the country was
corruption among Malay leaders. Only 22% believed it was due to demands made by
other races in the country. This national survey reinforced the Kuala
Terengganu findings of January 2009.
The changing values and changing mood was clear. A
significant 40% of the Malay respondents believed that citizens should be
treated and accorded the same rights in Malaysia, regardless of race and
religion. Forty-five per cent believed that government assistance programmes
only benefited the rich and politically connected. The two top issues all
respondents identified as being the most important in need of change were:
"making the country more democratic" and "making our education
system world class". But 66% of the public felt a sense of powerlessness
that they could influence government policy.
And yet Umno continued to play its dangerous game
for the future of Malaysia.
And it did not care that continuing to abuse race
and religion unabated spelt the death knell to its Barisan partners who could
never hope to deliver the minority votes necessary for the ruling coalition to
maintain power.
No political will
The then Prime Minister made attempts to bring Umno
back to the centre by calling for the voice of moderation to prevail in
Malaysia, reminding Umno members at the 2010 General Assembly that it was the
Malay trait of moderation that had enabled the community to be accepted as
leaders in a multicultural society.
But wasatiyyah required political courage. No one
in Umno had the political will to follow words with deeds. Its hypocrisy
continued to stench. Sisters in Islam was called in twice by the Police for
questioning under the Penal Code and the Sedition Act for standing up for
Kartika. For the first time too, a state religious authority issued an official
Friday sermon attacking Sisters in Islam and urged the congregation to take
action against us. Global Movement of Moderates indeed.
In frustration, I wrote a column in 2011 on whose
voice should prevail in this country. Those who perpetually saw race and
religion under threat and demanded that every person who believed, thought,
behaved, dressed, acted, opined differently should be "fixed" through
many state sanctioned operations - boot camps, rehabilitation camps, punished
under the Internal Security Act, the Sedition Act, the Official Secrets Act,
the Printing Presses and Publications Act, the Syariah Criminal Offences Act,
or just denounced and demonised as enemies and traitors of race, religion and
country?
Or those who envision a democratic and just future,
where rights are recognised on the basis of citizenship rather than just race,
religion, or sex.
The choice was obvious to most of us, the good
citizens of Malaysia who loved this country, and who were determined to be
resilient, resourceful, and open minded to face the challenges and realities of
the 21st century.
The same old script
I was totally frustrated by the endless
manufacturing of many more new threats. From the innocuous fun of poco-poco to the relativism of post-modernism,
from calling Muslims opposed to UMNO and PAS unification as "pengkhianat
Islam" (traitors of Islam) to accusing Christians of plotting to turn
Malaysia into a Christian state! All these of course adding to the existing
long list of threats that included pluralism, liberalism, feminism, secularism,
kongsi raya, open house, tomboys, yoga...
It was hard to understand why these same actors
were trotting out the same old script that cost the Barisan Nasional government
so dearly in 2008. It's like as if nobody had learnt any lessons from that
political tsunami. Since attacking liberal Muslims and ungrateful Chinese did
not work in 2008, they amended the script to add Christians and even the passé
Communists. Why would an unpopular political party create more enemies, instead
of making friends?
And to be sure they added the promise of the Hudud
law and its grim serving of chopped off Muslim hands and feet, stoning to
death, crucifixion! What kind of future is that? "It's ok to implement the
Hudud law because it doesn't affect non-Muslims." So it's ok for Muslims
to be brutalised? "Non-Muslims should shut up because it doesn't affect
them." But they are Malaysian citizens who have every right to speak up on
laws that allow for brutal and inhumane punishments against their fellow
citizens, the majority population to boot. "Muslims who are not experts on
Islam should shut up". Then please take religion out of the public sphere
and make it private between us and God.
By 2012, a desperate Umno, which for two decades
under Mahathir's rule had been consistently opposed to the Hudud law, embraced
it as its own. One state assemblyman in Johor proudly proclaimed that the Umno
Hudud would be superior to the PAS Hudud as it would apply to all citizens,
Muslims and non-Muslims! And other Umno leaders and entities in quick
succession echoed the call, lest their piety be questioned. And they stoked the
debate further by trying to portray the upcoming general elections as a choice
between those who wanted the Hudud and the Islamic state and those against.
I wrote then that the choice before us was not
between Islam and secularism, not between Hudud law and civil law, not between
tradition and modernity. Those were false dichotomies created to divide us. The
choice before us was between democracy and despotism, between good governance
and corruption, between equality and discrimination, between social justice and
inequity.
The Umno/Perkasa/Utusan Malaysia nexus and its
orchestrated battle cry of "Malays and Islam under threat" stoked
Malay anxiety - enough to win Umno support and make a nine seat gain in the
2013 general elections. Malays, who saw Umno as its protector, bought into the
emotive appeal that their special rights would be eroded by a Pakatan coalition
that stood for affirmative action based on need, rather than race, and Ketuanan Rakyat rather than Ketuanan Melayu.
But the very political strategy that won Umno
support in the rural areas and among some segments of the Malay community, cost
Barisan support among the Chinese, Indians and Malays in urban and semi-urban
areas. For the first time, Barisan won the national elections with less than
50% of the popular vote.
The demands for reformasi that began in 1999 with the sacking
and mistreatment of Anwar Ibrahim was steaming ahead. Barisan popular votes
went down by 10% then and Umno and Barisan were saved by support from the Chinese,
many of whom were spooked by reformasi in Indonesia. 2004 was just a blip
in the downward slide with excitement over promises of change by a new Prime
Minister. Performing from bad to worse in two successive general elections was
unprecedented.
There were yet more calls for change. This time the
then deputy prime minister warned Umno members to "change or be
dead". But no one was listening. Some Umno leaders continued to blame
others for their failures and shortcomings. And this time they told those who
disagreed with them to leave the country. In the past, the retort used to be
vote us out if you don't agree, but by 2013 that was too painfully close to the
truth to even utter.
At the Umno general assembly that year, the debate,
in content and tone, did not provide voters with any indication or hope that
Umno was capable of change to win back the support it had lost in two
successive elections.
The de rigueur threats were made yet again - from
"liberalism, pluralism and secularism", to threats from people who
supposedly attacked "Islam, the Sultans, the national language, the
NEP" all rolled in one breath, and threats from oh, those forever
ungrateful Chinese. And then, of course, the same old demands for more handouts
and economic assistance for the Malays. And nary a curious squeak as to why a
Malay dominated government that has implemented affirmative action policies for
over 40 years, with billions spent on bumiputra empowerment and economic
advancement plus dozens of accompanying policy instruments, have still failed
to address the needs of those left behind and build the resilient commercial
and industrial community as envisaged.
Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, the party deputy
president, gave a dire warning in his closing speech - that just a 2% swing in
votes will cost Barisan to lose power.
Forty-four of the 133 Parliamentary seats Barisan
held were regarded as "grey" seats where the party had won by a mere
majority of between 0.1 and 5.9%. Without new initiatives to appeal to the
electorate, Barisan would be in a "precarious position", he warned.
I met a few Umno leaders who were at that general
assembly who said they cringed listening to the speeches and the non-debates.
They felt they were in a sinking ship.
Then why didn't you and people like you in Umno
speak out, I asked.
One said, "Are you kidding me. I speak out, I
turn my back, no one is behind me."
Another said, "I speak out, they will send the
income tax guys knocking on my door at 3am."
The dinosaur was truly paralysed and rotten to the
core. Malaysia has changed, more and more Malays were changing, but Umno
remained trapped in a dance hall, partying to its own music, oblivious that
extinction was near.
In July 2015, I wrote a column, feeling choked and
suffocated that this country and its rakyat were being crushed and pummelled by
wrecking balls. The wrecking ball of race and religion, of insatiable greed, of
desperation to stay in power, of never-ending sense of entitlements, of
unpunished crimes and abuses, of ideology over rational thinking, justice, and
fair play. These concerns were nothing new. What was new was the breathtaking
scale, the endlessness of it all, and the shamelessness with which the
perpetrators displayed their unscrupulous, destructive and criminal behaviour,
in words and deeds.
The 1MDB scandal had broken. We began to live in an
Orwellian world where bad was good and good was bad, where those who revealed
abuses and scandals were detained, questioned, prevented from travelling,
charged in court, sacked from their positions, while those accused proclaimed
their innocence and carried on unimpeached, and buttressed to remain in power.
By this time, I felt Umno was committing hara-kiri.
It added yet more mind-boggling threats - "national security" and
"parliamentary democracy" it seemed were now under threat as more and
more damning evidence of kleptomaniac behaviour at the very top was revealed.
To continue to talk about it posed a threat to the stability of the ruling
party and therefore a threat to democracy and national security! What a mind
leap we were supposed to exercise to believe in this Orwellian construction of
truth.
I never understood why Umno leaders or all the
Barisan MPs still could not see that their rule was over. If the prime minister
continued to lead the party, they would lose GE14. Didn't they consider working
together to put pressure on him to step down in order to save the party and the
country? Didn't they consider working together with the Opposition MPs to mount
a no-confidence motion in Parliament? It was staggering that a Prime Minister
could ever accept RM2.6 billion dollars into his personal account - and still
remain in office. It was as simple as that.
But too many on the Umno bandwagon remained dazzled
by the millions that had been dispensed to them and the many more millions that
they could still make in power. So right up to May 9, they believed they would
still obtain a handsome victory at the polls. The unthinkable, they thought,
could not happen with the money spent, the gerrymandering and malapportionment,
the mid-week polling day, the mainstream media on their side, the threat of
arrests under the fake news law, the threat of an emergency under the new
national security act.
But we Malaysians have had enough. The promise of
change and the reality that it could happen was electrifying as a 92-year-old
indefatigable former Prime Minister stomped the country to convince enough of
those who were scared of change that they would be in good hands with him at
the helm. My friends and I knew this was the best chance to overthrow a party
that had been in power since independence day. For the first time ever, we
collected money to donate to candidates of our choice. Many of us in the
women's movement volunteered for Maria Chin, raised funds, managed her Bilik
Gerakan, helped with her communications, outreach, worked as PACAs, pounded the
streets at markets and neighbourhoods, and trudged up and down low-cost flats,
to reach out to the voters in Petaling Jaya. We headed to as many ceramahs as
possible in the Klang Valley. The idealistic fresh faces standing on stage
promising a new democratic, inclusive, and clean government gave us hope.
While so many friends were still too scared to
predict the outcome for certain, I just felt it in my old bones that Pakatan
Harapan would sweep into power.
Umno has no one else to blame but itself that
Malays no longer see it as the protector of the race and religion. In swinging
to the far right and representing the interest of only one segment of the Malay
community, it lost the faith of many others that it was able to steer a
moderate path to maintain Malaysia's political stability and prosperity in
collaborative partnership with others.
Today, the sun is shining again and I am so, so
proud to be Malaysian. We bucked the global trend of elections bringing into
power conservative and right wing parties. My friends abroad were thrilled that
we Malaysians did it! - Through peaceful elections and a relatively smooth
democratic transition to a new ruling coalition that stands for reform. If in
the recent past they had asked me in despair what went wrong with Malaysia as
it became known for the biggest kleptocracy scandal ever, this time with envy,
they asked, "How did you do it?"
The Malaysian electorate has for decades wanted to
see change in the way this country is governed, how law is applied, how
politics is conducted and how business is run. The long standing public demand
for greater transparency and accountability, independence of the judiciary, a
free and responsible press, free and fair elections, a more just and open
political system, an end to police abuse and misuse of power, and an end to the
intricate web of business and politics that bred cronyism and corruption, that
for decades remained unmet, now seem possible.
For Pakatan Harapan, winning was the easy job. The
hard work now begins. And I have no doubt that the rakyat will throw them out
if they fail to deliver on their promises. For this election victory is as much
ours as it is theirs. It was us who led the demand for change for decades, and
we never gave up. We delivered the victory to Pakatan. We all feel very
precious about what we have achieved and we will remain vigilant. And we will
not be cowed into silence.
Today, we live in hope and optimism that all good
things are possible in this new Malaysia. Salam Malaysia Baru, my beloved.
