Malaysia

The White House last week confirmed that President Obama will be traveling to Southeast Asia between October 6 and 12. He will visit Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines, and Malaysia. In all of these countries, Obama will be celebrating growing partnerships, including a defense partnership with treaty ally the Philippines that is at the strongest its been since the U.S. left its bases in the Philippines more than two decades ago; with the Philippines driven by fear of China’s growing regional presence, U.S. forces now are returning to the country with a much more significant presence than at any time since the Cold War. In Malaysia and Brunei and Indonesia, strategic cooperation, as well as growing bilateral trade, also will be highlighted by the White House; the United States recently agreed to sell Apache attack helicopters to Indonesia, one of the first big arms deals since restrictions on selling lethal weapons to the country were lifted. But in all of these countries, Obama also should be aware that he is walking into places where, though democracy is taking firm root, it remains bumpy. The White House should be careful to help promote continued democratization in these states—and indeed in all of Southeast Asia—rather than just celebrating its strategic ties and its bilateral relationships with the current leaders of these three nations. In Malaysia, such a democracy-first strategy would mean not only highlighting how Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has helped rebuild U.S-Malaysia strategic ties from their ebb in the latter days of the Mahathir Mohamad era but also meeting with opposition leaders like Anwar Ibrahim and rights activists like leaders of the Bersih movement for clean and fair elections in Malaysia. After all, in May Najib’s coalition actually lost the popular vote to Anwar’s opposition Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) coalition, and if not for gerrymandering and alleged voter fraud, Anwar’s coalition probably would be running Parliament now. In the Philippines, this strategy would mean not only working closely with President Benigno Aquino III, who has proven to be a more proactive leader than many expected, helping putting the Philippines on a more stable economic path, but also should spend time with the leaders of the movement to combat political graft and pork barrel spending (including staff from the Office of the Ombudsman), which has become an electrifying issue among middle class Filipinos transfixed by the case of several veteran lawmakers who allegedly worked together to steal millions from anti-poverty projects. Over 100,000 people have massed in the streets of Manila in recent weeks to protest the culture of graft and politicians stealing from the state treasury. Although Aquino has promised to crack down on the corruption that has plagued the Philippines and historically undermined its growth, his actual reforms have been relatively weak. Finally, in Indonesia the president should not only praise Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for his steady leadership over two terms, ending the chaos of the Habibe, Wahid, and Megawati years, but also should meet with younger leaders of Indonesian civil society from parts of the country other than Jakarta. Compared to a decade ago, Indonesian politics have become much more national, with Jakarta-based elites no longer dominating every issue, a change highlighted by the emergence of former Solo (and now Jakarta) governor Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, as a legitimate presidential candidate for the next election.

Even before several of my CFR colleagues and I arrived in Indonesia earlier this week for discussions on regional security and governance, headlines in the region’s media were dominated by the haze that was blanketing Singapore and Malaysia—not to mention parts of Indonesia—as a result of the slash-and-burn practices in Sumatra. In an effort to clear land to plant new crops, farmers there burn crop residue, timber, and peat. The result is hundreds of “hotspots,” or fires that contribute to a thick, toxic haze that travels throughout the region. This is despite a government effort to promote “zero burning” and a moratorium on all deforestation in much of the country. As Huang Yanzhong described in a post earlier this week, this year’s haze marks the most serious since 2007, when economic losses to the region reportedly reached US$9 billion. This time around, Singapore recorded its worst air quality in history, Malaysia closed hundreds of schools, and tourism dropped dramatically. Singapore and Malaysia have both offered assistance, while at the same time calling on Indonesia to step up its game. Indonesia, in turn, has refused the assistance and responded with criticism of its own, with one Minister complaining about other countries “making noise to the world when things go bad.” According to one Indonesian expert, Singapore’s offer of monetary assistance was “insulting.” Indonesian President Yudhoyono, perhaps in an effort to reduce tensions, apologized to the region and promised to devote more resources to the firefighting effort. This year’s contretemps is emblematic of a broader problem in regional governance and Indonesia’s own state capacity. While the challenge of regional haze has been recognized since at least 1985, in the region’s “Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources Agreement,” efforts to build an effective regional response have been stymied. Despite years of agreements to share information, train firefighters, and develop a common air quality index—as well as the establishment of a 2002 “ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution”—the fires continue to burn. Part of the problem rests in the nature of the agreement, which has no enforcement, sanctioning, or dispute settlement mechanism to help ensure countries’ adherence. The more significant flaw, however, is the failure of the chief culprit in the burning—Indonesia—to sign the agreement. Indonesia wants the agreement linked to other issues, such as illegal logging. Without ratification by Indonesia, the agreement cannot have any real impact on forging an effective collective response. Indonesia’s own weak state capacity poses a second challenge. Enforcement of its forestry regulations suffer from a high level of political and geographic decentralization, which makes it difficult to implement the country’s forest laws; in some cases local officials pass regulations contrary to laws passed by the central government. A powerful palm oil and timber lobby resists the more expensive methods of clearing land, and poor independent farmers have little economic incentive to adopt best forestry practices. Corruption is endemic in the forestry sector at local levels: for example, the former governor of Riau province, which is the source of much of this year’s fires, was arrested for corruption, in part for selling forest permits illegally. Still, there is hope. An alliance is emerging of domestic and international non-governmental organizations who are working with Jakarta to pinpoint the source of the fires, as well as those responsible. Agribusiness companies, such as Bunge, Caterpillar, and Nestle, are pledging not to buy palm oil or palm oil products from companies that practice slash-and-burn or plant in areas under the moratorium. More can be done. Other countries in the region should make clear to Jakarta that as a regional leader, Indonesia needs to ratify the haze agreement; it can’t be a laggard. Economic incentives to bulldoze, excavate, and compost crop residue and timber rather than burn it could also help reduce the temptation to take the quick and cheap route. Finally, the significant role of Singaporean and Malaysian palm oil and timber companies in Indonesia’s economy offers real opportunities for joint law enforcement efforts if the countries can overcome sovereignty and other political tensions.

Haze continues to spread across Southeast Asia, the result primarily of burn-offs from farming by individuals and agribusinesses in Indonesia, combined with the dry summer weather and urban pollution in the region’s largest cities. As Yanzhong Huang notes, air pollution levels in some parts of penisular Southeast Asia have reached record highs this past week; the more proactive governments in the region, like Singapore, have taken health precautions like pushing nearly all residents to wear masks while outdoors and setting up centers across the city-state for low-income and elderly residents to get free face masks they can use. As Yanzhong notes, Singapore also is vowing to pursue companies that use polluting practices and cause this haze. Overall, countries in the region, like Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, appear to be pointing fingers at each other and engaging in diplomatic recriminations rather than collaborating to address the haze crisis and its causes. It is certainly true that most Southeast Asian leaders are not exactly stepping up to the plate – Indonesia in particular, supposedly the region’s leader, has reacted to the haze crisis with a show of diplomatic pique that is useless – but in fact the countries in the region supposedly have a forum to handle non-traditional security threats like haze – their regional organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Haze has been on the agenda of ASEAN leaders’ meetings and foreign ministers’ meetings and environmental meetings for fifteen years now; I personally have attended at least three major ASEAN meetings where cooperation on reducing haze was discussed at length. More than ten years ago ASEAN inked an agreement on transboundary haze in which ASEAN countries vowed to take measures to reduce haze pollution. Of course, the agreement is vague, has no real enforcement mechanisms, and was not ratified by Indonesia, so it is of little use now. In fact, the transboundary agreement on haze is a perfect ASEAN document: Grand in vision, vague in details and enforcement, and then not acted upon. Indeed, when a crisis actually erupts, the organization’s inherent weakness, which normally can be hidden behind smiling summits and reams of plans for cooperation, is exposed. The organization’s secretariat in Jakarta is badly underresourced, as every ASEAN member knows, and the current ASEAN Secretary-General, Vietnam’s former deputy foreign minister, is a capable diplomat but does not have the tools or the name recognition to push ASEAN members to take any serious action on haze. Of course, this is how ASEAN leaders want it – having a powerful, well-known Secretary General of the organization might diminish individual country leaders’ appeal to being the voice of Southeast Asia, an unofficial post claimed at various times by everyone from Mahathir Mohamad to Thaksin Shinawatra to Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Meanwhile, average people in Southeast Asia suffer, as they have done every hot season for sixteen years now.

Having just arrived in Jakarta for a joint CSIS-CFR workshop on emerging Indonesia and rising regionalism, I was greeted by hot and humid weather conditions and horrible traffic. However, this is nothing compared to the severe haze that has blanketed Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, Malaysia, and Singapore, sending air pollution there to record high levels. The haze problem is nothing new. To those who live in Singapore and Malaysia, this has become an annual blight caused by farmers in Sumatra clearing forests to make land for crops. The last major regional haze outbreak occurred in 1997-98. But this time, the thick haze has broken the Pollutant Standards Index records and hit “hazard” levels in the region, and Singapore has threatened to take action. The slash and burn cultivation can be traced to when agriculture was first developed thousands of years ago. According to historian William McNeill, this cultivation method multiplied breeding places for mosquitoes and gave malaria a new, epidemic intensity. It is no wonder that malaria and dengue fever—both of which are transmitted by mosquitoes—are such a major concern in Southeast Asia. The farming practice is not confined to Sumatra, either. Indeed, a similar practice is becoming a growing contributor to severe haze in some Chinese provinces. Two weeks ago, when travelling on the high-speed train to Beijing, I was struck by the sudden drop of visibility, which was caused by farmers in central Anhui province burning straw along the railway. Given the spread of haze to neighboring countries, one would expect that the affected countries would work together to address the crisis.  Instead, we’ve seen the rekindling of old diplomatic disputes and intensified finger pointing among governments, NGOs, and the private sector. Last Thursday, Indonesia accused Singapore of “behaving like a child” and asked for significant financial aid in order to tackle the issue. However, this action is no surprise. The 1997-98 haze crisis has not led to effective cooperation over environmental issues. Countries in the region seem to be determined to protect their sovereignty irrespective of the implications that this may have for the wider region. They might be actively pursuing bilateral cooperation over a particular regional threat (e.g., a pandemic), but the residual lack of trust among them, coupled with the principle of non-interference, makes it difficult to pursue effective multilateralism or forge a real sense of partnership.

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. Li wraps up first foreign trip to India and Pakistan. Li Keqiang finished his first foreign trip as Chinese premier, where he visited India and Pakistan. The trip came only weeks after tensions had mounted between China and India over a Chinese military incursion into an Indian-controlled disputed border region in the Himalayas. Li was eager to focus on economic talks, but the governments continue to be wary of each other. Li then spent several days in Pakistan, where he offered assistance to end an energy crisis that has led to major power cuts throughout the country. Chinese state media highlighted China and Pakistan’s enduring “all-weather friendship and strategic partnership.” China has always been a staunch ally of Pakistan and suspicious of India, but choosing India as the site of Li’s first visit was a small step towards easing tensions between the two giants. 2. Obama welcomes Myanmar’s Thein Sein to the White House. President U Thein Sein’s visit to the Oval Office was the first by a Myanmar’s head of state in nearly fifty years, and President Obama praised Sein for “moving Myanmar down a path of both political and economic reform.” However, some experts, including CFR’s Josh Kurlantzick, fear that the United States has been too quick to embrace the new Myanmar, particularly in light of recent violence by Buddhist monks and others against Myanmar’s Muslim minority. The Obama administration must be careful not jump the gun; Kurlantzick argues that though Myanmar has taken important steps toward democratization, the United States should use its newfound influence to push for an end to the ethnic and religious attacks. 3. North Korean envoy visits Beijing. Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae, a top military official and confidante of Kim Jong-un, met with a number of senior Chinese officials this week in Beijing in hopes of mending fraying relations between the two historic allies. His visit included a meeting with President Xi Jinping, to whom Vice Marshal Choe handed a letter written by Kim. According to state media, Xi was blunt in his response: “The denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and lasting peace on the peninsula is what the people want and also the trend of the times.” The envoy reportedly stated that North Korea “is willing to accept the suggestion of the Chinese side and launch dialogue with all relevant parties.” 4. Abenomics to the rescue. After decades of stagnated growth, Japan might finally be in the midst of an economic revival, thanks to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic policies. “Abenomics” calls for “three arrows”—monetary easing, government spending, and economic reforms—that have all been tried in the past but never with the current level of coordination and breadth. Consumers are splurging at expensive restaurants and shopping malls across Japan. Not everyone is optimistic, though—many caution that Japan’s bureaucracy and rigid labor market cannot be easily reformed, and Abe has yet to make the most difficult changes. Ending deflation could also spur investors to demand a higher risk premium for holding government bonds, making the market more volatile. Certain sectors of the economy have become more volatile already—Japan’s stock market dropped 7.3 percent on Thursday from an all-time high, before regaining somewhat on Friday. Some analysts blame the drop on weak Chinese manufacturing data and U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s testimony before Congress that the Fed might slow its monetary policy. 5. Malaysia arrests opposition activists. The Malaysian government arrested three major opposition leaders and one student amidst disputes over the results of last month’s election. Activists have been staging large protests since the May 5 election, in which the ruling National Front party took 60 percent of parliamentary seats despite only winning 47 percent of the popular vote, thanks to gerrymandered districts. The four men will be charged under Malaysia’s Sedition Act, a colonial-era law that allows the detention of people trying to overthrow the government, which Prime Minister Najib Razak has promised to abolish. Bonus: Global Times claims American Indians descended from Hunanese: Du Gangjian, dean of Hunan University Law School, made a startling “discovery” recently following a trip to study Indian tribes in the United States—some people of China’s Hunan Province might have been ancestors of American Indians. “The history textbooks should be rewritten,” he stated.

On May 5, Malaysia held its closest national election in modern history. Although the long-ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition won the largest number of seats, the opposition actually won the popular vote, and only gerrymandering, massive handouts to voters to vote for the BN, and many election irregularities ensured the BN’s victory. This was the first time in history the BN had lost the popular vote. The irregularities allegedly included flying and busing voters from one district to another, where they did not actually live, inflating voter rolls, using pre-election postal voting to help BN supporters vote twice, and many other irregularities. Independent and accredited observers who witnessed the election deemed it “partially free but not fair.” An excellent summary of all the problems with the election has been written up by Bridget Welsh and is available here. In response to the disputed election, the opposition coalition, led by longtime Malaysian political figure Anwar Ibrahim, has been holding a series of massive rallies across the country, with some drawing as many as 100,000 people. The government has responded with race-baiting—accusing the country’s minority ethnic Chinese population of essentially being unpatriotic—and, increasingly, crackdowns. Last week, the government arrested prominent youth activist Adam Adli, who had been attending the rallies, for allegedly seditious speech. This week, it arrested other prominent opposition figures. The ruling coalition also has announced that it will make more arrests, and threatened that opposition figures who do not accept the victory should simply leave the country. If this electoral fraud, gerrymandering, and thuggery had happened in Venezuela, a country that the U.S. government regularly (and rightly) condemns for its unfair elections and electoral processes, Washington’s reaction would have been very different. In fact, when similar electoral irregularities happened in the Venezuelan elections last month, the Obama administration announced that Venezuela should hold a recount, rather than simply swear in Hugo Chavez’s anointed successor. But with Malaysia’s electoral sham, Washington has been strangely quiet. Three days after the election, the White House congratulated the BN on its win, only noting “concerns regarding reported irregularities in the conduct of the election.” By contrast, some regional democracies like Indonesia have been more cautious about endorsing the BN’s victory, as have other Western democracies. Washington seems to believe that Malaysia’s ruling coalition is essential for close U.S.-Malaysia ties, even though Anwar, who would have been prime minister had the opposition triumphed, would likely have been just as close to the United States. In recent years, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib tun Razak and his ambassadors in DC have wooed the Obama administration and the embassy in Kuala Lumpur, suggesting that he alone can deliver the kind of stability necessary for foreign investment, close defense ties, counterterrorism cooperation, and economic growth. During visits to DC, Najib has smoothly portrayed himself as the most competent economic and political reformer in Malaysia, despite the fact that this fraudulent election, and his subsequent race-baiting, shows the reformer concept to be false. This election was in many ways a watershed for Malaysia; it seems to have ushered in a truly two-party system, and perhaps opened the door to a change in power in the next vote. However, Najib is responding now by arresting opposition activists and covering his right flank with racial attacks. Will the United States respond now?

Meredith Weiss is an associate professor in the department of political science at the University of Albany. Adamantly pro-government newspaper Utusan Malaysia raised hackles among opposition Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Alliance) supporters two days after Malaysia’s May 5 election with its blaring headline, Apa Lagi Orang Cina Mahu? (What more do the Chinese want?) The barb refers to what incumbent Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has called a “Chinese tsunami:” his Barisan Nasional (National Front, BN) coalition’s unprecedented failure to secure a majority of the popular vote—even if a highly disproportionate electoral system has left the BN still with 60 percent of parliamentary seats. It is true that public opinion polls indicated—and campaign staff nationwide confirmed—that Chinese Malaysians were highly dissatisfied with BN rule and likely to vote for the Pakatan Rakyat, instead. And yet as Pakatan supporters were quick to point out, it was not just Chinese voters (who comprise only about one-fourth of the population) who supported the three-party coalition, contesting in its current form for the first time this election. In Malaysia’s political landscape, particularly with the anniversary of post-election riots in May 1969 just around the corner, to suggest that Chinese have been “selfish and greedy” and want to topple the Malay-based order (as the Utusan editorial, plus subsequent coverage, suggests) is clearly race-baiting. In point of fact, it is not just Chinese voters who want a change from politics-as-usual in Malaysia, nor is race sufficient explanation for why any specific voters have turned toward Pakatan. Much has been made, too, of a rural–urban divide in Malaysia: that rural voters supported the BN, while urban voters supported Pakatan. But just as it is not the fact of being Chinese that turned voters away from BN—of “cultural” or communal interests per se (shown not least by the fact that it was the BN that really touted these)—nor is there something intrinsic to being “rural” that inclines one to BN, particularly given how many voters with a rural address actually live and work in urban areas. Economics was the main story of this election. Each side had a manifesto including a wide range of issues. One could sum up the difference as: BN = populist economic programs + communal harmony (and the security of a known quantity); and Pakatan = populist economic programs + good governance. But the main stress for both sides was on the first part of those formulae. The BN stressed ad nauseum the government’s raft of “1Malaysia” programs (which it claimed entirely for the party, handily eliding party and state), especially one-time RM500 ($167) payouts of 1Malaysia People’s Aid (BR1M), for which any household earning less than $1000/month is eligible. Though definitively government, not party funds, BR1M payments were frequently dispensed via party offices and/or officials, including during the campaign period itself. (One Kedah BN campaign manager, for instance, noted that his candidate comes to shake hands as citizens collect both their BR1M checks and government loans for entrepreneurs during the campaign; his aides, though, are the ones to handle the checks.) Pakatan, for its part, argued that its own package of subsidies (for everything from water to cars to education to WiFi) would reduce the cost of living long-term, and thus be a better deal for poor and middle-class citizens. While Pakatan stump speeches I heard nationwide did, for instance, raise issues of corruption, cronyism, and good governance generally, these seemed to carry more clout with the audience when connected back to their own circumstances—for instance, a gifted speaker in a low-cost housing area in Sabah, who gracefully tied a critique of the graft-funded palaces of BN elites to the dilapidated housing of his audience. Such links do resonate, given the extent not just of interethnic, but intraethnic, inequality. Pro-bumiputra (Malay and indigenous peoples) affirmative action policies may indeed irk non-Malays, yet the real gains remain concentrated among a narrow elite, not the Malay masses. What these elections demonstrated was that as Malaysian electoral politics converges upon a two-party system (taking the two fixed coalitions as parties; the BN is already registered as such), interests and issues are increasingly crowding out identities as grounds for mobilization and voting. In my travels across Malaysia throughout the campaign period, it was clear that issues of land tenure, jobs, the inefficiencies of cronyism and corruption, and the rising costs of living—everything from water to tolls to petrol—raised more hackles on the ground than the tried and true bogies of race and religion. That fact alone tells us little about which coalition might win next time around, but it does suggest that communal politics has lost real ground, no matter how shrill the recriminations.

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. China offers to play peacemaker, but Bibi and Abbas don’t bite. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas both visited China this week. The Chinese media enthusiastically reported on the possibility that the country could serve as neutral territory for the two leaders to negotiate a peace settlement. However, the Chinese government made sure the leaders stayed far apart throughout the trip and were never in the same city at the same time. Netanyahu, for one, was far more interested in discussing trade and economic issues—China is Israel’s third-largest trading partner—as well as China’s potential role in halting Iran’s nuclear program. This is the first time that China has offered to play a role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and while mostly symbolic, could represent a new era in Chinese diplomacy and international reach. As a recent pro-Palestine opinion article in the state-run Global Times asserted, “China is no longer a weak country to be bullied by imperialist powers as it was more than a century ago, but an economic and military power capable of claiming what is rightly China’s. This is justice, and China wants to see justice served in the international arena.” But is China willing to see justice through to the end? Doubtful, but it will be interesting to see what other kinds of international justice the Chinese government will want served. 2. New Defense Department report calls out the Chinese government and military in cyberattacks. The U.S. Department of Defense released its annual report to Congress this week, and for the first time it explicitly accused China’s military of attacking American computer systems. The report said that cyberattacks around the world “appear to be attributable directly to the Chinese government and military,” a sharp deviation from last year’s report, which describes attacks “which originated within China.” A Chinese defense ministry spokesman expressed “strong dissatisfaction with” and “firm opposition to” the report, and stated that it damaged mutual trust. 3. Malaysia wraps up the closest election in its history, though opposition claims fraud. Barisan Nasional (BN), the political party that has ruled Malaysia since the 1950s, will remain in power after the most recent election, which had a high voter turnout of nearly 85 percent. BN won less than 47 percent of the popular vote but will hold 60 percent of parliamentary seats, thanks to gerrymandering. The Party could face serious difficulties leading a nation where the majority of voters, especially urban and wealthy ones, voted for the opposition. 4. Is China expanding its territorial claims? An editorial (Chinese) in the state-run People’s Daily on Wednesday called for a “reconsideration” of the historical status of Japan’s southernmost Ryukyu island chain, which includes Okinawa. The authors, scholars from the prestigious China Academy of Social Sciences, claim that Japan encroached upon the islands during China’s Qing dynasty, when the country was weakened by foreign forces and could not protect the island chain. Japan lodged a diplomatic protest to the claim, with Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga stating Okinawa “is unquestionably Japan’s territory, historically and internationally." Okinawa is home to 1.4 million Japanese citizens, as well as over 15,000 U.S. troops. This expansion of territorial claims is likely a tactic to gain leverage in the debates over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. 5. Obama backs President Park’s North Korea policy. Recently elected South Korean president Park Geun-hye paid a visit to President Obama this week. Obama declared their approach to North Korea as “very compatible” during a news conference following the meeting, and the two leaders discussed deepening economic ties. Park also addressed a joint meeting of Congress, an honor reserved only for close U.S. allies. Obama had a very close working relationship with former South Korean President Lee Myung-bak; all signs point favorably towards the development of a similar relationship with Park, despite the fact that she is generally considered to be more conservative and hawkish than her predecessor. Bonus: Rodman asks Kim to do him ‘a solid.’ Dennis Rodman, former basketball star and junior statesman (in light of his February visit to North Korea), tweeted, “I’m calling on the Supreme Leader of North Korea or as I call him ‘Kim’, to do me a solid and cut Kenneth Bae loose.” Kenneth Bae is an American tour operator who was arrested in North Korea in November for unspecified “hostile acts” and sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor. No tweets from Kim yet.

On May 5, Malaysians went to the polls in what was expected to be the closest national election since independence. Massive turnout was reported, particularly in urban areas, with many districts reporting that over 80 percent of eligible voters came to the polls. In the early part of the vote counting, opposition supporters seemed jubilant, and opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim even announced that he believed his three-party opposition alliance had taken down the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, which has dominated the country since independence, never losing an election. Of course, BN has used massive gerrymandering, enormous handouts from state coffers, thuggish election day tactics, and outright vote-buying in the past to secure its victories. Still, the May 5 vote seemed to be a potential watershed, putting the opposition into power and putting Malaysia onto the path of a real, consolidated two-party democracy. Unfortunately, the election seems to have solved nothing, and may only exacerbate Malaysia’s serious internal problems. Although the ruling coalition claims victory, Anwar and the opposition allege massive fraud that could have cost them the win. So, the status of Malaysia’s electoral institutions has been badly damaged. Indeed, the opposition coalition appears to have won a higher percentage of the popular vote, yet gerrymandering and potential frauds have given the BN a majority of seats. Since the election commission is run by the prime minister’s office, and thus by the BN, it’s almost impossible anyone is going to overturn the election results. So, for one, Malaysia now enters a period in which huge percentages of the population—particularly in urban areas—did not vote for the government and are extremely angry about the result. Anger is going to simmer for weeks or months, and is already growing fiercer on Malaysia’s free online media. This anger could lead to renewed street protests, a completely ineffective national government, or greater capital flight and educated Malaysians emigrating, already one of Malaysia’s biggest challenges. Without domestic capital being reinvested in the country, it will be impossible for Malaysia to escape the middle-income trap that it has been caught in for years. Second, the election now has torn apart any remaining fictions about interethnic harmony in Malaysia. The ruling coalition used to be comprised of ethnic Malay, Indian, and Chinese parties, but the BN’s ethnic Chinese components were all but wiped out in this election by the opposition’s ethnic Chinese party. At the same time, the BN expended far more of its resources in ethnic Malay-dominated districts, and so instead of being a multiethnic coalition, the new BN government is really just one party, the Malay-dominated UMNO. A graph on New Mandala shows the correlation between BN victories and percentages of Malays in each district. Malaysia now has a situation in which ethnic Malays totally dominate the ruling party, and minorities, including the Chinese, have almost completely gone to the opposition. Not a recipe for interethnic harmony. Private companies run by ethnic Chinese, already tired of affirmative action laws favoring Malays, are even more likely to close up and leave. Meanwhile, since the BN did not deliver an overwhelming victory, current Prime Minister Najib Razak, a relative moderate, is likely to lose his job to a figure in the BN who is more hard-line pro-Malay and less willing to promote reconciliation among all ethnic groups in Malaysia. All in all, not a situation with a lot of bright sides.

Meredith Weiss is an associate professor in the department of political science at the University of Albany. If all goes according to plan, election-watchers of all sorts will be thick on the ground for Malaysia’s upcoming thirteenth general elections. Admittedly, that plan is dependent upon rounding up and training an extraordinary number of volunteers, and doubtless will be forced to exclude the least accessible, but purportedly most watch-worthy districts. But what tends to get lost in the tea leaf-reading and data-crunching of this long-awaited showdown is the why behind such widespread interest in process and participation, which extends well beyond the polls themselves. Malaysia has seen heightened mobilization since 2008, if not since Reformasi in the late 1990s—part of why the unusually prolonged run-up to the polls has seemed so, well, long. This more sustained mobilization represents a true trend toward “democratization” in Malaysia, beyond the mere act of voting. Not that voting is unimportant. Former prime minister (and now voluble crank) Mahathir Mohamad insisted that democracy means voting once every five years, thereby giving the government a mandate to rule as it sees fit. Over the longue durée of his premiership, however, voices from a burgeoning civil society, as well as opposition political parties, challenged that reading. Earlier on, Malaysians voiced a wide range of political views and claims, on university campuses, in community organizations, in newspapers, and more. Part of the ruling National Front’s, then Mahathir’s own, consolidation of control from the 1970s on involved tamping down those voices—making contestation seem both needless and inappropriate. Even setting aside the effects of laws curbing press, speech, and association, conventional wisdom suggested Malaysians did indeed lose the taste or habit for political action. Developments over the past fifteen years, and especially a sustained surge since shortly before 2008’s electoral tsunami swept opposition candidates into federal and state office, indicate otherwise. The infrastructure for this surge includes a combination of headline-grabbing mass mobilization and determined efforts by more professionalized social movement organizations, linked symbiotically with parties of the opposition People’s Alliance coalition. Ongoing mass movements—Bersih, the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections; the Hindu Rights Action Force, HINDRAF; the environmentalist Himpunan Hijau, or Green Assembly—have articulated clear policy demands to all parties seeking their votes. Other initiatives have built up skills for engagement and critical analysis within the general public, such as NGO Pusat KOMAS’s Freedom Film Fest, now in its seventh year, or the human rights forum/collective LoyarBurok and election-information offshoot UndiInfo. Malaysians overseas have been increasingly energized, too, not least around the elections themselves. The Malaysian Forum, for instance, brings together hundreds of expatriate Malaysians, mostly undergraduates, for ongoing discussions and periodic conferences. (Most recently, in what I think is a first, Singapore hauled up several locally-based Malaysians carrying placards urging fellow Malaysians in Singapore—numbering at least several hundred thousand—to go home to vote.) And as noted above, election monitoring efforts themselves suggest the extent of popular determination to make democracy meaningful. For instance, Bersih has launched its own volunteer election-watch effort, Pemantau Pilihan Raya Rakyat (the People’s Election Watch, or Jom Pantau—loosely, Let’s Monitor!), supplementing an “official” such effort by four state-selected, but independent, organizations; the Centre for Independent Journalism, National Institute for Democracy and Electoral Integrity, and survey organization the Merdeka Centre have joined forces for an electoral information effort, Info Pilihanraya Malaysia, including an offshoot, “Watching the Watchdog” media-monitoring component; and Facebook pages, Twitter hashtags, and other crowd-sourcing tools are collecting images, complaints, and other information about the conduct of the campaign and polls. And then there are the media. Online media are now among the primary sources of political news at least among younger voters, surveys suggest (and about half of Malaysian voters are under forty); around two-thirds of Malaysians overall have internet access and half have Facebook accounts, where even if they do not “like” political sites, they are apt to encounter political posts and forwarded news items. Independent radio stations, such as Radio Free Malaysia and Radio Free Sarawak, have impact beyond where internet is likely to reach (albeit both recently jammed). Mainstream media are sycophantically pro-government, to an extent likely to turn off even moderately skeptical voters, so availability of these other sources of news inherently changes the terms of political debate. Moreover, these channels may not just supplement, but retool, the in-person, party-based networks through which Malaysians are typically conscientized and mobilized, not least to vote. Whichever side emerges the winner on May 5, these deeper, secular trends will not simply stop short. Rather, they suggest we read these polls more as signpost than destination, capturing rather than determining the character of its polity today.

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. Japan gets aggressive on deflation. The Bank of Japan surprised investors Thursday by unveiling aggressive easy-money policies to stimulate the Japanese economy, under newly installed central bank chief Haruhiko Kuroda. This is a huge change for the historically conservative bank, which will double its holdings of government bonds—a program 60 percent larger than the Federal Reserve’s QE4 bond-buying program, relative to GDP. The plan, dubbed “Abenomics” after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is Japan’s toughest attempt yet to combat deflation and a high yen, potentially stimulating Japanese exports. In response, the Nikkei 225 Stock Average surged 4.7 percent to its highest level since August 2008, and the yen hit a three-and-a-half year low of 97.21 against the dollar on Friday. 2. North Korea…again: The hits just keep on coming. Early this week, Pyongyang announced that it would restart its plutonium reactor and increase production of nuclear weapons material. Meanwhile, North Korea and the United States have continued shifting military assets on the Peninsula in anticipation of a conflict. On Friday, North Korea issued a warning to foreign embassies in Pyongyang saying that it cannot guarantee the safety of embassy staff after April 10. The rising tensions have taken their toll on South Korea, with foreign investors talking about moving production elsewhere; South Korean stocks fell 1.64 percent on Friday. 3. Bird flu returns. Chinese authorities confirmed the death of a sixth person with the avian-borne virus H7N9 today. The government slaughtered 20,000 birds in Shanghai in response to the discovery of pigeons infected with H7N9. As of now there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission; so far, there have been fourteen reported cases of the virus, all of which have occurred in eastern China. The Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report has a great collection of photos of China’s bird flu battle. 4. Continued fighting in Myanmar. Dozens are dead in Myanmar as violence between Muslims and Buddhists has increased steadily over the past two weeks. Ethnic minorities in Kachin and other areas plagued with violence represent one-third of the Burmese population and live mainly in resource-rich borderlands. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter expressed concern over the violence today, fearing that the country’s historic opening last year is in jeopardy. 5. Malaysia dissolves its Parliament. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced on Wednesday that he is dissolving parliament ahead of an upcoming general election. This move could lead to an unprecedented win by the opposition in a country where the National Front coalition has been in power for 56 years. The upcoming election, to be held on April 27, is expected to be the closest ever amid concerns over corruption.

This past week, Thailand’s government made the surprising announcement that it would launch talks with the insurgent organization National Revolution Front (BRN) in the south, with the discussions focused on achieving peace in the south. This marked the first time Bangkok had opened talks with any insurgent organization in the south since the violence flared up again more than a decade ago. Previously, many Thai leaders had insisted that even opening formal talks with an insurgent organization would be providing the insurgents with the kind of status they did not deserve, and possibly would open the door to significant autonomy for the three southern provinces. Allowing such autonomy would challenge the very foundation of the modern Thai government, which has always insisted on a unitary Thailand that allows little room for ethnic, religious, and geographical minorities. Since only a few weeks ago many prominent Thai scholars were still insisting that the Yingluck government would never give up this notion of a unitary state and even attempt to invest the prime minister’s prestige in talks, the announcement this week is a major step forward. In addition, the willingness to trust Malaysia as a potential interlocutor also shows the kind of risk-taking and bold thought on the south that had long been absent in Bangkok. Yet there remain many significant hurdles to real peace in the south. As noted by Don Pathan in The Nation, it remains very unclear whether the BRN group really can speak for large numbers of younger insurgents, who seem to have allegiance to no one leader and operate in nearly autonomous and fragmented cells. It is not even clear whether BRN, as the Thai southern command insisted this week, is even a major player in the southern unrest. Does the coordinating committee of BRN really call the shots in the south, as has been alleged by some analysts? Since the Thai government has been talking to a wide range of insurgent groups in the south, and any real peace will require the signing on of all these organizations, why not bring more than one group to the talks in Malaysia? Bangkok says it hopes that, by reaching an agreement with BRN, other insurgent groups will then come to the table and sign on. But while Bangkok might be able to reach a deal with BRN without making major concessions such as special status for the three provinces in the south, it is unlikely to lure other groups to the table that way.

Today Asia Times has an excellent overview of the political fallout from this past weekend’s large protest in Kuala Lumpur, which focused on reforming election laws. The turnout, as Asia Times noted, was far higher than the government expected (though figures of size were of course debated). What’s more, the fact that it was largely peaceful, and then resulted at the end of the protest in the use of excessive force by police against demonstrators, will cut into the image of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak as a reformer, an image he has worked hard to cultivate in the past two years, and which is critical to his election prospects as the prime minister is far more popular personally than his party is. Any serious dents in Najib’s popularity, thus, will be critical to the election, since his party is unlikely to be able to win over voters who have not made up their mind; only Najib’s personal attractiveness seems to be able to win these voters back from the opposition. Now, it appears Najib is likely to delay new elections until at least the summer, to try to give himself time to reburnish his reputation. Though Najib has instituted some important reforms, including attempting to change the national economic model and changing the Internal Security Act, his problem will remain that, because he is linked to the ruling party —and its election irregularities, its pork, its control of the print media, and its still-smoldering scandal involving graft in defense contracting—he is never going to seem as reformist as the opposition, and he may not even have good control of his own forces. Meanwhile, in order to win the election Najib will also have to continue to appeal to the hard-core ethnic Malay base, which disdains many of his proposed reforms, and which has much to lose from real changes in the affirmative action programs. As Asia Times and other reports noted, the protests last weekend drew sizable numbers of young Malaysians, and it also attracted a broad range of protesters including Malays, Chinese, and Indians. These young people will eventually be the future of Malaysian politics, and even if the ruling coalition holds it together to win again in the upcoming election, the long-term trends do not look favorable for the United Malays National Organisation and its allies.  

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was acquitted Monday morning in Kuala Lumpur on sodomy charges -- the second time he has faced such charges in two decades. The decision was frankly a surprise to nearly everyone who follows Malaysia, and to most Malaysian opposition politicians; nearly all expected that Anwar would be sent to jail again, so as clear the way for the current government’s re-election campaign (Several Malaysian opinion leaders I spoke with just before the verdict were convinced it would go against Anwar). Shockingly, it took the judge only two minutes to deliver the verdict. What does this mean? For one, it could mean that Malaysia’s courts, sensing that the government does not have the chokehold over power it once did, are feeling the political winds, as has happened to some extent in Thailand where courts have suddenly become more sympathetic to Thaksin Shinawatra’s ex-wife. Or it could mean that the Najib government decided that Anwar’s case, though it seemed to cripple the opposition leader, was actually working against the government by undermining the image of reform it was trying to present to the world, to investors, and to Malaysia’s youth. So, the government may have actually pushed the judiciary to end the case quietly. Only a few minutes after the decision Malaysia’s Information Ministry was trumpeting the acquittal as proof of Malaysia’s political openness. Or, in the best-case scenario, the judges didn’t bend to any political winds at all. It could mean that the reforms that the Najib government has pushed for – greater openness, an end to the Internal Security Act, and some degree of separation of powers –are actually being internalized and making a difference. Perhaps the judge made a decision simply on the merits of the case, which were blatantly ridiculous and never would even have come to trial in a completely free system.