Multiculturalism and Malaysia’s (Semi-) Democracy: Movements for Electoral Reform in an Evolving Ethno-Political Landscape

Abstract

In September 2011, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Tun Razak, announced that the Internal Security Act (ISA) was to be repealed in order to make Malaysia ‘the best democracy in the world’ (Bernama, 2011; cf. LFL, 2012). The ISA allowed for renewable two-year periods of detention without trial and was perhaps the most draconian piece of legislation in Malaysia (Fritz and Flaherty, 2003). The ISA, along with a draft of other pieces of legislation including but not limited to the Official Secrets Act, the Police Act and the University and University Colleges Act, contributed to Malaysia being described by academic observers since the late 1980s and 1990s as being a pseudo- or semi-democracy (for example, Zakaria, 1989; Crouch, 1993; Case, 2001; in October 2013, detention without trial was reapproved under Najib; Associated Press, 2013). More recent studies have continued to describe Malaysia as authoritarian despite having some of the trappings of democracy, with descriptors including ‘Electoral Authoritarianism’ (Abbott, 2011) and an ‘Electoral One-Party State’ (Wong and Norani, 2009).KeywordsEthnic IdentityOpposition PartiElectoral ReformEthnic ViolenceSoutheast Asian StudyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.