Uphill task for ruling coalition

Will it be 13th time lucky for Malaysia’s opposition? Malaysians vote on Sunday in the 13th general elections since the country gained independence in 1957. This time, just for novelty value, there is actually some doubt about who will win.

Ever since independence, Malaysia has been run by a coalition dominated by the United Malays National Organisation, which represents the interests of ethnic Malays, who make up 60 per cent of the 29 million population. (Ethnic Chinese form 24 per cent, Indians 8 per cent and there are an estimated three million migrant workers.) Until now, the arrangement has gone roughly like this. Chinese and Indian communities, who have historically been better off, have allowed the government to hand out preferential treatment to Malays. In return, they are left alone to prosper in a half-decently run economy. Umno administers the system through a policy of affirmative action known as bhumiputra, which literally means “sons of the soil”. The system provides Malays with preferential access to everything — from schools, universities and civil service jobs to lucrative government contracts and even car imports. Public companies must reserve part of their share allocation for indigenous Malays, who also get a discount on housing.

All this can be a bit galling for the Chinese and Indian minorities, an estimated one million of whom have fanned out abroad in search of better education and jobs. Still, two things have kept Umno (and its coalition partners) in power. One is the magic of incumbency. After more than 50 years of one-party rule, the line between government and the state has blurred. Electoral constituencies have been gerrymandered to give disproportionate voting power to rural areas where Umno and its allies are strongest. Large sections of the media are controlled and freedom of speech has been curtailed with harsh sedition laws. The Internal Security Act, which has recently been replaced, allowed for detention without trial. Anwar Ebrahim, a government defector who now leads the opposition, was jailed for six years on what look like trumped-up charges of transgressing the country’s archaic sodomy laws.

Aside from repression, Umno has prospered because Malaysia has not been a demonstrable failure. It has even been possible to call it a success. Its brand of Islam is moderate. There has been no repeat of the 1969 race riots, a prelude to bhumiputra affirmative action, when many ethnic Chinese were killed.

Economically, the country has not fared too badly. Once known as a “tiger cub economy” — with hopes to follow in the paw-steps of tigers such as South Korea — it grew very quickly in the 1970s and more or less respectably after that. Today, it has an average per capita income of $10,300 (Dh37,883). In the cities, many Malays have joined the middle class, though they do less well in the countryside.

Yet, the arrangement is fracturing. In the last election, in 2008, the Umno-led coalition got the shock of its life when it lost its two-thirds parliamentary majority for the first time. There are several causes. Voters are increasingly urban and sophisticated. This year alone, 2.3 million young people, many of them internet-savvy and less wedded to tradition, will join the electorate. There is huge anger at entrenched corruption and buddy-buddy crony capitalism. Many Malaysians have come to the conclusion, almost certainly correct, that affirmative action has outlived its purpose and is holding the country back.

There is increasing recognition, too, that economic performance is not all it may have been. It could have done worse, as in the Philippines. But equally it could have done much better, as in, say, Taiwan, where per capita income is at least double that of Malaysia. Manufacturing exports have stalled for years and attempts to build an indigenous steel and car industry have flopped. It has been easier for cosseted businessmen to jostle for lucrative state contracts than to compete internationally.

There are then two broad issues at stake in Sunday’s election. The first is the simple national exercise of transferring power from one party to another without provoking a crisis. Any self-proclaimed democracy ought to be able to manage that. Much of the region, from Indonesia to South Korea and from India to Taiwan, has done it. Malaysia has not.

The second is the need to roll back a system based on race and patronage in favour of one rooted in competition and merit. Anwar, associated with the system when he was in government, says that is what’s needed. (Even Umno has been watering down bhumiputra provisions.) However, Anwar’s broad-based coalition is vague about economic policy. It also includes an Islamic party that advocates the implementation of sharia. Many who vote for the opposition will do so not because they have great faith in its policies, but in the spirit of “anyone-but-Umno”.

The election is likely to be decided by a thin margin of votes, bought or otherwise. The benefits of incumbency may still help Umno scrape through. Yet it is hard to escape the conclusion that Malaysia is long overdue a change. The question, far from resolved, is just what that change might look like.

— Financial Times