Society
Dangers of democracy
Published 13 March 2008
Proponents of liberal democracy so eager for Anwar should realise that he is playing a dangerous game
"In some countries the opposition cannot win, but we are not like that." The words of Dr Mahathir, Malaysia's longest-serving prime minister, never rang truer than when the results of the recent elections came in. Mahathir's hand-picked successor, Abdullah Badawi, led the ruling coalition, the Barisan Nasional (BN), to its worst result since independence 50 years ago. The BN still has a simple majority, but it is in crisis after the opposition quadrupled its tally of MPs from 19 to 82.
Gone was the crucial two-thirds majority the BN needed to amend the constitution. Gone was BN control over four of the country's 13 states, as was any hope of regaining the one state previously held by the opposition. Gone, too, was the longest-serving (self-serving, many would say) cabinet minister and head of the Malaysian Indian Congress, Samy Vellu, one of four cabinet members to lose their seats.
Badawi gambled on holding elections just before the de facto opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, was allowed to stand for public office again. He lost spectacularly, and Keadilan, the reform party set up as a vehicle for the former deputy prime minister, jailed under Mahathir, emerged as the biggest opposition party in parliament.
It's bad news for Badawi. But is it bad news for Malaysia? The election should silence critics who called the country a democracy in name only. The stranglehold of racial politics whereby three main parties delivered to the BN the votes of the Malays, Chinese and Indians (in turn roughly 60, 30 and 10 per cent of the population) has been loosened, allowing hope that a politics of ideas and principles might one day replace that of race. In Penang State the opposition DAP (Democratic Action Party) won, and the Chinese-led party's support came from an unexpected quarter. "Even the Malays voted DAP!" was one text circulating among astonished Malaysians.
"The government needed a kick up the butt" was another, expressing widespread dismay at the performance of Badawi, whose affability barely cloaks weakness, indecisiveness and unwillingness to confront the corruption he had promised to root out. (It didn't help that his closest adviser is his son-in-law.) The tens of thousands who attended protest rallies held by Bersih, a "clean-up public life" group, and the Hindu Rights Action Force in Kuala Lumpur last year were dismissed by ministers as "troublemakers". Now a fair few of those irritants are MPs.
That democracy has dealt such a blow to a ruling elite grown arrogant and incompetent may be cause for cheer. So, too, may the fact that a free and fearless internet has shown up the censorship and bias of government-controlled media.
But democrats should be wary of what they wish for. Anwar has been fawned on by the liberal west since his sacking and jailing on trumped-up charges in 1999; his name was even connected with the job of UN secretary general. But the company he keeps deserves to stem the tide of sycophancy. His opposition coalition includes an Islamic fundamentalist party, PAS, that approves of amputation for thieves and thinks there are lessons to be learned from Hezbollah. Previously in control of only rural Kelantan, where it required women to wear headscarves, instituted separate lines at supermarkets for men and women, and banned gambling, nightclubs and rock concerts, PAS will now be in charge of two more states.
Further success would be disastrous for a country that has been both a Muslim state and a multiracial, multi-religious democracy since independence - a record no other can match (Turkey is a secular, not an Islamic, state) - and in which sharia courts only have jurisdiction over Muslims, and even then strictly for marriage, divorce and so on.
Any advance by PAS, whose constituency is almost entirely Malay (Malays make up the vast majority of Muslims), may be a sign of a healthy electoral process, but is a setback for Buddhists, Hindus, Confucians, Christians and animists, for Chinese, Indians and indigenous tribes - for anyone who does not sign up to PAS's hardline agenda. Proponents of liberal democracy so eager for Anwar should realise that he is playing a dangerous game, one that could result in increased democracy but a reduction in liberty. The west needs to think long and hard about just who its friends should be in a region that contains more Muslims than the entire Arab Middle East. If the day comes when it rues having spurned the more pluralistic and liberal managed democracy of Dr Mahathir in favour of so-called reformers who ally themselves with medieval theocrats, it will almost certainly be too late.
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