Malaysia– towards a topology of an electoral one-party state

This article was downloaded by: [Monash University South Africa] On: 14 March 2011 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 918148218] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 3741 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Democratization Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713634863 Malaysia - towards a topology of an electoral one-party state Chin-Huat Wonga; James China; Norani Othmanb Monash University, b Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), a Online publication date: 05 October 2010 To cite this Article Wong, Chin-Huat , Chin, James and Othman, Norani(2010) 'Malaysia - towards a topology of an electoral one-party state', Democratization, 17: 5, 920 — 949 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13510347.2010.501179 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2010.501179 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. 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The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. Democratization Vol. 17, No. 5, October 2010, 920 –949 Malaysia – towards a topology of an electoral one-party state Chin-Huat Wonga, James China∗ and Norani Othmanb a Monash University, Malaysia Campus; bUniversiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) (Received 10 July 2009; final version received 7 January 2010) Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 For the first time in 51 years of independence, Malaysia’s ruling coalition Barisan Nasional (National Front, BN) under the weak leadership of Abdullah Badawi was denied its customary parliamentary two-third majority in the 2008 elections. The three major opposition parties, which formed the Pakatan Rakyat (The People’s Alliance, PR) after the elections, increased the number of opposition-held state governments from one to five. The opposition had never held more than two state governments at any one time.1 For many practitioners and students of Malaysian politics, the 2008 poll means the birth of a long overdue ‘two-party system’, where two multiethnic coalitions contest for power and alternate in running the country. After all, two similar attempts to build a Malay-dominated second coalition to rival the ruling coalition dominated by the ethno-nationalist United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) were made in the 1990 and 1999 elections by former UMNO leaders who lost in their party in-fighting. Sadly, the coalitions built did not survive even the next elections. We argue that such optimism may be misplaced due to a failure to appreciate the ‘electoral one-party state’ nature of Malaysia.2 Despite having held 13 national elections without failure, and having almost no incidence of in- or post-election violence, neither a military coup nor ‘people’s power’, Malaysia has never been anywhere close to being a ‘consolidated democracy’, 52 years after joining what Huntington called the second wave of democratization.3 For Linz and Stepan, a consolidated democracy requires not only a government with de facto authority to generate policy and exclusive de jure power, but also that ‘this government comes to power that is the direct result of a free and popular vote’. In other words, democracy has to become ‘the only game in town’.4 Keywords: Malaysia; one-party state; opposition parties; two-party system; United Malays National Organisation; consolidated democracy 1. Introduction The ‘democratic’ status of Malaysia is plagued by two issues: (a) that the elections have not been free and fair5; and (b) that it has never experienced party alternation ∗ Corresponding author. Email: [email protected], [email protected],anioth@ pkrisc.cc.ukm.my ISSN 1351-0347 print/ISSN 1743-890X online # 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13510347.2010.501179 http://www.informaworld.com Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 Democratization 921 since the first Home Rule elections in 1955. The two issues are certainly not independent from each other, resulting in various labels of ‘quasi-democracy’ by Zakaria, ‘semi-democracy’ and ‘pseudo-democracy’ by Case, ‘soft authoritarianism’ by Means, ‘illiberal democracy’ by Bell, Brown and Jayasuria, ‘ambiguous regimes’ by Crouch and ‘electoral authoritarianism’ by Ufen.6 We believe the most accurate characterization of Malaysia’s political system is ‘electoral authoritarian regime’.7 This categorization however captures a host of hybrid regimes that produces ‘elections without democracy’, from Malaysia and Singapore with entrenched ruling parties, Russia and Belorussia with strongman presidents, Kuwait and Jordan with commanding monarchies to Iran with a domineering clergy. If ‘electoral/competitive authoritarianism’ is to be treated as a major category in itself alongside ‘liberal democracy’, ‘electoral democracy’ and ‘closed authoritarianism’, then it may warrant more classification effort. After all, the categorization of closed authoritarian regimes into subtypes like personal dictatorship, military juntas, (de jure) one-party states and absolute monarchy, has shed light on understanding the trajectory of democratic transition.8 While we do not intend to offer a full typology for sub-types of electoral authoritarianism, we believe fleshing out the logic of the ‘electoral one-party state’ subtype, which Malaysia belongs to, will help understanding both the democratization prospect of Malaysia and future comparative analysis that may include other countries like Singapore and Cambodia, where the ruling parties have been winning elections since the foundation of the political system and are often equated with the state. It is not unforeseeable if China and Vietnam join the rank of electoral one-party states should they in the future choose to introduce elections only to maintain their dominance and keep democracy out. ‘Electoral one-party states’ are the intermediate regime type between democratic one-party predominance and de jure one-party states. On one hand, their uninterrupted rule, regularly renewed by elections, may suggest resemblance to one-party predominant democracies such as Japan9 and India before the 1990s. On the other hand, they might well be comparable to the African one-party states built by nationalist parties ‘seen to embody the aspirations of state’.10 Three characteristics may help to identify an electoral one-party state in relation to its two typological neighbours. The first is the party system and its freedom, all three have a dominant party but they would take a different attitude towards genuine opposition parties. While a one-party-predominant democracy permits them and a de jure one-party state prohibits them, an electoral one-party state would allow but constrain them. The second feature of an electoral one-party state is controlled or manipulated elections, when a one-party-predominant democracy holds free and fair elections and a de jure one-party state has no elections at all. The third parameter is the state – party boundary, which is non-existent in a de jure one-party state, clearly distinguished in a one-party-predominant democracy while blurred in an electoral one-party state (see Table 1). These criteria imply that changes from one regime type to another are incremental, focus on procedures and allow democratic assessment which can be 922 C.-H. Wong et al. Table 1. Distinguishing political systems with a dominant party. Regime Regime subtype Party system and Free and fair its freedom elections Separation of state and party Authoritarianism De jure oneparty state Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 Democracy A dominant No elections No separation party, and real oppositions not allowed Electoral oneA dominant Controlled or Blurred party state party, and real manipulated boundary oppositions elections between state constrained and party One-party A dominant Free and fair Clear separation predominance party, but real elections oppositions unconstrained somewhat separated from a particular outcome. In other words, winning elections does not mean a democratic mandate but neither does ruling with a huge majority for a long period indicate authoritarianism. The distinction between an electoral one-party state and a one-party-predominant democracy is particularly important. Following Sartori,11 a predominant party is one which generally wins an absolute majority of seats in at least four consecutive elections. Pempel12 argued that in these ‘uncommon democracies’, the dominant party ‘plays (the) game well enough to keep itself in power so that it can continue enacting and implementing policies which reinforce its power base. If it plays this complex game particularly cleverly, it may unleash a “virtuous cycle” that will propel it into semipermanent governance.’ The line therefore to be drawn is that such a ‘virtuous cycle’ must fall short of fusing the state and the party, in ideological, administrative or redistributive sense. It should also be stressed that ‘electoral one-party states’ capture better the characteristics of political systems like Malaysia and Singapore than Sartori’s ‘hegemonic party system’13 on two grounds. First, unlike Mexico under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) or Poland under the communists with an authoritarian origin, Malaysian and Singaporean political systems were modelled on and meant to function like Western democracies. Secondly, these political systems depend on sophisticated electoral manipulation such as gerrymandering or malapportionment of constituencies as much as if not more than repression. Both characteristics give these electoral one-party states greater legitimacy, both domestically and internationally, than repressive hegemonic states could enjoy. In the next four sections, we will revisit Malayan/Malaysian history to understand the growth of the predominant party, analyse the systemic factors which contribute to its electoral strength, and investigate the fusion of state and party, and examine the prospect of her fragile democratization. The detailed account of the Democratization 923 party system evolution here is meant to build a case study to inform on future comparative works. Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 2. The emergence and growth of a dominant party Notwithstanding the banning of the defunct Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) and the selective disapproval of party formation on some others, Malaysians are arguably free to form a party and participate in elections. Six to fifteen parties regularly participate in elections in Malaysia, and two to eight of them have won representation in the federal legislature (see Table 2). When the relative size of the parties was taken into account, the Effective Number of Elective Parties (ENEP) and Effective Number of Legislative Parties (ENLP)14 shrunk dramatically. With the exception of the 1969 elections, Malaysia has effectively had less than three elective parties and less than two parliamentary parties. The discrepancy between ENEP and ENLP indicates the under-representation of smaller parties. While obtaining respectively 10– 21% of votes in most elections, the largest Malay and non-Malay opposition parties were normally rewarded with only 3– 14% of the seats. Parti Negara in 1955 and Parti Sosialis Rakyat Malaya (PSRM) in 1974 were denied representation at all despite winning 8% and 4% of the popular vote. This is very much the consequence of the electoral system, which will be detailed in the next section. Except for the 1969 elections, the ruling coalitions, the alliance (1955 – 1974) and later the expanded Barisan Nasional (BN) have always won more than half the popular vote and more than two-thirds of parliamentary seats. Even when the allied opposition managed to capture 47% and 43% of votes, as in 1990 and 1999, they could only get 30% and 23% of seats. This makes party alternation hardly imaginable if not outright impossible until the third attempt in 2008. Undoubtedly, Malaya/Malaysia has a dominant party which has won elections since 1955. A party may dominate politics through either or both of these possible paths, democratically or otherwise: (a) winning support in elections; (b) co-opting other parties before or after elections. To profile the development of the electoral one-party state, we shall look at the evolution of the party system in this section and analyse the electoral dynamics in the next one. The competition for dominance, 1952 –1969 The demands for self-government and independence in post-war Malaya saw the flourishing of political parties even before first elections were introduced at the municipal level in December 1951. However, many of the political organizations co-existed with each other in very fluid forms, characterized by amalgamation and schism. The emergence of a dominant party should therefore be seen as a product of rigorous electoral and non-electoral competition. Two developments had substantially shaped Malaya’s political landscape before the first federal elections in 1955. The first was the launching of the Election 1955 1959 1964 1969∗∗∗ 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1995 1999 2004 2008 Alliance/BN Largest Malay-based opposition∗ Largest non-Malaybased opposition∗∗ Scalar number of parties Effective number of parties Vote Seat Vote Seat Vote Seat Elective Legislative Elective Legislative 81.68% 51.77% 58.53% 46.29% 60.73% 57.23% 60.54% 57.28% 53.38% 65.16% 56.53% 63.85% 51.39% 98.08% 71.15% 85.58% 62.50% 87.66% 84.42% 85.71% 83.62% 70.56% 84.38% 76.68% 90.87% 63.06% 7.88% 21.27% 14.64% 20.91% 3.97% 15.48% 14.46% 15.50% 15.06% 10.19% 14.99% 15.69% 19.00% 0.00% 12.50% 8.65% 8.33% 0.00% 3.25% 3.25% 0.56% 4.44% 3.13% 13.99% 2.74% 13.96% 0.48% 12.91% 16.08% 11.96% 18.30% 19.13% 19.58% 21.00% 17.61% 12.00% 12.53% 9.94% 14.07% 0.00% 7.69% 1.92% 9.03% 5.84% 10.39% 5.84% 13.56% 11.11% 4.69% 5.18% 5.48% 12.61% 7 6 7 10 7 16 11 9 9 7 10 9 7 2 6 6 8 4 4 3 3 5 5 5 4 4 1.48 2.99 2.54 3.56 2.44 2.58 2.35 2.52 2.90 2.19 2.69 2.23 2.94 1.04 1.89 1.35 2.41 1.29 1.38 1.35 1.39 1.92 1.39 1.64 1.21 2.21 Sources: Election reports, various years. Data input and calculation errors, where identified, corrected. Notes:∗ The largest Malay-based opposition party based on vote shares has been PAS for most of the time, except in 1955 (Parti Negara), 1974 (PSRM), 1990 and 1995 (S46).∗∗ The largest non-Malay based opposition party has been DAP since 1969. In 1955 it was the Labour Party and Socialist Front in 1959 and 1964. ∗∗∗ The result here covers those elections suspended after the 1969 ethnic riots and resumed in 1970 and 1971. The Malayan Alliance (UMNO, MCA, MIC), the Sarawak Alliance (Bumiputera and SCA) as well as the two Sabah Alliance parties which ran under their respective party labels (USNO and SCA) are regarded and counted as a single party. C.-H. Wong et al. Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 924 Table 2. The dominance of the Alliance/Barisan Nasional, 1955–2008. Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 Democratization 925 Malayan Union in 1946, a unitary state incorporating all the British protectorates (the nine Malay states) and colonies (Penang and Malacca) in the Peninsula which gave equal citizenship to Malays and non-Malays. The divide between these two broad and internally-pluralistic ethnic categories, already pronounced before the war with the growth of nationalist thought, had gained saliency in the war which pitted the generally anti-Japanese Chinese against the largely pro-Japanese Malays. The fear of dominance by non-Malays, whose number almost equalled the Malays, led to the United Malays National Organisations (UMNO) in May 1946. With strong support by the Malay rulers, UMNO had within three months forced the British to agree to abandon the Malayan Union, and replace it with the Federation of Malaya or Persekutuan Tanah Melayu (Federation of the Malay Lands). Although UMNO was an amalgamation of ideologically diverse Malay groups, the aristocrats under the leadership of Dato’ Onn Jaafar emerged to be its driving force. Charging UMNO of ‘dictatorial methods’, the left-wing Malay National Party (MNP) soon withdrew. The Malay Left, under the banner of Pusat Tenaga Rakyat (PUTERA), later joined force with their non-Malay allies – Westernized Left and conservative Chinese businessmen – in the All-Malaya Council of Joint Action (AMCJA) to stage a hartal in October 1947, to halt the economy in protest of the new Federation. Their failure to stop the new settlement only indirectly confirms UMNO’s strength.15 The second development was the communist insurgency launched in 1948 to fight against colonial rule and capitalism, the success of which would have produced a de jure one-party state. The communist insurgency has unintentionally strengthened the communal pattern of political representation in Malaya, which explains the multi-ethnic start of the alliance. On one hand, the British-backed and conservative Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) was born in 1948 to compete with the communist for Chinese support. The Malayan Indian Congress (MIC), a founding member of AMCJA also distanced itself from the communist sympathizers. On the other hand, UMNO’s Dato Onn’ was convinced that his party should be open to all Malayans in pursuit of independence. The rejection of Dato’ Onn’s proposal by other UMNO leaders who did not want to give citizenship to non-Malays led to the exit of the farsighted leader who went on to form the Independence of Malaya Party (IMP) in 1951. IMP was however defeated badly by an ad-hoc local-level coalition of UMNO and MCA in the 1952 municipal elections of Kuala Lumpur, the capital city. This surprise landslide had two far-reaching impacts: first, the formalization of the UMNO-MCA alliance which attracted MIC as the third member in 1954; secondly, the abandoning of multiethnic politics by Dato’ Onn. By the first federal elections in 1955, the alliance had successfully established itself as the dominant party with a 51– 1 landslide victory. It simply had no realistic alternative as Dato’ Onn’s return to the cause of Malay nationalism through a new outfit Parti Negara won only 8% of votes and no single seat, while the sole Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 926 C.-H. Wong et al. opposition member came from Pan-Malaya Islamic Party (PAS), which sprang out as a religious faction in UMNO.16 The victory gave the alliance the mandate to negotiate Malaya’s independence from the British, eventually winning it on 31 August 1957. The alliance’s electoral and parliamentary dominance was reduced by both the strengthened PAS and new centre-left parties representing the non-Malays in 1959. Its fortune was soon revitalized by the formation of Malaysia which was the Alliance Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman’s brainchild but perceived as a neo-colonialism project and opposed by most opposition parties. The pro-Malaysia mood triggered by the Indonesian Confrontation against the Malaysia project thus rewarded the young coalition in the 1964 Malayan elections. It should be noted that the alliance had already secured its dominance in the enlarged Federation which increased the number of states from 11 to 14. Sarawak, Sabah, and Singapore were respectively given 24, 16 and 15 seats in the federal Parliament vis-à-vis Malaya’s 104. From the beginning, Sabah has become effectively a ‘one-party’ state when all four parties formed the Sabah Alliance as the sister party of the alliance in Malaya.17 In Sarawak, five parties formed the Sarawak Alliance, with only the Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) staying out. Singapore’s ruling party PAP, however, was not recruited as a state partner of the Malayan Alliance. With the conclusion of elections in the three states in 1963, the alliance’s position marginally improved to 108 out of 159 (67.92%) in the extended Parliament from 74 out of 104 seats (67.31%) in 1959.18 The post-riot coalition governments (1970 – 1973) The 1969 elections, before being suspended in East Malaysia after the 13 May riot, left the Alliance Party in shock. Of the 103 concluded contests in the Peninsula,19 the coalition only won 66 seats with 48.5% of popular votes. UMNO delivered the best performance by carrying through 51 out of 67 seats contested while MCA and MIC won only 13 of 33 and two of three respectively. This was in sharp contrast to the impressive performance of the opposition parties: Democratic Action Party or DAP (13 seats), PAS (12), Gerakan (8) and PPP (4). At the state level, the alliance lost one more state, Penang to Gerakan on top of Kelantan which had been ruled by PAS since 1959. Two other states, Perak and Selangor, saw hung assemblies with the coalition controlling only 19 of 40 and 14 out of 28 seats respectively.20 The 1969 elections practically ended the alliance political order, the ‘consociational democracy’ which Lijphart acclaimed, with both UMNO and its Peninsula allies simultaneously weakened by their Malay and non-Malay rivals.21 Most significantly, the Peninsula vote share of PAS soared by nearly 10% from 14.64% to 23.74%. Many Malays felt let down as independence did not significantly improve their socio-economic status. With only 33.98% of the Peninsula vote share or less than 60% of UMNO-PAS total votes, UMNO’s claim to be the Malays’ sole representatives was now threatened. On the other hand, the non-Malays felt threatened by the increasingly vocal Malay nationalists’ demand for greater Malay dominance Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 Democratization 927 in culture, politics, and economy. However, contrary to the common perception, the Peninsula vote share of the non-Malay-based opposition parties did not surge but remained roughly the same at 1964’s 26%. Thanks to the electoral pact between DAP, Gerakan and PPP, the non-Malay opposition votes were more efficiently translated into seats, which in turn triggered the Malays’ sense of political insecurity. Sino-Malay ethnic riots erupted first in Kuala Lumpur on 13 May and quickly spread to other urban centres. The 13 May riots paved the way for the suspension of Parliamentary rule for about two years, which saw the introduction of more political repression and pro-Malay policies. Based on declassified British documents of intelligence and correspondence, Kua argued that it was a plot of UMNO’s Young Turks to topple PM Tunku who was seen as too accommodating to Chinese interests.22 More important than the inter-generational power struggle within UMNO was the eventual restoration of the party’s dominance through expansion of the ruling coalition to co-opt its rivals. In June and July 1970, the suspended elections resumed respectively in Sabah and Sarawak. While the Sabah Alliance23 won all 16 parliamentary seats, the Sarawak Alliance24 won only seven out of 24 federal seats and 15 out of 48 state seats. With this, the alliance (Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak combined) now controlled only 90 out of 144 seats (62.5%) in the Parliament and enjoyed majority Table 3. Seats gained by major parties in the Parliament and five state assemblies in the 1969–1971 elections. Sarawak Federal state Parliament assembly Alliance UMNO MCA MIC Sabah Alliance Sarawak Alliance Pesaka∗ SUPP∗ SNAP Gerakan∗ PPP∗ PAS∗ PRM DAP Independent Total 90 52 13 2 16 7 2 5 9 8 4 12 13 1 144 15 Penang Perak state state assembly assembly 4 19 16 2 12 1 Kelantan state assembly Selangor state assembly 11 14 15 8 12 12 1 48 1 3 6 24 40 4 19 30 9 1 28 Source: The 1969 Election Report. Notes: ∗ Parties which formed coalition government with the alliance and later joined Barisan Nasional in 1974. Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 928 C.-H. Wong et al. control in only nine out of 13 states (see Table 3).25 This triggered the birth of four coalition governments from 1970 to 1973, orchestrated by Tun Abdul Razak, the Tunku’s successor and de facto prime minister after the 1969 riots. The first three coalition governments saw the absorption of non-Malay opposition parties in Sarawak, Penang and Perak. On 7 July 1970, as the Sarawak state elections returned no clear winner, UMNO officials helped seal a Muslim – Native-Chinese coalition by co-opting the Chinese-based Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP). This prevented a non-Muslim – Native-Chinese government by SUPP and the Dayak-based Sarawak National Party (SNAP). The deal covered federal politics as SUPP would back alliance in the Parliament and was soon given a federal ministership.26 On 13 February 1972, the second coalition government was formed in Penang, with the alliance getting a seat in Penang state cabinet27 and parliamentary support from Gerakan. On 15 April, the third coalition government followed suit in Perak at both state and municipal levels, with the PPP given a state minister position in return for three places given to the alliance in the PPP-controlled Ipoh Municipal Council. The PPP parliamentarians however would remain in opposition.28 On 1 January 1973, Tun Razak completed his cooptation plan when the last opposition state government was ended by an alliance-PAS pact. PAS appointed two alliance state ministers in Kelantan, in exchange for a federal minister post, a state minister post each in Terengganu and Kedah, and a few other senior appointments. These coalition government arrangements not only restored the alliance’s twothird parliamentary majority and brought under its control all 13 state governments, including Kelantan, which defied UMNO since 1959, they laid the foundation for Tun Razak’s new political order. He had three goals: (a) reduction of ‘politicking’ to ensure ethnic harmony and improve the Malays’ economic status; (b) modification of Westminster Democracy to fit better with Malaysia’s socio-political reality; (c) the promotion and maintenance of Malay unity and UMNO’s dominance. In brief, Tun Razak wanted to eliminate political competition. This consideration explains particularly well why the alliance still wanted to pull in PPP and PAS even when support from SUPP and Gerakn had restored its parliamentary two-third majority. But why would the opposition parties want to be co-opted? As a starter, the dominant factions in SUPP, Gerakan and PAS all hoped that a power-sharing pact with the alliance would strengthen their own positions within the party and bring political offices at the federal level.29 However, more importantly, the opposition parties believed that their subnational governments cannot survive without UMNO’s blessing in the post-1969 political climate. For SUPP and PPP, refusal to share power with the alliance might effectively mean choosing to be permanent opposition. In Sarawak, where the last Iban-dominated government was toppled by federal emergency rule, an Iban-Chinese coalition was seen by the SUPP leadership as infeasibile. In Perak, PPP president Dato Sri S.P. Sineevasagam believed that as a federal opposition Democratization 929 Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 party, PPP would not only be barred from ruling the Perak state, even its control of Ipoh municipality would end with the abolition of local elections. For Gerakan and Penang, financial support from the federal government was crucial for their state governments in delivering their electoral promises. Not only did the new Gerakan government in Penang need money for industrialization, the third-term PAS government in Kelantan too was also financially tight. To make the matter worse, the Sedition Act 1971, the 1971 Constitutional Amendment and the 1972 amendment of the Elections Act meant that opposition parties could not campaign freely on their popular issues such as citizenship or use religious symbols in electioneering.30 The grand coalition – Barisan Nasional (1974 – now) On 1 July 1974, the five members of the Alliance Party (UMNO, MCA, MIC, Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu31 and Sabah Alliance) and its new allies SUPP, Gerakan, PPP and PAS formed a permanent coalition that runs in elections on a single slate, Barisan Nasional (BN). Hence, the co-opted opposition parties can no longer compete with the old alliance members or each other as the number of seats are now allocated centrally. Unlike the alliance in the early days, UMNO is the dominant party in BN with no pretence that the partnership is equal or collegial. While the birth of BN did not eliminate the opposition, it did restrict their potential in coalition building. Ironically, the growth of the opposition owes much to the division of UMNO or BN. In 1978, PAS re-emerged as the standard bearer of Malay opposition after UMNO engineered a split in PAS between its party president and Kelantan Chief Minister. However, PAS could not form any official tie with DAP, which had emerged as the sole spokesperson of alienated non-Malays since 1974, until UMNO itself was split. UMNO’s schisms in 1987 and 1998 had given birth to two splinter parties, the Malay-nationalist Semangat 46 Party (46 Spirit Party, S46, 1990 – 1996) and the multiethnic centrist Parti Keadilan Rakyat (People’s Justice Party, PKR, since 1999), and three opposition coalitions: the Gagasan Rakyat-Angkatan Perpaduan Ummah (1990 – 1995/6), Barisan Alternatif (1999 – 2001) and Pakatan Rakyat (since 2008).32 The first two opposition coalitions effectively disintegrated before the next elections, not due to any legal obstacles but indirectly because of the suboptimum electoral payoff for their coalition building. Unlike its predecessors, Pakatan Rakyat was a post-election coalition which formalized the tacit pact between PKR, PAS and DAP. Sensing no future in the opposition, many opposition parties have instead hoped to become UMNO’s partners and join BN. A contemporary example is the Indian Progressive Front (IPF), a splinter party of MIC and once a member of Gagasan Rakyat, which has unwaveringly applied for BN membership for the past two decades. More than any ideological cohesion, the benefits awaiting BN members explains the ruling coalition’s ability to incorporate new social interests and maintain its ‘competitiveness’ vis-à-vis the opposition in the eyes of electorate. 930 C.-H. Wong et al. Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 Within the coalition, members however cannot compete openly against each other, especially UMNO which decides the allocation of seats and public offices. In that sense, the BN itself resembles Sartori’s description of a hegemonic party system in which the hegemonic party allocates administrative, parliamentary and governmental positions to the second-class parties surrounding it.33 3. The construction and maintenance of electoral dominance The ability of a dominant party to eliminate its rivals in elections and/or co-opt them after elections lies in the construction and maintenance of a powerful electoral base. This can be enhanced via a few means: (a) control of enfranchisement; (b) changing of international and administrative boundaries; (c) mal-apportionment and gerrymandering; and (d) other forms of electoral manipulation. Control of enfranchisement The foundation of UMNO’s electoral one-party state after 1969 was partly laid down as early as 1946. As Linz and Stepan have rightly pointed out that ‘without a state, there can be no citizenship; without citizenship, there can be no democracy’, democratization in Malaya/Malaysia was first and foremost a question of citizenship.34 With the replacement of the Malayan Union by the Federation of Malaya, non-Malays could only acquire federal citizenship ‘after fulfilling certain requirements of domicile, language, birth and oath of allegiance’.35 Reflecting the views of UMNO and the Malay rulers, the new political structure was to be more a ‘Malay’ nation state than a ‘Malayan’ one.36 In 1955, ethnic Malays constituted 84% of the Malayan electorate. Only 60% of the Chinese Malayans and 180,000 Indian Malayans had become citizens by September 1952. Only after the liberalization of citizenship, the Malay percentage fell to 56%. However, pressured by PAS to adopt a more pro-Malay policy and worried about the danger of non-Malay support, the UMNO-led alliance government soon moved to tighten the procedure for citizenship application in 1960 and 1962.37 Changes of international and interstate boundaries An alternative to control of enfranchisement is to include or exclude certain population groups through international and administrative boundary changes. This method contributed to the formation of Malaysia in 1963 and later the expulsion of Singapore in 1965. In 1961, Tunku Abdul Rahman proposed a merger of Malaya with four neigbouring British territories: Singapore, North Borneo (present day Sabah), Sarawak and Brunei. The primary consideration for the project was to prevent Singapore from going communist. Tunku saw the island state a potential ‘Cuba’ to Malaya. A merger of only Malaya and Chinese-majority Singapore, however, would upset the ethnic balance and threaten the Malays’ demographic dominance. The native groupings in Sabah and Sarawak were counted as the Malays’ cousins Democratization 931 Table 4. The proportion of population and federal seats allocated for the four constituent states of Malaysia upon its formation in 1963. Territory Population % Seats % Seat %/ population % Malaya Singapore Sarawak Sabah 7919055 1844200 819808 506628 11089691 71.40% 16.63% 7.39% 4.57% 100.00% 104 15 24 16 159 65.41% 9.43% 15.09% 10.07% 100.00% 0.92 0.57 2.04 2.20 Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 Source: Means, Malaysian Politics, 294. and later classified as ‘Bumiputera’ (‘Sons of the soil’), hence restoring the ethnic balance in the Malays’ favour. With Brunei opting to stay out, the federation of Malaysia was finally formed on 16 September 1963 with four entities – Malaya, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak. To ensure the dominance of the Bumiputera, the allocation of parliamentary seats in the new federation favoured Sarawak and Sabah with representation doubling their population weight, while Singapore was given half of what its population share would warrant (see Table 4). Two years later, Malaysia’s boundary was redrawn to effectively protect the alliance’s dominance. Unlike the major parties in Sabah and Sarawak, PAP was not co-opted into the wider alliance. Instead, a Singapore Alliance was formed to challenge unsuccessfully PAP in the 1963 Singapore elections. In retaliation, PAP contested in nine constituencies against MCA in Malaya the following year but only won one seat. UMNO rejected PAP’s expressed wish to replace MCA as its Chinese partner, PAP then moved to form a Pan-Malaysian coalition ‘Malaysian Solidarity Convention’ with four other parties from Malaya and Sarawak. This realignment project attempted to replace ‘Malay Malaysia’ with ‘Malaysian Malaysia’, which like the 1969 elections result later had been used to evoke the Malays’ sense of political insecurity. In the pretext to arrest the escalating ethnic tension, Singapore was expelled by Tunku on 9 August 1965. Partitions can also be made at sub-national level to safeguard electoral powerbases. The 1969 elections returned a hung assembly in Selangor as both the alliance and the entire opposition won the same number of seats. As part of the post-1969 arrangements, Chinese-majority Kuala Lumpur was carved out in 1974 to keep Selangor as a Malay-majority state. The ‘Chinese’ problem was not transferred to other states as the capital city was made a federal territory with no state-level government. Mal-apportionment and gerrymandering of constituencies While control of citizenship and enfranchisement gave UMNO a safe start in the electoral game, this was further strengthened by manipulation of the electoral system. From the beginning, a first-past-the-post electoral system was chosen over some other systems with elements of proportionate representation (PR), Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 932 C.-H. Wong et al. and the Malay-majority rural areas were to be given heavier weighting vis-à-vis non-Malay-dominant urban centres, as quid pro quo for UMNO to agree on liberalization of citizenship for non-Malays. The 1955 delineation set the maximum weighting at two to one, namely a variation of plus or minus 33% from the average constituency population. The bias was later checked by the Reid Commission which limited the disparity to 15% above or below the average size in each state.38 The 15% limit was, however, never implemented as the Constitution was amended in 1962 to annul the fairer delineation of constituencies. Two changes with further implications were also introduced. The first was the reintroduction of the two to one rural weighting. The second grants the Prime Minister the power to table the Election Commission (EC)’s redelineation proposal to the Parliament ‘with or without modifications’, effectively allowing UMNO to redraw boundaries as it desires. In 1973, the Constitution was further amended to remove the power of the EC to apportion parliamentary constituencies amongst the states and completely remove the 50% limit on rural weighting. Mal-apportionment, both inter-state and intra-state, now faces no constitutional constraints. Consequently, the largest constituency was nearly 22 times the smallest in 2004, compared to 3.5 times in 1959. As the largest and the smallest constituencies signal only the range but not the distribution of constituency sizes, the Gini Coefficient39 may be a better indicator. With 0 representing absolute equality and 1 representing absolute inequality, its values for Malayan/Malaysian parliamentary constituencies were only low in 1959 and 1964. The values have remained above or around 0.20 since 1969, suggesting that disproportionality was already severely compromised with the 50% intra-state limit (see Table 5). A scrutiny of Table 5. Mal-apportionment of constituencies in Malaysia, 1955 –2008. Elections 1955 1959 1964 1969 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1995 1999 2004 2008 N, seats 52 104 104 144 154 154 154 177 180 192 193 219 222 N, electorate Indicators min max Mean median Gini Coefficient max/ mean min/ mean 7,835 10,986 12,854 18,302 9,190 9,585 10,724 12,171 14,004 15,849 16,018 5,079 6,608 46,221 35,549 58,261 81,086 51,534 90,611 114,704 81,005 100,488 85,954 98,527 104,185 112,224 24,315 20,940 26,568 31,888 26,019 32,850 39,491 39,350 44,518 46,909 49,689 46,995 49,146 25,511 20,865 25,693 30,163 26,126 30,922 36,592 37,313 41,751 45,126 48,419 44,844 47,598 0.23 0.12 0.13 0.23 0.20 0.24 0.25 0.22 0.22 0.19 0.20 0.21 020 1.90 1.70 2.19 2.54 1.98 2.76 2.90 2.06 2.26 1.83 1.98 2.22 2.28 0.32 0.52 0.48 0.57 0.35 0.29 0.27 0.31 0.31 0.34 0.32 0.11 0.13 Source: Election reports, various years. Democratization 933 Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 Table 6. Malay electoral advantage in Peninsula Malaysia: 1955–2008. Year % Malay in population % Malay in electorate % Malay-majority in constituencies Overrepresentation ratio 1955 1959 1964 1969 1974 1986 1994 1999 2004 2008 49.8 50.0 50.0 52.9 53.2 55.2 58.1 59.3 – – 84.2 57.1 54.4 55.7 57.9 55.3 56.3 56.7 57.1 58.9 96.2 57.7 56.7 57.7 69.3 69.7 67.4 68.1 68.5 68.5 1.14 1.01 1.04 1.04 1.20 1.26 1.20 1.20 1.20 1.16 Source: Adapted from Lim (‘Electoral Politics in Malaysia’, 129, Table 6); the 2004 and 2008 ethnicelectoral data from New Strait Times (19 March 2004 and 25 February 2008). ethnic composition would suggest that for the Peninsula at least, the Malays have been over-represented at 1.20 times what their electorate proportion would warrant (see Table 6). In the Malay heartland, constituencies were mal-apportioned and gerrymandered to discriminate against the Malay-based oppositions. In a detailed case study of the 2002 delimitation exercise in Kedah, Ong and Welsh pointed out that ‘safe areas’ in traditional UMNO strongholds and non-Malay seats were moved into marginal seats with awkward boundary changes not corresponding to administrative divisions.40 The combined effect of the malapportionment, gerrymandering and uneven distribution of party supporters is the severe violation of the ‘one person one vote’ principle. Tables 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 show respectively the vote share, seat share and the seat/vote ratio of the alliance/BN and major opposition parties since 1955. Some opposition parties were always under-represented, while others were simply denied representation despite winning respectable vote shares. The greatest victims of these systemic manipulations were opposition parties, especially the leftist parties like Pekemas and PRM and the Malay-based opposition parties like Parti Negara, PAS, Semangat 46 and Parti Keadilan Rakyat up until 2008, whose supporters tend to be geographically dispersed. Dividing the relative vote/share ratio of the ruling coalition by that of the opposition parties, one gets the number of votes the latter needed to garner to counter a vote for the former. It was 12.25 for the Socialist Front in 1964, 11.39 for Pekemas in 1974, 40.41 for PAS in 1986, 26.08 for PKR in 2004 and, mathematically, infinity for all those parties which failed to gain representation (see Table 8). Such incredible disparities testify to the effectiveness of the systemic manipulation and partly explain why some opposition parties like PPP, Gerakan and SNAP would join BN while others simply could not survive. Elections Alliance /BN 1955 1959 1964 1969 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1995 1999 2004 2008 81.68% 51.77% 58.53% 46.29% 60.73% 57.23% 60.54% 57.28% 53.38% 65.16% 56.53% 63.85% 51.39% PAS∗ PN 4.06% 7.88% 21.27% 2.11% 14.64% 0.36% 20.91% 15.48% 14.46% 15.50% 6.72% 7.30% 14.99% 15.69% 14.36% Labour /SF /PSRM /PRM 0.48% 12.91% 16.08% 1.13% 3.97% 0.63% 0.93% 1.28% 1.01% 0.64% 1.04% 0.24% PPP∗ 0.11% 6.29% 3.40% 3.37% PAP /DAP 2.05% 11.96% 18.30% 19.13% 19.58% 21.09% 17.61% 12.06% 12.53% 9.94% 14.07% Gerakan∗ SNAP∗ 7.47% 2.69% 5.54% Sources: Election Reports, various years. Data input and calculation errors, where identified, corrected. Notes: ∗ Parties which had joined BN or were absorbed into BN at some points in time. 0.41% 0.11% Pekemas S46∗ PBS∗ 15.06% 10.19% 2.29% 3.32% 2.16% PKN /PKR C.-H. Wong et al. Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 934 Table 7.1. Percentage of valid votes in parliamentary contest obtained by major parties, 1955–2008. 5.13% 0.68% 0.01% 11.67% 8.43% 14.36% Elections Alliance /BN 1955 1959 1964 1969 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1995 1999 2004 2008 98.08% 71.15% 85.58% 62.50% 87.66% 84.42% 85.71% 83.62% 70.56% 84.38% 76.68% 90.87% 63.06% PAS∗ PN 1.92% 0.00% 12.50% 0.96% 8.65% 0.00% 8.33% 3.25% 3.25% 0.56% 3.89% 3.65% 13.99% 2.74% 10.36% Labour /SF /PSRM /PRM 0.00% 7.69% 1.92% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% PPP∗ 0.00% 3.85% 1.92% 2.78% PAP /DAP 0.96% 9.03% 5.84% 10.39% 5.84% 13.56% 11.11% 4.69% 5.18% 5.48% 12.6!% Gerakan∗ SNAP∗ 5.56% 6.25% 5.84% Pekemas S46∗ PBS∗ 0.65% 0.00% 0.00% 4.44% 7.78% 3.13% 4.17% 1.55% 0.00% 0.00% PKN/ PKR Democratization Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March Table 7.2. Percentage of parliamentary seats won by major parties, 1955– 2008. 2.59% 0.46% 1396% Sources: Election Reports, various years. Data input and calculation errors, where identified, corrected. Notes: ∗ Parties which had joined BN or were absorbed into BN at some points in time. 935 Elections 1955 1959 1964 1969 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1995 1999 2004 2008 Alliance /BN 1.20 1.37 1.46 1.35 1.44 1.48 1.42 1.46 1.32 1.29 1.36 1.42 1.23 PAS∗ PN 0.47 0.59 0.59 0.40 0.00 0.45 0.00 0.21 0.22 0.04 0.58 0.50 0.93 0.17 0.72 Labour /SF /PSRM /PRM 0.00 0.60 0.12 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 PPP∗ 0.00 0.61 0.56 0.82 PAP /DAP 0.47 0.76 0.32 0.54 0.30 0.64 0.63 0.39 0.41 0.55 0.90 Gerakan∗ SNAP∗ 0.74 2.32 1.05 Sources: Election Reports, various years. Data input and calculation errors, where identified, corrected. Notes: ∗ Parties which had joined BN or were absorbed into BN at some points in time. Pekemas S46∗ PKN/ PKR 0.13 0.00 0.00 0.29 0.31 0.00 0.00 PBS∗ C.-H. Wong et al. Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 936 Table 7.3. Ratio of seat share/vote share for major parties, 1955–2008. 3.40 1.26 0.72 0.22 0.05 0.74 Democratization 937 Table 8. Imbalance of vote values between alliance/BN and largest opposition parties (by vote share) 1955–2008. Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 Elections 1955 1959 1964 1969 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1995 1999 2004 2008 Largest opposition party Votes to match 1 alliance/ BN vote Second largest opposition party Votes to match 1 alliance/ BN vote Third largest opposition party Votes to match 1 alliance/ BN vote PN PAS∗ SF PAS∗ DAP DAP DAP DAP DAP DAP PAS∗ PAS∗ PKR Infinity 2.34 12.25 3.39 4.52 2.72 4.75 2.27 2.10 3.33 1.45 8.15 1.67 PAS∗ SF PAS∗ DAP SNAP∗ PAS∗ PAS∗ PAS∗ S46∗ S46∗ DAP DAP PAS 2.54 2.31 2.47 1.79 1.37 7.03 6.30 40.41 4.48 4.22 3.28 2.58 1.70 NAP∗ PPP∗ UDP Gerakan∗ Pekemas Pekemas PSRM PSRM PAS∗ PAS∗ PKN PKR DAP Infinity 2.25 6.65 1.81 11.39 Infinity Infinity Infinity 2.28 2.59 6.11 26.08 1.37 Sources: Election Reports, various years. Data input and calculation errors, where identified, corrected. Notes: ∗ Parties which had joined BN or were absorbed into BN at some points in time. Other electoral irregularities The most common irregularities are ‘phantom voters’, a colloquial term referring to impersonators who vote on behalf of the dead, improperly-registered names and even genuine voters. The root causes lie in the contamination of electoral rolls and the failure to prevent multiple voting. A sample survey by election watchdog MAFREL before the 2004 elections in two constituencies, P98 Gombak and P121 Lembah Pantai, provided shocking findings: respectively 50% and 73% of the names surveyed were either unidentified by the local residents or registered on untraceable addresses. Other problems related to the electoral rolls include the omission and involuntary transfer of voters.41 Another problem is the non-transparency in postal voting which involved 200,712 or about 2% of the electorate in 2008. For four consecutive elections from 1990 to 2004, more than 5,000 ballots went missing in the Lumut constituency and the EC chairman in 2004 attributed the problem to postal voting.42 As thousands or even hundreds of votes may change the winner in a marginal seat, these polling irregularities may well be a more cost-effective and time-efficient means of manipulation compared to delimitation exercises carried out every eight years. 4. The blurring of state and party lines The fusion of the Malayan/Malaysian state and the UMNO-led ruling coalition begun in 1948 when the Malayan Union proposal was defeated and gained momentum after 1969. One such aspect of the state – party fusion is ideology. Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 938 C.-H. Wong et al. From the beginning, Malaya’s Constitution has stipulated a special position for the Malays and defines a Malay person with Islam, Malay language and Malay customs. After 1969, the special position of Malays and other Bumiputera groups (Article 153 of the Federal Constitution), the status of languages (Article 152) and the institution of monarchy (Article 181), alongside the provisions of citizenship (Part II), were protected from questioning and criticism by the revised Sedition Act 1948. Although short of establishing Malay nationalism as the national ideology in the Constitution, this symbolized UMNO’s hegemony. ‘The “special rights” of the “definitive people”, which found a spirited defence in the book [Mahathir’s Malay Dilemma], found institutional fulfilment in UMNO’s political supremacy’ (Khoo, Paradoxes of Mahathirism, 35). ‘Malay dominance’ or Ketuanan Melayu was practically unchallengeable. It is important to note that political dissent, even unrelated to ethno-religious contentions, is not tolerated when it threatens the one-party state. Amongst its tools of suppression is the draconian Internal Security Act (ISA) which allows for detention without trial for renewable periods of two years and has been used against trade unionists and environmental activists (Crouch, Government and Society in Malaysia). Official Secrets Act, Printing Presses and Publications Act, Communications and Multimedia Act, Societies Act, Universities and University Colleges Act, Trade Union Act and Police Act are also often used to curb the freedom of media, civil society groups and individual citizens. Another aspect of state – party fusion is economic redistribution. With the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP), the public sector expanded tremendously to elevate the Malays, UMNO’s powerbase. Gomez and Jomo pointed out that ‘centralisation of power in the executive arm of the government, particularly Mahathir’s UMNO, has contributed to extensive practice of patronage in the execution of the policy’.43 Mehmet has long identified five distributional coalitions that actively seek rent from the implementation of NEP. As a matter of fact, UMNO’s bitter infightings in the late 1980s and late 1990s were very much driven by contestation of state power and resources by its factions.44 That the BN’s economic policies, on the one hand, disproportionately favour those wellconnected Bumiputeras (the so-called UMNOputeras) rather than all Bumiputeras and, on the other hand, also benefit well-connected non-Bumiputeras suggests that Malaysia is not a Malay ethnocracy but rather a UMNO-dominated one-party state.45 The most obvious characteristic of the one-party state is the politicization of state institutions, from the EC, police and military, universities, state-owned media to all and sundry government agencies and state-owned corporations. Not only were senior bureaucrats expected to be UMNO sympathizers, but certain parts of the bureaucracy, such as Radio and Television Malaysia, a Special Section of the Information Ministry, the 14,000-strong Kemas (Jabatan Kemajuan Masyarakat or Social Development Department) and the Biro Tata Negara (National Civics Bureau) ‘have served transparently as virtual adjuncts of the ruling BN party’.46 Civil servants including teachers are often transferred to Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 Democratization 939 remote areas if they are found supporting the opposition even in their personal capacity. In elections, state agencies become powerful machinery for propaganda and mobilization and the incumbent BN federal and state governments would intensify the delivery and promises of material development to local communities. Meanwhile, opposition parties will find various obstacles in organizing events, from denial of police permits, unavailability of public premises to misreporting or blackout by the state-owned and BN-controlled private media. Conceptually speaking, an electoral one-party state cannot survive functioning federalism or decentralization. With vertical division of power, electoral dynamics at different levels should have produced pluralized political elites. The most significant steps in the fusion of state and party are therefore the erosion of federalism and the termination of local democracy. The erosion of federalism Until 2008, the alliance/BN had controlled all but maximum two state governments. The limited exceptions were Kelantan (1959 – 1974; 1977, 1990-present), Terengganu (1959 – 1961, 1999– 2004), Penang (1969 – 1971), Singapore (1963 – 1965), Sarawak (July – September 1966) and Sabah (1986, 1990– 1994). Except for the second PAS government which survives since 1990, these opposition governments died an unnatural death outside ballot box. The 2008 elections were revolutionary and historic in the sense that it brought four more states to the fold of opposition, including the most industrialized and affluent states of Selangor and Penang, and their more agricultural neighbours of Perak and Kedah. Together, the five PR states constituted 46.6% of the national electorate in 2008, and their reformist policies are seen by many as the alternative model to BN statecraft. This shows that federalism, if allowed to operate, can be an antidote to electoral one-party state.47 The alliance/BN has resorted to four main tactics to eliminate their state-level rivals. The first is administrative and economic discrimination against the state governments, so that they will be deprived of economic development and the electorate will be compelled to vote for the federal ruling coalition to get development funds. This tactic had been used right from 1959 and it was a main consideration for the Gerakan and PAS state governments in Penang and Kelantan to enter coalition with the alliance after the 1969 ethnic riots. After 1990, both the new opposition chief ministers from Kelantan and Sabah were excluded from the federal-state Heads of Government meeting and from heading the state security councils in their own states. Federal aid for Kelantan was given to a specifically-created Jawatan Pembangunan Persekutuan (Federal Development Department), by-passing the state government.48 Nine years later, when PAS captured neighbouring Terengganu, the new state government found itself deprived of the 5% royalty payment by the federation-owned petroleum company for petroleum extracted off Terengganu shore, totalling at least RM 800 million and comprising two-thirds of the state budget.49 As a starter, the post-2008 opposition state governments are excluded by Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 940 C.-H. Wong et al. a federal ministry from its federal tourism promotion campaign, while another ministry appoints a parallel set of village administrators to rival those appointed by these state governments whose constitutional jurisdiction cover local governance. The complementary tactic to administrative sanction is political persecution, including selective investigation and prosecution. The son of Kelantan chief minister Nik Aziz Nik Mat and the younger brother and senior aide of Sabah Chief Minister Pairin Ketinggan were both at one time, detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA) for terrorism and separatism respectively.50 This tactic has gained currency after the 2008 elections. Opposition law-makers in Perak, Penang, Selangor and Kedah were zealously investigated. In Perak, two PKR state ministers were eventually charged for asking bribes to assist developers in a fabricated development project. In Selangor, Teoh Beng Hock, a political aide to a DAP state minister, became the first official to die in a federal – state power struggle. He was found dead, after being interrogated by the MACC for nearly 11 hours. The MACC was trying to get him to implicate the DAP in corruption. The partiality of MACC is obvious as it had ignored all corruption allegations against BN ministers and parliamentarians. The third tactic used to end an opposition state government is triggering defection of opposition lawmakers. The first Terengganu PAS government lasted only two years thanks to infighting and defection in a no-confidence vote in 1961. This method was tried in Sarawak in 1966 and Kelantan in 1977 – 1978. The textbook example of regime change by mass defection happened in Sabah in 1994. The opposition Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) won a slight majority of 25 versus BN’s 23. BN was determined to end PBS rule after the Christian-led and Kadazandusundominant party pulled out from BN and joined the opposition coalition Gagasan Rakyat on the eve of polling in 1990. Within a week of the victory, more than a dozen PBS legislators defected to the BN and the BN allowed the registration of three new parties by these former PBS leaders. PBS remained a reluctant opposition party until its readmission to BN on UMNO’s terms in 2002.51 BN’s fourth tactic in ending a defiant state government is through direct federal intervention.52 The most extreme case is the expulsion of Singapore in 1965. A year later, the alliance orchestrated an unconstitutional revolt of Sarawak legislators against the outspoken Sarawak Chief Minister Stephen Kalong Ningkan53 from the Sarawak National Party (SNAP). The defiant Ningkan was eventually reinstated by the Borneo High Court and wanted to dissolve the state assembly to seek the electorate’s verdict. The federal government emerged the ultimate victor through a declaration of a ‘State of Emergency’ in Sarawak and amendment to the state constitution which legitimized Ningkan’s removal. In November 1977, emergency rule was proclaimed in Kelantan after the UMNO-backed faction failed to prevail in a bitter struggle for the control of the PAS-led state government. The state assembly was suspended with its power transferred to a federal appointee. The emergency rule was suddenly lifted three months later and the suspended state assembly was dissolved the very next day, paving for a landslide for a coalition consisting of UMNO and a PAS-splinter party. Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 Democratization 941 In the case of Sabah, attempts to dislodge democratically-elected government always involved the federal UMNO. In 1985, newly registered Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) won state elections with a clear majority of 26 seats in the 48-member state legislature. However, fearing emergency rule, PBS applied to join BN but was rejected by Prime Minister Mahathir. When PBS dissolved the state assembly to seek a new mandate in February 1986, its wish was delayed by the EC claiming financial difficulty, while USNO and Berjaya replied with political violence in the name of Islam, creating the atmosphere for federal intervention. Dr Mahathir tried forcing through a power-sharing solution which included BN membership and a pre-election seat-allocation for PBS, USNO and Berjaya but PBS instead insisted a free competition between the three parties. In the end, the anti-Kuala Lumpur sentiment swept PBS into power again with a stronger majority of 34 seats and PBS was finally admitted into BN in June 1986. In February 2009, the BN brought down the PAS-led Perak government by enticing three state legislators (two PKR, one DAP) to defect. The constitutional Sultan of Perak unconventionally rejected the request of the ousted Chief Minister Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin to dissolve the state legislature and hold fresh elections. Instead, the Sultan sacked him even though there was no no-confidence vote taken and simply appointed a new BN state government. The behaviour of the Sultan, a former chief justice of the country, was puzzling given that he had earlier written a book suggesting that a constitutional ruler cannot refuse a request from the head of government for the dissolution of parliament. The demise of local democracy Like state governments, elected local governments which were once controlled by the opposition parties and provided an effective check to the electoral one-party state soon became the latter’s victim. Beginning with Kuala Lumpur, citing mismanagement and corruption as an excuse, the federal government, however, started to takeover municipalities as early as 1961. Later, the Indonesian Confrontation provided an ideal pretext to altogether suspended local elections. While it promised to restore local democracy ‘the very moment peace is declared and the Emergency regulations are withdrawn’, and despite the Athi Nahappan Royal Commission’s unequivocal call for the revival of local elections, all local councillors became political appointments with the enactment of the Local Government Act 1976.54 While the constitutional jurisdiction of local government theoretically remains in the hands of state governments, with BN controlling most if not all state governments, local governments have conveniently become an integral part of the electoral one-party state. First, it deprives the electorate and the opposition parties the experience of regime change, which is especially important in those states which are never ruled by the opposition. Traumatized by the 13 May experience, many Malaysians equated regime change with political violence. Secondly and relatedly, it inhibits centripetal competition. Communal-based opposition parties like DAP and PAS were deprived the incentives to form coalition, encourage Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 942 C.-H. Wong et al. centrist positioning, and pluralize their leadership, thus making themselves more electable. Such positive trends are now clearly seen in states like Perak and Selangor after the regime change. Alternatively, centrist parties on the communal spectrum such as Pekemas, PRM, S46 and Keadilan also may then flourish with more resources and better prospects. Lastly, elected local governments would reduce the weighting of patronage in federal and state politics. As Malaysian parliamentarians and state legislators do not hold the government’s purse-strings, they depend heavily on constituency development funds provided by the federal and state governments. In a highly partisan political context, this translates into a systemic advantage for all candidates from the incumbent parties. Local elections would politicize the allocation of local development funding and allow the state and federal politics to be more driven by programmatic concerns. 5. Prospects and conclusion We have demonstrated how the Barisan Nasional has managed to perpetuate its rule through various forms of electoral manipulation and administrative repressions. On one hand, its initial electoral strengths have been entrenched through control of franchise, alternation of international and administrative boundaries, mal-apportionment and gerrymandering of electoral constituencies, controlled electoral campaigns and polling irregularities. On the other hand, political opposition is disempowered with infringement of civil and political liberties, extensive patronage networks and abuse of federal apparatus to suppress intergovernmental competition. The opposition state governments are discriminated against and in some cases overthrown through direct federal intervention, while the local elections which the ruling coalition had largely failed to win were outright terminated since 1965. These manipulative and repressive measures are implemented around a ruling coalition of mass parties with a near-official ideology that justifies the dominance of the hegemonic party. This makes Malaysia in some way resemble de jure oneparty states in Asia and Africa like China and Vietnam or Zambia and Kenya in the past where the ‘nation-founder’ or ‘independence fighter’ parties entrench themselves as the backbone of the nation. Self-evidently, one would not expect the same recipe of regime maintenance in personal dictatorships, military juntas, theocracies or absolute monarchies that hold and win elections. As a sub-species of electoral authoritarianism, electoral one-party states like Malaysia – another prime example being Singapore which was incidentally expelled from Malaysia because UMNO tolerated no challenge to its one-party dominance – therefore deserve specific academic attention and comparative investigation to understand its deeper logic. Such understanding would be particularly useful to the democratization of Asia if economically pro-market China and Vietnam eventually decide to introduce elections but not genuine democracy to sustain their political control. A legitimate question to the usefulness or even the validity of this conceptual enterprise is whether it has been disconfirmed by Malaysia’s 2008 elections. After Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 Democratization 943 all, if the ruling regime can be defeated in elections, the electoral one-party state may be alternatively seen as only long-delayed regime change in one-party predominances like India. The answer is a resounding no on two grounds. First, the electoral and administrative features of UMNO’s electoral one-party state remained intact after the 2008 elections and there was no guarantee that the regime would gracefully bow out in the event of an electoral defeat. The abortive palace coup in Sabah in 1984 and the successful one in Perak in 2009 suggest that democratic transition may not be followed by democratic consolidation. A new elected government may well be overthrown by unelected institutions in the name of ethno-nation, religion or political stability. In other words, if elections do not return a BN government, non-electoral institutions such as the civil service, the courts or even the military may be used to return BN to power. For now, thanks to the control of state apparatus and media, the BN is already recovering lost ground under the canny new Prime Minister Najib Razak. Secondly, the electoral one-party state may stay beyond the lifespan of the dominant party. If an electoral one-party state is defined by electoral manipulation and state– party fusion which makes party alternation hardly possible, it is conceptually compatible that such state may experience periodic renewal like dynastic changes in absolute monarchies. In other words, a party alternation may mean, not the replacement of the one-party state by democracy, but merely the changing hand of the one-party state from one predominant party to another. Given the context of ethno-religious politics in Malaysia, the emergence of a new predominant party after regime change is the most likely scenario. As shown in the series of post-2008 by elections, up to 70 – 80% of the non-Malay voters are now rallying behind the Pakatan Rakyat while the Malays are almost evenly split with UMNO enjoying the larger part. Given the fact that non-Malays constitute a majority in 51 out of 165 parliamentary seats in the Peninsula and a significant minority of at least one third in 42 other seats, the next elections may see UMNO winning perhaps only 60 seats in the Peninsula while its non-Malay allies win just one or two seats. Even if BN’s East Malaysian component parties win, they are likely to switch alliance to the rising Pakatan Rakyat and join PR. Deprived of the prospect of returning to power in the short future, UMNO will become a more parochial party in opposition – if it could accept such defeat peacefully – and be as unelectable as PAS and DAP before 2008. Hence, if the anti-competitive features of the political system are not dismantled, Pakatan Rakyat might just look like the more inclusive alliance (Perikatan, in Malay) in the early years of the original electoral one-party state. Such cyclical replay of history would mean that bi-partism is an unachievable dream, as pessimistically prophesized by Donald Horowitz: ‘in an environment of ethnic conflict, there is room for only one multi-ethnic party or alliance’.55 The challenges for Malaysia’s democratization are therefore two-fold. At the socio-political level, the question is whether grounds can be found to necessitate and sustain two multiethnic coalitions or blocs. At the institutional level, the new ruling bloc, if it indeed emerges, must be prevented from perpetuating its 944 C.-H. Wong et al. Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 power through electoral manipulations and state– party fusion. This is particularly imperative if there will be no electable multiethnic opposition to the new regime. If the electoral system and process is not thoroughly reformed, and the state– party fusion in ideological, administrative and distributional sense is not broken, before or immediately after party alternation, then the transition may not usher in genuine multiparty democracy, but perhaps only ethnically more inclusive, more competent, sophisticated and accountable authoritarian regime. Arguably, Malaysia might then only become a ‘more successful’ electoral one-party state, like Singapore. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. Chin and Wong, ‘Malaysia’s Electoral Upheaval’. Parts of this paper were used in a research project organized by the Malaysian Strategic Research Centre. Wong and Norani, ‘Malaysia at 50’. Huntington, The Third Wave. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, 5. Chin, ‘Malaysia: The Barisan National Supremacy’; Rachagan, Law and the Electoral Process; Puthucheary and Othman, The Electoral System of Malaysia; Puthucheary and Othman, Elections and Democracy in Malaysia. Zakaria, ‘Malaysia: Quasi Democracy’; Case, ‘Semi-Democracy in Malaysia’ and ‘Testing Malaysia’s Pseudo-Democracy’; Means, Soft Authoritarianism in Malaysia; Bell, Brown, and Jayasuria, Towards Illiberal Democracy; Uffen, ‘The Transformation of Political Party Opposition in Malaysia and its Implications for the Electoral Authoritarian Rgime; Crouch, Government and Society in Malaysia. See the discussions on ‘competitive authoritarianism’, see Schedler, ‘The Menu of Manipulations’; see Levitsky and Way, ‘The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism’; Diamond, ‘Thinking about Hybrid Regimes’. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition; Geddes, ‘What Do We Know about Democratization’. Case, ‘UMNO Paramountcy’; Ng, Yi Dang Du Da. Lawson, Conceptual Issues, 197. Sartori, Parties and Party Systems, 174. Pempel, ‘Introduction’, 16. Satori, Parties and Party Systems, 204 –11. ENEP and ENLP measure party numbers which take into account their relative size by vote or seat share. For example, a parliament with a party controlling 90% of seats and another controlling 10% is not a two-party system but effectively one with 1.22 parties. Based on Taagepera and Shugart, Seats and Votes, the formula for the calculation is ENP ¼ 1/ (), where Si is the size of party i. For Table 2, the calculation of ENEP excludes independent candidates and minor parties which won less than 1% of national vote shares, while that of ENLP excludes all independent MPs. Means, Malaysian Politics, 81–102. Ibid., 226. The parties contested against each other when agreement could not be reached on candidacy, Means, Malaysian Politics, 302. Means, Malaysian Politics, 302– 5, 339. Election in the Melaka Selatan seat was suspended. UMNO won the seat when the election resumed on 30 January 1971. Mauzy, Barisan Nasional, 36. Democratization 21. 22. 23. 24. Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies. Kua, May 13: Declassified Documents on the Malaysian Riots of 1969. Sabah Alliance consisted of the dominant United Sabah National Organisation (USNO) and its junior partner the Sabah Chinese Association. Mauzy, Barisan Nasional, 49, listed three members of the Sarawak Alliance in 1973: Bumiputera (Malay-dominated), Pesaka (Iban-dominated) and Sarawak Chinese Association (Chinese). The 1969 Election Report, however, listed Pesaka separately from the Sarawak Alliance. Gerakan’s refusal to form coalition governments with other opposition parties in Selangor and Perak allowed the alliance to retain its power. The ruling coalition’s position was further strengthened by defection from the opposition. Two PPP members and one DAP member crossed the floor in the Perak legislature in July 1970. Milne and Mauzy, Politics and Government in Malaysia, 164, 183. Chin, Chinese Politics in Sarawak, 117 –22. State cabinets in the Peninsula are called executive council, and state ministers are called Exco. Mauzy, Barisan Nasional, 59 –64. Ibid., 51, 58– 9, 73. Ibid., 51 –9, 63 –6, 72 –3. PBB is the product of a merger between Parti Bumiputera and Parti Pesaka in May 1973. The other member of Sarawak Alliance, the Sarawak Chinese Association dissolved itself by June 1974. By default, the Sarawak Alliance ceased to exist. The multiethnic Gagasan Rakyat and the Islamist Angkatan Perpaduan Ummah were linked by Semangat 46 as the common member. It can therefore be seen as a coalition with two wings. Gagasan ended with DAP’s pullout in 1995 while Angkatan died a natural death with Semangat 46’s dissolution in 1996. As a multiethnic coalition, Barisan Alternatif ended on 21 September 2001 when DAP pulled out even though technically PAS and PKR continued to appear as BA at least until after the 2004 by-elections. Satori, Parties and Party Systems, 230 –8. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, 28. Means, Malaysian Politics, 57. Cheah, Malaysia: The Making of a Nation, 2. Cheah, Red Star over Malaya, 13; Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 402; Lim, ‘Electoral Politics in Malaysia’, 105 –8. Lim, Electoral Politics in Malaysia, 104 –8. The Gini Coefficient is the economists’ tool to measure inequality in income or wealth. Over the years, its use has expanded to other fields like healthcare. Using the Gini Coefficient in political science might have been done by others but we did not come across any instances in our research. The formula for its calculation is G= 40. 41. 945  n  (n + 1 − i)yi 1 i=1 n+1−2 n n i=1 yi where n is the number of cases, yi is the number of electorate for constituency i where all the constituencies are sorted in non-decreasing order, such that yi ¼ yi+1. The calculations above were done with the user-friendly software kindly provided by Professor Wessa at http://www.wessa.net/co.wasp. Ong and Welsh, ‘Electoral Delimitation’. Lim, ‘Making the System Work’, 272 –4; Puthucheary and Othman, Elections and Democracy in Malaysia, 38 –41; Ong, ‘Examining the Electoral Roll’; Salbiah, ‘Some Legal Aspects of the Electoral System’, 363–5. 946 42. 43. 44. Downloaded By: [Monash University South Africa] At: 08:26 14 March 2011 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. C.-H. Wong et al. ‘EC Chief on Dirty Tricks and the “Real Liars”’, Malaysiakini, April 13, 2004, at http://malaysiakini.com/news/19536. as accessed on September 18, 2006. Gomez and Jomo, Malaysia’s Political Economy, 98. Shamsul, From British to Bumiputera Rule; Shamsul, ‘Battle Royale: 1987 UMNO Elections’; Mehmet, Development in Malaysia. Chin, ‘The Malaysian Chinese Dilemma’, 173. Funston, Malaysia: Developmental State Challenged, 175– 6. Wong and Yeoh, ‘A Tale of Two Malaysias’. Agus Yusoff, Malaysian Federalism, 168 –70. For details, please see Pusat Penyelidikan PAS, ed., Royalti Minyak: Politik Khianat dan Balas Dendam BN, as cited in Liew, Articulating an Islamic State. Chin, Sabah State Election of 1994, 904 –15. Chin, Going East: UMNO’s Entry, 20 –40. Chin, ‘Politics of Federal Intervention in Malaysia’. 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