Regime Resilience in Malaysia and Singapore

The following sections are included:

• Contents
• List of Acronyms
• Acknowledgments

In July 2015 the Wall Street Journal revealed that nearly $700 million dollars from the Malaysian government-owned development company 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) had been deposited into Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s personal bank account. Subsequent revelations pointed to $4.5 billion in questionable allocations, as part of one of the worst money-laundering scandals in history, in a company with nearly $11 billion in debt that was founded on a Malaysian government guarantee. Over two years later, Najib remains in office, having appeared to weather the allegations of corruption and kleptocracy. Within Malaysia he has been cleared of any wrong-doing, and while internationally 1MDB legal proceedings remain on-going, Najib remains in power. In fact, his coalition, Barisan Nasional (BN, National Front), seems poised to win re-election in 2018, returning his party, United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), to power. While Brazil and South Korea have seen their leaders jailed for corruption, in Malaysia the leader survives, and arguably has emerged in greater control of the levers of executive power than before the scandal. Najib has shown himself to be of the political resilience mould long honed by his political party — at least so far…

Four years have passed since the historic May 2013 polls where the incumbent Barisan Nasional (BN or National Front) coalition held onto power. Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak received a maiden mandate, a weak one clouded with legitimacy issues in a seriously flawed electoral process, but one nevertheless that left power in the hands of the party that has governed the country for over 60 years. He is Malaysia’s sixth elected premier, who subsequently received the blessing of his party in an uncontested election for the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) presidency in October 2013. He is now Malaysia’s third longest serving leader. On the surface, it would appear that there is more of the same — the status quo remains in which the country is deeply politically polarised and the world’s longest serving political coalition remains in power. Real challenges of governance from addressing corruption and multi-ethnic inclusion to improving economic development and providing quality services remain. A closer look, however, reveals that GE 2013 marked some fundamental shifts in the national political landscape that profoundly shaped political dynamics. On many levels, GE 2013 brought change, although these changes do not necessarily promise a strengthened, more inclusive and democratic polity, at least in the short term…

Malaysia’s first nation-wide election, begun in 1969, and its most recent, on 5 May 2013, have many things in common. Similar government and opposition parties battled each other. The geographical distribution of support for the two sides was much the same. And in both elections the ruling party lost the popular vote, and failed to gain a two-thirds majority. These similarities notwithstanding, the outcomes were substantially different. The ruling party did much better in 1969 than in 2013…

Barisan Nasional (BN) emerged from GE13 even weaker than before (with 133 of 222 seats, as against 140 at GE12 in 2008). But United Malays National Organization (UMNO) domination of the governing BN coalition, of Parliament, public policy and national life generally was enhanced…

On the Sunday night of 30 August 2015 the neon-lit streets around Dataran Merdeka (Independence Square) in the heart of Kuala Lumpur city, usually ghostly empty at this time of day, shone a golden amber; its normal haunted pallor harkened to the tired colonial institutions made monumental by the adjacent majestic high court building and the secular laws it enshrined that the British left behind. But this night was special: the satellite photograph reflects the gleaming streets glowing in the dark. A closer look shows that the golden stream consists of hundreds and thousands of tiny yellow specks that are actually Malaysian protestors clothed in banned yellow T-shirts. It is nearing the end of the 34-hour mass demonstration that the organisers of Bersih (Coalition for Free and Fair Elections) called and the crowd is as tired as the secular laws that have been sorely tested that they are out here to uphold. They are tired but euphoric because there is nothing as political as gathering on the streets en masse to make one’s collective voice heard. In that sense, they embody Hannah Arendt’s definition of politics and power. For Arendt, power is something that ordinary people have the potential to produce, since action is part of the human condition of being born. Politics, on the other hand, is ‘the organisation or constitution of the power people have when they come together as talking and acting beings’. The space that enables them to do so — to share their opinions and potentially bring their ideas into a compromise with those of others during the process of discussion and debate — is the public sphere. This can take shape on social media and online forums, and offline, for example, as public street demonstrations like Bersih’s…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Evidence of the Gap
• Key Gaps between the Government and the Public
• Explaining the Gaps between the Government and the Public, including Diverging Expectations
• Government‘s Response to the Perception and Reality of the Widening Gap with the Public
• The 2015 General Election and Regime Resilience
• Conclusion

Following the 2011 electoral backlash against the People’s Action Party’s (PAP), when it suffered from the worst electoral performance since independence in 1965, a humbled Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong assured Singaporeans that there would be a more open and transparent style of governance, an acceptance of different views and closer engagement with the populace. At the post-election Cabinet swearing-in, Lee affirmed the government’s commitment to ‘evolve in tandem with our society and our people … accommodate more views, more debate and participation’. In his National Day Rally speech in August 2011, Lee appealed to Singaporeans to join him in writing the ‘next chapter’ of the Singapore Story as the citystate embarked on a process of re-invention. To facilitate this process, a ‘Singapore Conversation’ forum distilled public concerns and aspirations. Lee also guaranteed Singaporeans that the government would do more to help lower- and middle-income Singaporeans own homes — in recognition that cost-of-living pressures, soaring real estate market, slowing of social mobility, wage stagnation, infrastructure bottlenecks and labour market pressures, owing in large part to the influx of foreign workers and migrants, contributed to the electoral backlash against the PAP. Put simply, the PAP government promised to re-calibrate economic and social policies to facilitate ‘growth with equity’. The government also promised greater political space and the promotion of transparent governance. The essay examines the extent to which the PAP government has delivered on these post-2011 promises of social policy and political reforms and the forces driving and inhibiting the PAP’s reform agenda.

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Talking and Listening: Communication 101
• Our Singapore Conversation
• General Election 2015: Pragmatic Communication
• Communication Case Study: Bukit Batok By-Election 2016
• Conclusion

The changing nature of communications technologies, including the increasingly dynamic capacity of the Internet to connect and transmit information, has contributed to rapid changes around the world. ‘New media’ technologies have been utilised to organise mass rallies, assist with clean elections and have generally provided a space for greater freedom of opinion and expression on a variety of issues and events throughout the region. At the same time, digitalisation of media content has seen existing media business models thrown into disarray. As Internet penetration increases, newspaper circulation generally declines. From the deterioration of quality journalism in democracies, to assisting the so-called ‘social media revolutions’ in authoritarian regimes, the impact of digital media is a hotly debated topic amongst scholars and the general public. In 2016 Thomas Carothers from the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace articulated what is now a crucial issue for many scholars of media and democracy. He described our current times as a ‘paradox’ and argued: The first fifteen years of this century have been a time of astonishing advances in communications and information technology, including digitalization, mass-accessible video platforms, smart phone, social media, billions of people gaining internet access, and much else. These revolutionary changes all imply a profound empowerment of individuals through exponentially greater access to information, tremendous ease of communication and data-sharing, and formidable tools for networking. Yet despite these changes, democracy — a political system based on the idea of the empowerment of individuals — has in these same years become stagnant in the world. The number of democracies today is basically no greater than it was at the start of the century. Many democracies, both long-established ones and newer ones, are experiencing serious institutional debilities and weak public confidence. …

On 15 September 2011 Najib bin Abdul Razak, leader of the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and Prime Minister of Malaysia, announced an ambitious legal transformation programme to convert Malaysia into ‘a functional and inclusive democracy where public peace and prosperity is preserved in accordance with the supremacy of the constitution, the rule of law and respect for basic human rights and individual rights’. Accordingly, in December 2011 the Dewan Rakyat (Lower or Peoples’ Chamber of Parliament) passed a motion to annul the Proclamations of Emergency of 1966, 1969 and 1977. Over the following months the Parliament passed bills to repeal or amend several of the so-called ‘draconian laws’ that for decades had curtailed Malaysians’ enjoyment of their constitutionally guaranteed civil and political rights and freedoms, such as the Police Act 1967 (used to limit freedom of assembly), the University and University Colleges Act 1971 (used to prevent students participating in politics) and the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 (used to muzzle the press). At the same time, Najib specifically promised to repeal the repressive Sedition Act 1948 and replace it with a more benign-sounding ‘National Harmony Act’. He even convened a National Unity Consultative Council to assist…

Petroleum revenues substantially finance public services and underscore regime legitimacy in Malaysia. The gradual reduction of the fuel subsidy from 2008 has accelerated inflation and reduced support for the ruling coalition. The federal government gets most of its petroleum revenues in opposition-controlled states and states with strategic parliamentary representation in the ruling coalition, making the contestation over petroleum highly political. The ruling coalition has used revenues directly to garner support through patronage and negotiations, including during elections. Petroleum revenue transparency is important as petroleum resources contribute substantially to government revenues, although revenue funds have declined since the 2013 election. Although the share of the petroleum contribution in the government revenue has been decreasing, the resource will continue to feature in the political economy. Petroleum resources earn revenue in many ways beyond the sale of oil and gas. Downstream production activities generate economic growth and stimulate supportive activities. The federal ruling coalition controls and manages petroleum resources to its advantage while the producing states are interested in petroleum-related revenues and benefits from petroleum-related activities. This resource thus plays a major role in shaping Malaysian politics.

Malaysia’s 13^th general election on 5 May 2013 was waged on a number of heatedly contested grounds. As expected, Pakatan Rakyat’s (PR) attempt to unseat the government in power was based on a potent mixture of political corruption, abuse of power, lack of accountability and waste of public funds. In the face of stinging accusations, Barisan Nasional (BN) leaders had little response except to issue flat denials and attempt to sue and harass their detractors. BN’s case for re-election, as in its manifesto, hinged on two bases: one, that it had provided political and social stability and, two, that it had delivered economic growth and people-centred development. PR was able to point out the flaws by highlighting the poor conditions of the vulnerable working and underclasses, although, try as it might, PR was unable to create its own set of coherent economic policies…

On 8 March 2008 (GE 2008) Malaysians unexpectedly delivered a stunning blow to Malaysia’s long-standing ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional (BN), at the twelfth general election. Although it won the election, BN lost its psychologically important two-thirds majority in parliament which allows it to change the Federal Constitution at will. The blow was all the more devastating as the Anwar Ibrahim-led informal coalition of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR/People’s Justice Party), Democratic Action Party (DAP) and Parti Se-Islam Malaysia (PAS/Pan Islamic Party of Malaysia) managed to form state governments in almost all states in the developed western parts of Peninsular Malaysia with citizens of the two most industrialised states (Selangor and Penang), as well as Kedah and Perak, joining Kelantan (the poorest state on the peninsula) on the opposition side. BN was also wiped out almost entirely from the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur with the opposition winning ten of the eleven parliamentary seats. All of these suggest that urbanites had deserted BN in droves. BN, nevertheless, was formidable in its birthplace, the state of Johor, and in the two resource-rich, but poor, states of Sabah and Sarawak while winning the states of Perlis, Negeri Sembilan, Malacca, Pahang and Terengganu with differing margins…

The last decade saw the slowest economic growth in Singapore for the last five decades. In the first two decades after Singapore separated from Malaysia (1965–85) economic growth was 9.2 per cent per annum. In the next decade, 1986–97, growth was 8.6 per cent. In the fourth decade, 1998–2008, growth was 5.0 per cent per annum. In 2008, growth was 1.4 per cent, and 2009 growth was negative at -2.0 per cent. The 2010 budget was the first in a series of ‘productivity budgets’…

The following sections are included:

• Beyond psephology
• Political literacy: a concept and practice
• Modern electoral politics: An import
• Organising representation
• ‘Gladiatorism’ and the contest for the perception space
• Building political literacy

Malaysia is one of the world’s few remaining ‘hybrid’, or pseudo-democratic, regimes. Part of what made GE13 so pivotal was that an opposition coalition formed with sufficient ballast truly to take on the perennially-dominant Barisan Nasional (BN). Unlike in neighbouring states such as Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, strongly institutionalised political parties, not just strong personalities, fundamentally shape Malaysian political contests and loyalties. That pattern has not changed. The key structural innovation of GE13 was the seemingly sustainable development of a two-coalition system. I focus here rather narrowly on that system, sketching out very briefly why I see this development as occurring, how these parties and coalitions function, and the implications for specifically electoral contests and, more broadly, political participation…

There is a popular belief that the source of the problem of authoritarian rule in Malaysia is fundamentally political: the problem of authoritarianism derives from ethnocratic rule — where the role of the state is to defend the ethical and political identity of the state as principally a Malay-Muslim state by reference to the doctrine of ‘Malay dominance’. The popularity of this belief explains why the call for ‘reformasi’ has been so popular in Malaysia as opposition parties claim that the problem of authoritarianism can be overcome if officials subscribe to alternative modes of political rule. In this paper I argue that critics of ethnocratic rule under the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) government fail to appreciate that there is a distinctly legal or jurisprudential basis to ethnocratic and authoritarian rule in an inherently authoritarian philosophy of law called ‘the culture of domination’. The culture of domination involves the use of law as a tool of domination over citizens to construct a stable legal-political order governed by an aspiration to ‘social unity’. My worry is that the popular criticism of ethnocratic rule also reflects the features of the culture of domination. Therefore, critics risk reproducing the dangers of authoritarianism, discrimination and general hostility to democracy associated with such rule. To overcome this problem, they need a different conception of social stability as rooted in a different notion of ‘social compromise’ and an attendant view of law more amenable to the ideal of democracy. Fortunately, the basis for this view is already immanent in Malaysia’s wider political culture and offers an attractive interpretation of the Malaysian Constitution.

For over half a century since decolonisation, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and the People’s Action Party (PAP) have sustained single-party-dominant regimes in Malaysia and Singapore respectively. September 2015 witnessed PAP taking 83 of the 89 elected seats in Singapore’s twelfth parliamentary election since independence in 1965. Its share of the vote increased to 70 per cent after having fallen to a historically low 60 per cent in September 2011. Meanwhile, in May 2013, the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional (BN), in coalition with smaller Indian and Chinese ethnic parties, won 133 of the 222 seats in the federal parliament (Dewan Rakyat) in the thirteenth federal election held in Malaysia since independence. Despite opposition challenges of varying seriousness to the incumbent party, at no time over this electoral period since 1963 has either PAP or UMNO lost control of the political process or the institutions of these post-colonial states…

This collection shows that the way PAP and UMNO maintain power has changed and is evolving. Contemporary party leaders Lee Hsien Loong and Najib Tun Razak are adopting new strategies and, in the process, transforming political conditions. This raises questions about what this means for both our understanding of these countries and their political futures.

The following sections are included:

• Bibliography
• About the Authors