Assessing Political Dynamics in Contemporary Malaysia: Implications for Democratic Change

Surain Subramaniam

doi:10.16995/ane.12

Abstract

This article examines political dynamics in Malaysia and assesses the prospects for change in the direction of greater political liberalization. It focuses on the 12th General Election of 2008 and its implications for opportunities and challenges for liberal democratic change in Malaysia. It discusses the role of the internet-based new media in shaping an emerging public sphere, and some factors affecting the changing role of non-Malay voters in the political process. This article argues that democratization in Malaysia is already occurring, albeit at a gradual pace; it is being pushed by the new political forces of civil society actors, newly empowered opposition parties, and the internet-based media. The boundaries of this emerging democratic space is simultaneously being shaped and contested by the political competition between status-quo and reformist forces in this society. Some institutional changes have expanded the parameters of democratic space, although the entrenched dominant institutions of the ruling regime continue to wield sufficient amounts of institutional capacity to subvert any consolidation of these democratic changes for now.

Highlights

This article examines political dynamics in Malaysia and assesses the prospects for change in the direction of greater political liberalization
By circumventing the current dominant institutions that represent the mainstream media in Malaysia, new media is creating a new democratic institution. To summarize, these are some of the institutional changes that have swept across the political landscape in Malaysia in the wake of the 12 GE: (1) There is a higher level of voter choice differentiation.[50]
This is certainly true for non-Malay (Chinese and Indian) voters, but this is the case for Malay voters, who have three choices from which to choose: the status-quo option in United Malays National Organization (UMNO), and two different offerings within the opposition coalition, a liberal choice in PKR, and a more conservative alternative in PAS.[51] (2) For the first time in recent political history, there is an increasingly viable two-party coalition system in Malaysia, with the BN coalition parties having to face a nascent “shadow government” in the Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Coalition)