Anwar Expects Further Crackdowns Under New Malaysian Leader

BANGKOK – Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on Monday again warned that the imminent rise to power of rival Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak will likely provoke a further crackdown on popular dissent in the economically struggling Southeast Asian nation.

Speaking in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in Bangkok, Mr. Anwar said: “I think we can clearly see a trend developing. Already we can see what Mr. Najib’s rule will be like.”

In the past week, Malaysian authorities have shut down two opposition-run newspapers, effectively preventing them from reporting on the run-up to three by-elections on April 7, which will provide a partial test of Mr. Najib’s national support. On Monday, policed seized DVDs the opposition was using as part of its election campaign, and last week riot police used teargas and water cannons to prevent Mr. Anwar from addressing his supporters.

Mr. Najib will likely become premier in the next few days after current Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi hands in his resignation to Malaysia’s king on April 2. Already a war of words is emerging with Mr. Anwar, arguably Mr. Najib’s most potent foe after the opposition alliance broke the ruling National Front’s customary two-thirds majority in elections last year.

Their deepening struggle threatens to overshadow the Malaysian government’s efforts to offset its steepest recession since the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s. Some economists predict the economy could contract by as much as 4% this year.

The government this month unveiled a $16.7 billion stimulus package to be spent over the next two years.

In addition to the newspaper closures — which will be in effect for three months, according to the Malaysian government — several senior members of the ruling National Front coalition have also accused Mr. Anwar of betraying his race for supporting the scrapping of Malaysia’s decades-old affirmative action policies which were introduced to ensure economic and political power for Malaysia’s majority Muslim ethnic Malay population.

Mr. Anwar is a Malay, but argues that the New Economic Policy, as the affirmative action program is known, has rendered Malaysia’s economy uncompetitive and will likely limit the country’s recovery from the global slump.

“What I argue is that we should help all the races equally so we can take favoritism out of the equation,” Mr. Anwar said. “I think we’re going to hear more about racial issues if the economic situation continues.”

In addition, Malaysian riot police have forcibly broken up two opposition rallies in the past several days, raising concerns among political analysts that Mr. Najib intends to steer Malaysia back to the authoritarian ways espoused by its former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who ruled Malaysia for 22 years before stepping down in 2003.

Mr. Anwar has been distracted by legal issues after a former aide accused him of sodomy, which is a crime in Malaysia. Mr. Anwar, who was convicted and then acquitted of the same crime after challenging the government in 1998, says he is innocent and his being framed by Mr. Najib’s operatives.

Mr. Najib has repeatedly said he has nothing to do with Mr. Anwar’s legal troubles. On Saturday he denied that he was stamping out opposition dissent.

Courtesy: AnwarIbrahimBlog

A Mahathir redux expected with Najib

M. Taufiqurrahman dari DeKalb, Illinois

Nearly a decade after the start of a reform movement and at a time when one of its closest neighbors will soon have a free election for the third time, Malaysia remains where it was, if not worse, politically.

Barring some major catastrophe, very soon Malaysia’s hegemonic coalition the National Front (Barisan National) will have anointed Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak as the country’s new prime minister, replacing Abdullah Ahmad Badawi who has been in power for the past six years, following Mahathir Mohamad’s resignation in 2003.

Foreign media and those in the opposition have buzzed about the alleged involvement of the prime-minister-in-waiting in the grisly murder of a Mongolian model, who knew about shady dealings involving Najib’s aide in a multi-billion defense contract.

But the scandal aside, Malaysians should be more worried about the return of the old-style authoritarianism of Mahathir Mohamad in the country, after the relatively benign rule of the laid-back Badawi.

If Najib’s recent overtures were of any indication, pro-democracy activists and the Malaysian people have reason to worry that it could be d*j* vu all over for them.

In spite of significant electoral gains, life has become very difficult for members of the opposition. Police have been deployed to bar supporters of opposition groups from attending political rallies. In the state of Perak, the police were deployed to block opposition lawmakers from entering the parliament building.

In the Perak imbroglio, the opposition movement learned the hard way about the persistence of the ugly nature of authoritarianism. The police, in spite of the privileges and immunities that he should have enjoyed, harassed Perak Assembly speaker V. Sivakumar of the People’s Alliance Party (Pakatan Rakyat).

Najib’s intolerance to criticism is also apparent in the decision on the suspension of an opposition parliament member who accused him of having links to the murder of the Mongolian model.

This is a repeat scene that borrows its script from Mahathir’s playbook, when the autocrat crushed any opposition movement that stood in the way of his efforts to modernize Malaysia. Mahathir consolidated Malaysian authoritarianism in the early 1980s when he started to push for high economic growth driven by state-led industrialization.

The economic growth could only be achieved by relegating democracy and human rights to the backburner. Especially when the state-led industrialization was threatened by the slump of commodity prices in the mid-1980s, Mahathir resorted to repressive measures with relative ease. When Razaleigh Hamzah challenged his leadership of UMNO in 1987, which was tantamount to control over state resources, Mahathir resorted to subverting independent institutions such as the judiciary, the police, parliament and the media.

And after six years of Badawi’s disastrous term - as indicated by UMNO’s reduced votes in the polls and states falling into opposition hands - there is little option for Najib but to resort to a heavy-handed approach to maintain the National Front dominance in Malaysian politics.

And now the emasculation of independent institutions is taking its toll on the Malaysian political system. The system is now rife with irregularities as indicated by the rise of Najib, the use of police, the judiciary and the bureaucracy to repress the opposition movement and the paralysis among others in the state government of Perak.

One politician from the opposition camp said it best. “At the rate things are going, we’re going to be a failed state within a decade,” Salehudin Hashim, secretary-general of the People’s Justice Party was quoted by the New York Times as saying.

There is also a more worrying development that under Najib, Malaysia would be more Islamist than it has been under Badawi.

Recently, Najib felt the need to emulate what Mahathir did early in his term, playing the Islam card. Concurrent with his state-led industrialization, Mahathir also enacted a massive Islamization program. The culmination of the effort was when, against the backdrop of the Sept. 11 attack, Mahathir declared Malaysia in 2001 an Islamic state.

Najib needs to reiterate his commitment to the Islamist cause. In a gathering of UMNO women, he urged Malays to return to Islamic teachings to face the current challenges. He told members of UMNO the universal values of Islam would lead Malaysian people to success and glory.

It seems for Najib nothing is broken and no fixing is needed in Malaysian politics.

Courtesy: AnwarIbrahimBlog

What Malaysians learnt from the Umno assembly

MARCH 29 – The talking is done and the dust has settled. A picture is emerging.

• Umno – The country’s most powerful party, is not to be underestimated. Sure, it does not have the vintage class of leaders in the mould of Tun Abdul Razak or Tun Dr Ismail and, despite the enlightened rhetoric of the past few days, the party will be mired in a quagmire of corruption and self-interest for a long time to come.

Still, it controls all the levers of power in Malaysia and on Wednesday and Thursday, delegates voted in a team of politicians who want – and know how to exercise – power. They will not readily give up political control.

In its day, Umno still owns an impressive election machinery. When they are not fighting each other, Umno politicians make fearsome adversaries, opponents who are adept at occupying the shady space between white and black.

With a new leader at the helm and the feel good factor flowing back into recesses where recently only despair and self-doubt resided, the Umno-led Barisan Nasional will be tough to beat in Bukit Selambau, Bukit Gantang and Batang Ai.

• Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak – Malaysians got a peek of what Najib is going to do for the first 100 days after he is sworn in as Prime Minister at 11am on April 3. He will seek to surprise.

On Saturday, he went further than any recent party president by saying that he was going to dismantle the archaic and abused electoral system which has seen 2,500 party delegates deciding the line-up of Umno leaders, and by convention, the country’s leaders.

He proposes that 60,000 branch and division members become the party’s electorate. Najib knows that he has little wriggle room. He cannot afford to tweak here and there.

If he is to silence BN’s critics and convince his army of doubters, he has to make an impact with every announcement. Expect his Cabinet line-up to contain at least 50 per cent new faces.

Whether this line-up, which will be unveiled in early April, captures the imagination of Malaysians who have grown promise-weary, will be another thing.

The Malaysian Insider understands that Najib is tapping top overseas talent to advise him on his first 100 days in office and has engaged the services of an international public relations outfit to help with the messaging.

• Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi – In October, several Supreme Council members cautioned Abdullah against defending his party president’s position, saying that with the strong groundswell against him, he may not obtain sufficient nominations to contest the top post.

His supporters argued otherwise. They told Abdullah that they had gone down to the branches and divisions and found out that the groundswell was artificial, manufactured by several Umno leaders who were driven by self-interest.

Several top Umno officials visited his home in Putrajaya with a game plan to defend the party president’s position. As Abdullah noted in his speech at the opening of the assembly, he could have defended his president’s position but chose not to, in the interest of party unity.

The election results on Wednesday and Thursday suggest that Abdullah’s aides and supporters were right when they said that the groundswell against him was manufactured.

New Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin, Wanita Umno chief Datuk Shahrizat Jalil and at least 16 of the 25 Supreme Council members are identified as those aligned with Abdullah.

Out in the cold was Datuk Rafidah Aziz who told Abdullah that she would suffer the same fate as former deputy prime minister Tun Ghafar Baba if he persisted and defended his party president’s position.

• Party under siege – It was no coincidence that delegates elected more vocal candidates to the Umno Supreme Council. Puad Zarkashi, Tajudin Rahman, Bung Mokhtar Radin, Noh Omar, Idris Haron, Jamaluddin Jarjis may not have the gravitas or finesse of other Umno politicians but they are fighters and are not afraid of getting into a scrap with Opposition leaders or non-governmental organisations.

Listening to Umno delegates, it is clear that they want the party to start pushing back hard against what they view as excessive demands by non-Malays.

And if Umno’s partners in BN also start mouthing off like the Opposition, they too should be mowed down.

• Reform, what reform? – They want more positions in government-linked companies, they want the party to control the government, they want the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to stop investigating corruption in Umno, they want Malaysians to stop challenging the institution of the Malay Rulers, they want non-Malays to stop using the word Allah, they want newspapers to stop calling the Opposition alliance Pakatan Rakyat, they want those appointed to the board of public universities to be Umno-friendly and they want Anwar Ibrahim corralled for promoting the concept of Ketuanan Rakyat and daring to put Chinese and Malays on the same platform as Malays. - MalaysianInsider

Umno struggles to stay relevant with new leaders

KUALA LUMPUR, March 26 — Malaysia's longtime ruling party is meeting to select a new crop of leaders after a series of electoral setbacks. But it faces a stiff challenge to reverse a rapid slide in popularity at a time when Malaysia's trade-dependent economy is sinking into recession.

At stake is the stability of a political order that has guided the multiracial country for five decades. Umno leads a coalition government that has delivered economic development but appears unable to tackle increasing racial tensions and calls for greater freedom.

At the four-day convention, which began on Tuesday, Umno officials have hammered a message of reform and renewal in order to win back voters. But a scandal over delegate vote-buying, which led to the disqualification of several candidates, has only added to the public perception of an organisation that is mired in graft and out of touch with ordinary voters.

Seizing on this weakness, opponents are turning up the heat on Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who is due to replace outgoing Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi next week. By convention, the leader of Umno becomes the country's prime minister. Najib is running uncontested for the post, replacing Abdullah.

Earlier this month, an opposition lawmaker was suspended from Parliament after he accused Najib of involvement in a sensational 2006 murder of a Mongolian interpreter. Najib has denied any link to the case, which has snared two of his bodyguards, who are currently on trial for the murder.

A close aide to Najib, who admitted having an affair with the interpreter, was acquitted last year in the same trial. Opposition activists warn that Najib is trying to silence his critics by using repressive laws, adding to tensions. This week authorities suspended publication of two opposition newspapers and sent riot police to break up rallies led by opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

Last year, a blogger was jailed for two months after airing more allegations over Najib's link to the 2006 murder case. Supporters of Najib, the British-educated scion of a political dynasty, argue that Malaysia lost focus under Abdullah, a soft-spoken Muslim scholar, and requires more forceful leadership, particularly in an economic downturn.

The government has forecast that the economy, which relies on natural resources and manufacturing, could shrink this year by 1 per cent. But it's unclear if a more authoritarian hand would stay the challenge to Umno's grip on power.

Instead, it could undermine any attempt to remake the party and reach out to young voters, who are plugged into Malaysia's lively blogosphere, bypassing stodgy pro-government media. "With new media, it's a more level playing field, in terms of information to the public. While there are factions of the party (Umno) that favour a return to more hardline ways, it's going to be more difficult," says Ibrahim Suffian, who runs Merdeka Centre, an independent polling group in Kuala Lumpur.

A recent poll by the group found that only 19 per cent of the majority-Malay population wanted Umno to lead the country. Most respondents said the party's biggest problem was corruption. This week's convention comes one year after the ruling coalition saw its majority slashed in Parliament. Two subsequent by-election wins have bolstered the opposition's claim of a momentum for change. Three more by-elections are scheduled for April 7, affording a quick test of the government's popularity.

Under Umno's rules, prospective leaders need to secure endorsements from division chiefs, who owe their loyalty to the existing leadership. Only one other candidate, former Finance Minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, tried to run this time, but failed to get enough nominations, leaving Najib the only name on the ballot.

This does a disservice to the party at a time when it needs to ask itself tough questions, says Clive Kessler, a sociologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, who studies Malaysian politics. He says the party's inertia seems almost impervious to change. "The only way possibly to reform Umno is to get in someone with real stature who has not been part of the system for the last 15 to 20 years," he says. — Christian Science Monitor