Turbulent times in Malaysia

With Anwar Ibrahim embroiled in scandal and rumours of corruption tainting the political class, Asia's island of stability is being shaken.

For over 50 years, politics in Malaysia has been characterised by a stability unique in the region. The governing coalition, the Malay-dominated Barisan Nasional (BN), has never lost a federal election, while proof that it was more of a democracy than neighbouring Singapore was to be found in opposition victories at a state level.

In the last three months, everything has changed. The shocking news that Anwar Ibrahim, the opposition leader, has been accused of sexually assaulting a male aide, is only the latest event to suggest the "guided democracy" that was the basis for Malaysia's implicit social contract, relying on tradition, respect and avoidance of conflict, and which provided that stability, is breaking down.

In the March general election, the BN lost its crucial two-thirds majority in parliament and endured its worst ever result. Anwar, a former deputy prime minister, was triumphant, confidently predicting that defections would mean his coalition, Pakatan Rakyat, would be in government by September 16 (the date when independent Malaya enlarged to become Malaysia in 1963).

The move would be unprecedented, but the election showed haywire voting patterns – Muslim Malays supporting a secularist, left-leaning Chinese party in Penang, for instance – while stories of cronyism and judicial corruption filled the ever-more-confident and influential blogosphere, which reports what tame newspapers won't. Even wilder stories began to circulate. Just how was it that a Mongolian named Altantuya Shaariibuu, the spurned mistress of a close adviser to the current deputy prime minister, came to be shot in the head twice and blown up with plastic explosives only available to elite security units?

This last scandal reached boiling point recently when the editor of the Malaysia Today website filed a court document implicating deputy PM Najib Tun Razak's wife in the murder. Local observers wonder whether the timing of the accusations against Anwar was entirely coincidental. Najib was expected to take over from the current PM, Abdullah Badawi, but now his position isn't looking too strong and the Anwar story has taken minds off Najib's troubles. Even so, the Altantuya case won't go away, and Najib faces a challenge for the BN leadership from a veteran ex-minister, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, who might normally be considered too old: only the demand for candidates, any candidate, who seems "clean" is so insatiable that his bid looks credible.

Another important question is how much of a BN there will be left for Najib (or anyone else) to lead. The coalition's multiracial balancing act was supposed to maintain peace and order. Many say, however, that it has ossified into an organisation that purported to help the majority Malays gain a more equitable share of the nation's wealth but did more to allow an elite to line its pockets. Now the price of oil has shot up and there are shortages of rice, but no convincing answers. It may not take much for constituent parties to break ranks.

So we come back to Anwar, whom the world remembers as the "reformasi" leader of a decade ago, the high-flying, charismatic finance minister sacked by Mahathir Mohamad, PM at the time, who was then tried and convicted of sodomy and corruption not long after Newsweek made him their "Asian of the Year". It goes without saying that everyone considers the new allegations to be ridiculous. No one ever thought the original sodomy charge had anything in it either (that judgment, although not the corruption conviction, was overturned in 2004). The government denies any involvement, but Anwar's accuser was clearly acting on behalf of, if not the BN, then their proxies or sympathisers.

The "old" way would have been for Anwar to have made a rapprochement with the BN after he was released from jail four years ago, and worked his way back up from within. He certainly was enough of an inside player to have done it, with a past littered with incidents of Malay chauvinism, pandering to conservative Islam and political ambition that westerners who seek to make him a liberal saint conveniently forget.

The best hope for the way he has in fact chosen is that a genuinely two party politics might develop in which pluralism is allowed full voice. But Anwar's coalition is disparate, not to say incompatible – his own, predominantly Malay, Justice Party; the leftist Chinese DAP; and the Islamic fundamentalist PAS. To a great extent stability was imposed on Malaysia; and there are plenty who would argue that, although imperfect, it worked. Now the cork in the bottle has been loosened, and the genies of race, religion, free speech and western-style liberal values have begun to escape.

Only time will tell if these spirits will, unfettered, demonstrate mutual tolerance. If not, such harmony as has existed in Malaysia could be dashed on the rocks of a sectarianism that provided the rationale for "guided democracy" in the first place.

Sholto Byrnes
Tuesday July 1, 2008
guardian.co.uk