Malay Dominance and Opposition Politics in Malaysia

Abstract

On 2 September 1998, almost a year after the financial meltdown afflicted the Southeast Asian region, the economic fallout in Malaysia became intertwined with a political crisis when Anwar Ibrahim was sacked from his posts as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance. A day later, he was also voted out of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO). From 5 September until his arrest on 20 September, Anwar took the initiative to go on the political offensive. He launched a Malaysian version of the Indonesian reformasi, organizing and leading a series of hugely popular meetings renouncing korupsi, kronyisma, and nepotisma (corruption, cronyism, and nepotism, or KKN), among other things, and demanding the resignation of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the Prime Minister. Earlier on the day that he was arrested, Anwar led a huge demonstration, estimated to have gathered between 35,000 to 100,000 people, in Kuala Lumpur. Even after his arrest on 20 September 1998, regular street demonstrations persisted such that they became a feature of the Malaysian political landscape.1 That Malays constituted by far the overwhelming majority of those who participated in the demonstrations was indicative of the deep split in the community arising from the Mahathir-Anwar break-up. The full impact of the split in the community was evidently felt in the November 1999 general election. Although the Barisan Nasional (BN, or National Front) retained its two-thirds majority, UMNO suffered a dramatic setback as it lost considerable Malay support.2 One reason why UMNO fared poorly in the election was that, for the first time, the disparate opposing forces managed to unite to form a single opposition party, the Barisan Alternatif ( A, or Alternative Front) ,3 to challenge the BN. The formation of BA and its performance in the 1999 election gave hope that Malaysian politics might finally move beyond the BN's brand of ethnic politicking. The large Malay vote for the opposition was interpreted as signifying a move away from the ethnic-based issues to that of the reformaste universal ones,4 for example, human rights, environmental degradations, eradicating KKN, independence of the judiciary, and so on. The reformaste universal issues,