Teo’s Spin on Malaysian ‘Democracy’

October 15, 2010

Teo’s Spin on Malaysian ‘Democracy’: Let us debate him

By John Teo at www.nst.com.my

DOES communalism inform our democratic practice or is it more the other way round; that our democracy churns out the worst in us all and makes us even more communal-minded than we ordinarily would be?The question bounced in my head after reading what Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew said recently. In his eulogy for his departed wife, Lee said that when the Malaysia idea was first bandied about, his wife said that the politics in Malaya then was communal-based. Lee’s People’s Action Party (PAP) was, of course, striving to be multiracial and he was hoping the new Malaysia would follow suit. 

Lee eulogised that his wife was right when Singapore separated from Malaysia two years after it was formed, largely because Lee’s foray into national Malaysian politics made Singapore too hot for Kuala Lumpur to handle.

But that was hardly the end of it. In an interview published several weeks earlier in the New York Times, the Singapore elder statesman had this to say about younger Singaporeans who worry him: “The kind of open political combat they demand would inevitably open the door to race-based politics and our society will be ripped apart.”

It is, however, generally accepted that Malaysia today is politically more open than Singapore — perhaps more “chaotic” in Singapore’s eyes. By the logic of Lee’s own words, we are, therefore, necessarily more “race-based” in our politics and our society will inevitably be ripped apart.

Separation was more than 40 years ago and Malaysia today remains in one piece. Perhaps Lee’s greatest fear may still turn out true. Like Singapore, our society faces relentless pressure for greater political opening. With greater opening, our politics will — based on Lee’s logic — become even more race-based as centrifugal forces gather further momentum.

The evidence on the ground here tends to support Lee’s political theorising. The avowedly multiracial Parti Keadilan Rakyat — the backbone of the Pakatan Rakyat — is struggling while its more overtly communal coalition partners, DAP and Pas, look to be on more solid ground.

In the Barisan Nasional, both the multiracial Gerakan and Sarawak United People’s Party seem to be foundering. In Sabah, the one-time ruling party — the multiracial Parti Bersatu Sabah — lost power and spawned both Kadazan-based and Chinese-based splinters and UMNO’s entry into state politics.

Ironically, although they are often more political adversaries than friends, both Lee and former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad may share the same basic political philosophy. We may one day look back to the period of Tun Dr Mahathir’s iron-grip rule as a golden age of multiracial harmony and development in the country that will never again be experienced.

As Lee frets over what happens to Singapore after he leaves the scene, Dr Mahathir is positively askance over the state of the nation since he left office and his hand-picked successor, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, ushered in a new era of greater political opening.

However, on closer inspection, Lee’s recent comments about both Malaysia’s and Singapore’s politics may be needlessly pessimistic and in fact rather self-serving.

The rather extreme right-ward tilt of politics in both America and Europe recently, with an increasingly anti-foreign and racist colour to it, is an altogether new phenomenon although democracy has been rooted there for a long time. The serious encroachment of usually fringe politics into the American and European mainstream seems more a function of unusually bad economic times than the practice of open democratic politics.

It is a tribute to our open political culture and our unique multiracialism (as opposed to Singapore’s muliculturalism since political and economic power there is unambiguously with the majority population group) that we have continuously grown economically without the need for Singapore’s rather excessive political conformism.

Yes, Singapore has grown even more impressively than we have but being a mere city-state has its clear advantages and moreover, its ethnic heterogeneity is actually a lot more homogeneous than officially hyped and in no way like our truly problematic heterogeneity.

Malaysians seem to care more about their more open political space. We may suffer the resulting consequences of not being as economically progressive and dynamic as Singapore is but who is to argue about that. We evidently prefer to take our democracy more seriously and that’s that.

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