After 50 years of independence, Malaysia has still not worked out important identity issues and is now struggling with the rise of blogging and desire for free speech.
Malaysia is approaching the fiftieth anniversary of its independence from Britain. It has spent much of the time since then promoting its bumiputeras – ‘sons of the soil’ literally, which is the conventional form for referring to ethnic Malays – at the expense of the less numerous ethnic Chinese and Indians who are the other major components of the population. The ruling party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) is based quite explicitly on ethnic grounds. Opposition to the ethnic basis of governance is suppressed under a range of legislation and social prohibitions. For example, the Akujanji is a pledge of loyalty to the government which all students are obliged to utter and which is criticized by opponents for being a means of suppressing political discourse.
There has recently been a mini-wave of criticism of the government and its policies, partly stimulated by various blunders made by government leaders and partly because of the rise of political blogging and other manifestations of the non-mainstream media in the country. In the many years during which Malaysia was dominated by Dr Mahathir Mohammad, it was established as something of a consensus that ethnicity and religion were really better not discussed. Malaysia was a country in which Muslims predominated for sure, but it was by no means an Islamic country based on Sharia law. In this way, the different sectors of the population could more or less rub along with each other, albeit that Malay, Chinese and Indian tended to stick within their own circles. This is all now changing, not least because of the retirement of Dr Mahathir, whose massive presence off-stage no longer inhibits his would-be successors from attempting to make their own mark.
One of the more notable of these is Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak, who has hit the headlines in problematic ways recently. Sensationally, he has been linked to suspects in the murder of a Mongolian model who may or may not have had a lover in a very senior position. The court case surrounding the model continues and the public sits agog for the latest daily sensation. Najib has also been courting controversy by referring to Malaysia as an Islamic state, perhaps in an attempt to redirect attention away from the murder trial. Coming on the heels of heart-wrenching court cases that forbid Malaysian citizens from pursuing the religion of their choice, this has caused considerable debate and, where it has not been suppressed, dissent.
UMNO has largely managed to avoid race riots and ethnic conflicts for the first fifty years of independence. Can it continue to do so?
