Who shall govern Malaysia? Why, when, what for?
Does it matter who governs?
IN Lim Kit Siang, there is the Jul 9, 2008, post that transcribes a discussion segment from a radio forum at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Journalists, west or east, are very weak, even inept, in reading events, digesting and comprehending them and then extrapolating for outcomes. It is no different at the ABC; hence, much of the transcription essentially rehashes old news. But two points from a guest (not a journalist) in the forum, Clive Kessler, is worth regurgitating because they are revealing into Malaysia’s immediate future.
Point #1, and this is the premise:
Clive Kessler: The situation in Malaysia at the moment is remarkable and that the brave hopes of independence have turned into an unbelievably sordid soap opera and the popular feeling among many people on the streets is precisely that. That in the sense they find the politics unbelievable, damaging and destructive and they see that more clearly than many of the political principles themselves.
Point #2, which is the conclusion:
Clive Kessler: The likelihood of a coalition misunderstanding becoming a political understanding and political crisis becoming a public, public order crisis seems to be fairly high. And it’s in that context that the police and army came out last week publicly to say well they’ve already got the contingency plans in place and they’re doing the dry run, more or less, to have a polite authoritarian solution to the politicians and the chaos they’ve created. I think that is the prospect that seems to me to be in the offing, rather than continuing democratisation.
The last part requires clarification for no reason other than that an extemporaneous narration has no amplification. Worse, it is subject to a variety of interpretations (for a flavour into the variety, read the comments section in the post and note how commentators missed the point in the conclusion.)
Hence to rephrase Kessler:
The likelihood of a coalition misunderstanding becoming a political crisis becoming a public order crisis seems to be fairly high. It’s in that context the police and army came out last week publicly, doing the dry run. They are saying that they’ve the contingency plans in place. (The response to a public order crisis is) a polite authoritarian solution to the politicians and the chaos they’ve created. This (the solution) seems to me to be in the offing, rather than continuing democratisation.
Question #1: What exactly is this political crisis, and how does it become a public order crisis?
Question #2: What is meant by a “polite authoritarian solution” that is likely to be applied in a public order crisis?
The answers require extrapolation into Kessler’s premise, which is in Point #1. More than that, they require one to agree with him, that is, his conclusions. But, first, to clear the deck on some concepts and for brevity’s sake the academic definitions are avoided.
Political crisis: There is no stable central government hold on Malaysia.
Everywhere in the newspapers, in announcements and in the political websites, the assumption is that either (a) the Barisan Nasional (BN) government keeps its majority or (b) there’ll be enough defections to form a new Pakatan Rakyat (PR) government. This assumption is predicated, in turn, on the notion that everything is settled in one swoop. Thirty legislators jump ship or nobody jumps and all is settled.
Because of the rise of online news, both the newspapers and the government media have now only a limited or little influence on public opinion. The loss of control on the one side, therefore, tilts the influence towards the other side. This is crucial because the domination of online news, which is on the side of PR, means that no one is told that the efforts of Anwar Ibrahim, the opposition leader, to bring about defections in Parliament is dicey. It breaks not only an ethical principle of politics, but the defections can go the other way. Hence – and this is the more likely scenario – parliamentarians may be defecting back and forth between the BN and PR. This leaves a situation where legislature is in a constant state of flux.
In that regards, the first point of note is that one of PKR’s inner circle members, Ezam Mohd Nor, has already taken the leap. Ezam has numerous precedents, Nallakaruppan, Chandra Muzaffar, to name just two. This suggest that many politicians inside the PKR, including those seconded from the non-governmental organisations, are opportunists. They are there because they see an opportunity, the opportunity being their interests rather than in the public service.
Second point of note: Sabah’s SAPP is gallivanting between BN and PR, and somewhere neither. Its party chief says one thing today; one of its legislators says another, nearly to the contrary, another day. Note, that seldom, if not rarely, is there discussion on this issue, that is, not everybody is taken in by Anwar Ibrahim. And one has to ask the difficult question: Why not?
In this scenario, which is to re-affirm Kessler’s implication, the central authority is highly unstable. Countless problems bounce from it: who shall run this ministry and that; how shall budgets get approved; who shall run the various state companies; why should anybody take any orders from anyone in the government; why should the police continue to patrol the streets; what shall be the policy on immigration; and, so on. A political crisis has all the effects just cited and these, collectively, mean a public order crisis. It doesn’t merely mean 20,000 gathered in a stadium, shouting down the government. They can shout all they want inside a stadium, so what?
Some commentators (such as Malik Imtiaz) have said that the accusations in the paper work of two, once obscure personalities, P Balasubramaniam and Saiful Bukhari Azlan, reflect a collapse in the rule of law. This seems true: the law is no more sacrosanct; it is exploited; it is abused; it is used in anyway that anybody sees fit; it is used contemptuously. In Parliament, where law in written form originates, its long-standing member Bung Mokhtar Radin is a repeated testament and a personification of the contempt.
But a collapse of the rule of law is not at all the same as lawlessness, as stated here. Lawlessness happens amid the end of public order situation, such as described earlier. The law might be treated with contempt – who gives a shit, is the colloquial phrasing – but nobody observes authority and everybody does as pleased.
To internalise these meanings, imagine for a moment the daily conduct of taxi drivers extracting fares from their passengers; the snatch thieves, the municipal health officers, the policemen waiting and all others who make their daily rounds. Multiply that to every facet of life and to all walks of life. Count in bloggers like Tian Chua and Susan Loone who writes anyway it pleases them, thereby contributing to the lawlessness. That, in totality, is lawlessness.
The cause or causes of this lawlessness is not at issue; that all agree. But once the army is out on the streets, the perception of lawlessness changes nearly immediately. More than that, the conduct of the taxi driver could perceptibly change. The snatch thieves hide for the first time in five years, and so on. All that would be the implied consequences of a “polite authoritarian solution”: show the face. There is another way to describe the meaning. It is this: talk softly but walk around with a big stick.
The presumption all along (implied also in Kessler) is that a “polite authoritarian solution” will be the work of the BN government. Now, suppose Anwar gets what he wants: a simple majority government. He will be standing on the exact same shoes as the BN government today.
Who is to say the defections stop immediately and not go from PR to BN? Who is to say Anwar’s government will last 24 hours? Who is to say there won’t be rallies in stadiums and on the streets of Johore, Pahang, Perlis and Malacca where the BN has a substantial majority in the state legislatures? Who is to say there shall be no more issue of statutory declarations? What will the PR central government do? Who is to say that a million civil servants will obey Anwar, the PKR and the DAP and the ministries they control? Will Mr Chua and Ms Loone still preach human rights? Or will the PKR restore rule of law and not use a polite authoritarian solution? An Islamic solution, perhaps?
The point in the questions is this, any government, either way, is going to be weak. And note that neither the DAP nor the PKR has supplied the vaguest notion of how they shall sustain such a government. If they are going to have trouble in government, then what’s the point of being there? Point again: the authority of governments is not absolute. This is exactly what the PKR and the DAP have been trying to show in the last few months.
