The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion
The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion |
| Posted: 20 Jul 2011 05:40 PM PDT JULY 21 — According to the data available, in the past 12 general elections since the Federation of Malaya (then Malaysia) gained independence, the count of popular votes given to the opposition was never less than one-third of the total vote count. In fact, the percentage of votes given to the opposition has been less than 40 per cent only four times out of the 12. The distribution of seats in Parliament has not, of course, reflected this. Throughout the history of elections in independent Malaysia, the ruling coalition has lost the seemingly magical two-thirds majority of parliamentary seats only twice. Once by a hair's breadth in 1969, and the other time in the last general election of 2008. 1969 was, of course, a notable year for the country. It was the first GE after Singapore was partitioned off from the country. At the time, Gerakan was part of the opposition to the Alliance, and Barisan Nasional had yet to exist. It had the longest campaign period for an election, and the prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, had stated that the five weeks given was to allow the people time to listen and digest what the politicians had to say. That GE was the first time that the two-thirds majority was lost by the Alliance, and resulted in some rather untoward behaviour by all sides, culminating in the string of incidents so infamous we just call it May 13. As for 2008, the loss of the two-thirds was down to several factors, apparently, but general consensus was that it was mainly due to broken promises. After gaining the highest number of seats in any GE so far in 2004, BN under Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi simply lost the plot, and along with it 58 seats and 11.7 per cent of the votes. What is interesting to note here is that, given the numbers gathered for the 12 GEs, even though Alliance/BN won every single one of them, they've had to work really hard for those victories. What is even more interesting to note is that, given all the instruments available to them — the police, the civil service, the mainstream media, the gerrymandering, the other (alleged) irregular activities like ballot stuffing — the voting population of the country had been rather adamant in not particularly allowing them to have overwhelming majorities. In fact, from a popular vote perspective, in 1969, less than half of the total voting public wanted them in power. If proportional representation was practised in Malaysia at the time, we would have had a change of government. If it was practised in 2008, another 2.3 per cent for the opposition would have achieved the same (and in fact, in the peninsula, that was exactly how the percentages turned out). Even in 2004, when BN obtained 90.4 per cent of the 219 seats available, their share of the popular vote was "only" 63.9 per cent. In other words, they may have had the run of the House, but 36.1 per cent of the people would rather they didn't. Of course, listening to the politicians from BN, they make it sound like except for a very small number of deluded individuals, the whole of the nation backs them up all the way. On the surface of it, they do seem to have the most viable formula for keeping things together. It is very much an unequal coalition, with Umno as the head, and every other party within subordinate. This unequal partnership, with a clear leader, meant that deciding on the party line and sticking to it a matter of fiat. Even when the official party line comes across as an insult to the lesser parties. The MCA may dispute the assertion that Umno is the clear leader of the coalition, but the voting breakdown makes any argument they might deign to forward moot. Of the 140 seats obtained by BN in the last GE, Umno candidates returned more than half of that total, while MCA managed less than a quarter. The opposition coalition, in its current guise as Pakatan Rakyat (disregarding the other parties which are not members of either coalition for the purpose of this discussion), on the other hand, portrays itself as an equal partnership. This meant that, in theory, the social democrats of the DAP would have an equal say in matters as the Islamists in PAS and the slightly (or enormously, depending on your view) right-of-centre PKR. However, the fact that PR has a leader of the opposition in the form of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim cannot hide the fact the three parties have orthogonal ideologies and are united only in the face of a common enemy. However, their vote division in the last GE does tend to support their equal partners stance. The gap between the percentage of votes between the three of them is not much more than two per cent (as of now, taking into account defections from their previously party-faithful candidates). And therein lies the state of politics in the country. The ruling coalition, rightly or wrongly, seems to have the most workable formula to rule, with no particular reluctance to use every available tool at its disposal to keep ruling. The opposition is strangely united, in spite of them seemingly being their own worst enemies, and near enough desperate to break the ruling coalition's iron grip on the seat of power. As for the voting public… well, some of us moan, complain, march and/or rally. Those who do that get showered, gassed, incarcerated, hijacked, pawned and played out. Those who don't, which is most of us, stay on the sidelines, either cheering those who do or jeering them. The bulk of us will always vote for one side or the other, each time, every time, come what may. But there's a sizeable minority that slides from one to the other. The swingers. The ones who decide whether a seat would fall on this side or that side. And the politicians from both sides want these swingers. They want these "kingmakers", if you like. Because every few years or so, as we go out to the polling booths, we will put our X in the box, and the swingers will be the ones who decide who takes the prize. The prize? The prize is our country. Yours, mine and ours. And so far, there's only ever been one winner. * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
| Why changing from the inside is a Malaysian myth Posted: 20 Jul 2011 05:29 PM PDT JULY 21 — My friends on the "inside" always chide me, they say for all my protestations and condemnations I have to admit without power you are unlikely to affect real change. The nuts and bolts of running a country. They are in power, and I am not in power. However, the bulk of my friends are reformists; they want to change things by working with the power order of the day. Because they don't disagree with me that the country needs to move forward, they just differ on the method. In real terms, they'll work with Barisan Nasional (BN) — those who've run the country since 1955 — to make a better Malaysia. I stand on the principle this country cannot progress in any meaningful way under BN in its present shape and form, and work with other like-minded people to remove it from power so that the country has a chance for a better future. As for my friends, the inside-reformists, despite hoping for their success I fear they won't. It is important to make the distinction between an existing government, working government and an efficient government, so that the bar is set fairly for the inside-reformists — before I criticise them. Imagine government being a singular transport bus, a public paid and managed bus. An existing government means that for the money paid, the said bus is physically present under the care of the state and it plies the route. Proving there is a government, that it exists. A working government would be for the bus to stop at designated stops, operate for the hours stipulated, have reasonable frequency and rarely breaks down. An efficient government, a bus which realigns its routes and stops to prevailing commute numbers, has a highly accurate bus schedule, has easy and useful ticketing, multi-channels to transmit information to the public in multi-languages, has staff who are trained, communicative and determined to get you to work and home. It will go further, it will develop better maintenance schedules so that there is little downtime, it will equip its staff with basic management skills to meet the demands of their jobs, engage community to find out why the routes need tinkering, convince people who are not into buses to give buses a try and the list goes on. I understand the above is a simplification, but it does distinguish what is paraded by the BN as great government (something between existing and working) and what real change means. Who is the inside-reformist? Most come from establishment families. They see the disparity between how things are and where the world is heading. However, they are saddled with the knowledge "their past" is responsible for the reality. And rejecting the present system would equate to condemning what has raised them and displace the people they prefer from power. Primarily children of BN politicians, civil servants and business allies of BN. They reach a mental impasse and resort to intuition, choose to make things better with the people they know. Plus the benefit of being in the ruling class, they've got the education, savvy and worldly knowledge to pinpoint the weaknesses of new pretenders to the throne. So in their equation, their side can improve and the other side is flawed, so in net terms status quo is better. The preference for those already in power can also be attributed to our neo-feudal society. A permanent hierarchy has always been championed and naysayers condemned as traitors prior to British rule. Colonial rule only entrenched it further. What the inside-reformist wants and how he goes about it To start with as demonstrated by previous explanations above, he does not want BN out of power. All change must happen in a BN-run Malaysia reality. Nothing odd really: More democracy, better government (the focus) to bring more social benefits (education, healthcare and security) and economy (jobs, higher income and manageable cost of living) to its people. The means begin with a career in Umno — Malaysia's ruling party — or joining one of those state-linked/owned/run organisations to shape the future (Pemandu, Khazanah, government lawyers, Economic Planning Unit, Bank Negara etc) Why the inside-reformist fails Change happens through sacrifices, not through launches. To be less abstract, let's identify which virtues are heralded as pillars of great society. Participation, ideas, transparency, process-driven, checks and balances and personal freedoms. Which of them do you see Umno openly and stoutly championing? The elitism and pecking order culture in government already obscures many if not all the pillars. What prevails? Ideas from those in power monopolise and they will be prioritised even if they are done without process. Local stakeholders get to watch decisions from afar while having to live through those decisions. Passive agreement is held as model behaviour and active disagreement stamped out with brute force. Spending is opaque, ever-increasing and beyond reproach. Personal freedom is what BN supporters get to have when on overseas trips. The mountain facing the inside-reformist is already daunting. To be a success he needs to confront the three banes of Malaysia: the over-centralisation of power (Putrajaya knows best) — bloated civil service; unfettered businessmen-politicians nexus; and failing public services. They all come down to divestment of powers. Letting more Malaysians have actual control of decision-making at local levels, scrutinising the liberalisation and globalisation of Malaysian business by being fair to both capitalists and consumers and increasing the ringgit-spent-returns in civil service employment and expenditure. It is about power sharing. However the inside-reformists will find decision-makers averse to power divestments. They are unwilling to reduce the power in their hands while wanting a different outcome. This is when the reformist becomes flustered and then frustrated, to finally quitting or abandoning the reform agenda till things are more conducive. A hypothetical scenario. The police start to build better community relationships and local initiative. More police beats according to residents' advice, scheduled meet-the-people sessions and appointing community liaisons. But those obligations will quickly take a backseat when a minister visits since all personnel need to attend to the VIP. And later those progresses might collapse completely because the home minister has contracted an IT firm with a web-based HR solution to integrate police — auxiliary police — Rela (voluntary corps) — work-flow, impacting on KPIs. Centrally aggregated information based on what residents fill electronically on the website will be the main template for deployment, and personnel transfers will be built-in from user service feedback. Previous efforts will be discarded and the new system will bring a better future. The minister does not need to bother with previous groundwork, he is a minister, for the love of Zogba. Plus the IT solution includes biometric scanning. And yes, we would be the first in the world to do it. (In Malaysia, lab rats are superior to humans because the former gets to taste all kinds of trial drugs first.) Can you see such a scenario playing out in Malaysia? And in such a scenario will the inside-reformist — as special officer or police planner or Pemandu point-man to the police force — manage to advise the minister away from his own initiative? I'd say very unlikely, unless the prime minister's men have their own IT firm in mind. Then it's about which IT firm, not how to improve community policing. Decisions will always be top down in this BN government. Second, BN adopts a zero-loss attitude to new policies. They are game for any new policy as long as it does not lose them anything. The want their cake and eat it too. In place of an actual commitment to change, they'll commit to the most outlandish name for the policies. Just look at our major problem, our public schools. They are in a major state of disrepair. A combination of corporatisation, decentralisation of management to states and districts, streamlining courses to modern educational needs, a standard examination and possibly privatising some of the schools is necessary. But BN will do little but announce more new measures. The system needs an overhaul. Do you remember one educational policy which was proposed, kept to its spirit and kept in the schools long enough to bear fruit? Everything mutates as each policy stutters through filter after filter to end up as something ineffectual. Why risk the future of our children? That question is passed on, like everything else. There are more riveting priorities and they are met. BN needs the teachers' vote, their "support" when they serve as election personnel during polls and they need the 11 years to "streamline" young minds to become BN voters. Everything else is secondary, and they are willing for the deep labyrinth of technocrats to run the show with infrastructure contracts, overlaps of courses built on psychological conditioning rather than intellectual emancipation and of course "majlis makan" (dining events) after "majlis makan." The malaise inside Umno is so embedded that no clever adjusting of present measures will revive reason. It's not that the inside-reformist is incapable, unwilling or lacking imagination. Reason has been buried a long time ago in those corridors and only the blunt strike like an electoral loss will resuscitate Umno-run BN. Right now, my friends, the inside-reformists are just applying band-aids to a corpse. * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
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