Category: Politics

Yesterday I (TP) spent two hours interviewing Tan Sri Abu Talib bin Othman, the Chairman of SUHAKAM (Suruhanjaya Hak Asasi Manusia; Human Rights Commission of Malaysia).  With an organizational name like that, you’d figure that this is a pretty good group.  In fact, it is.  The problem is that the group has an "advisory role" for the government, and the government responds to this advice by saying "thanks, but we’re not interested in your reforms".  It is widely known that the Malaysian Parliament (Dewan Negara Dewan Rakyat) does not even read the reports that they mandate that SUHAKAM produce. 

OK, that’s not surprising.  And to be honest, I didn’t have high expectations of my conversation with Tan Sri Abu Talib.  I was interested in his views on a couple of other matters.  Tan Sri Abu Talib–a barrister by profession–was the Attorney General of Malaysia from 1980 to 1993, and in 1999 he headed the Royal Commission to investigate the savage beating that former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim received when first detained under charges of corruption and sodomy.  This is a man who has been at the center of the regime’s authority, and an instrument of its power over society.  I wanted to know his views of judicial independence in Malaysia.  This is a particularly relevant question for him.  In 1988, as Attorney General, he was the person who charged the then-Lord President Tun Salleh of "not acting properly" for criticizing (in a private letter to the King) the Prime Minister’s view that the judiciary should not question government decisions.  Tun Salleh and two other judges were eventually convicted of improper conduct by an independent Tribunal with no legal standing appointed by the Attorney General and the Prime Minister, and subsequently removed.  This has been widely interpreted as Mahathir Mohammad’s most important move in consolidating a regime with no institutional checks on his personal authority, as well as the end of the always-tenuous independence of the Malaysian judiciary.

Tan Sri Abu Talib is quite a nice man.  We had a very nice conversation, and he was more than willing to speak in his capacity as a private citizen.  At one time, he rattled of a list of requirements of the judicial branch that would please any democrat or lawyer: the judicial branch of government "must be independent, fair, and impartial."  Yet I have to wonder how he could honestly hold such views given his personal involvement in the Tun Salleh affair.  He was very clear that he believed that Tun Salleh had acted improperly by stating that the judiciary branch of government must be independent.  How can he reconcile these views?

Tan Sri Abu Talib, as Chairman of SUHAKAM, is an ardent supporter of
freedom of the press ("with responsibility," of course) and a strident
opponent of Malaysian laws which allow the police to detain indefinitely
suspects without trial, evidence, or legal counsel.  Speaking of his own experience as Attorney General, though, he claims that he never used these laws unfairly.  Things were different then, he says.  And I think that he believes that as well.  Anwar Ibrahim, in his view, received a fair trial.  Tan Sri Abu Talib argues that the judiciary must be independent, but in the same breath stipulates that the role of the judiciary is not to get bogged down in procedure and principles, but to dispense "justice".

So here we have the benign face, or perhaps the Janus face, of power in Malaysia.  Tan Sri Abu Talib, a very friendly and obviously intelligent man, who genuinely supports true human rights causes in Malaysia, does not believe that his role in Mahathir Mohammad’s regime constituted a violation of the very principles for which he now advocates.

Anthropologists have a problem.  When an anthropologist studies something within a culture as an outside observer, he or she runs the risk of misunderstanding things and placing undue emphasis on things that aren’t really that important.  He or she can never know if she is committing such an error, because he or she is by definition an observer, not an active participant.  We watched a documentary once about a people who lived on an island off the coast of Sumatra who eat large worms (raw, still alive) that they find in the trunks of sago palms.  A good 15 minutes of the 60 minute film focused on the eating of worms.  Why?  Eating worms is completely normal to them; but more importantly, it is a very small part of the daily life of this people.  How about 15 minutes on their cosmology, their political system, their economy?

Such is the problem with our understanding of race and politics in Malaysia.  We can’t tell if we are missing the point when we study communalism in Malaysia.  What we can tell you is this:  From our perspective as observers of Malaysia, communalism is the stuff of politics here.  More than that, communalism pervades almost every aspect of life here.  We are hardly alone in this view, of course.  Most Malaysians would probably say the same thing.  Yet there is a problem here–would race and communalism be such a big deal if people didn’t keep bringing it up all the time?  Maybe not, but who knows?

We discussed how confusing ethnicity is here once before.  That politics is so dominated by communal considerations makes for interesting stuff.  You can sum up the gist of communal politics with a simple term: special rights.  Bumiputras in Malaysia get special privileges through a system euphemistically known as “positive discrimination.”  If you want to get into a university, it’s easier if you are a bumiputra.  If you want a mortage, you get better rates if you’re a bumiputra.  All publicly listed companies must issue stocks at below market prices that only bumiputras get to buy.  All students must speak Malay.  If you want to convert to Islam (the official religion), that is great, but converting away from Islam is illegal.  It is illegal to even question publicly these Malay special rights.  As you might imagine, this state of affairs leads to an identification of communal issues with economic issues, so much so that you can’t understand the latter without the former.

It’s not just that the laws favor Malays here.  Non-bumiputras use communalism of their own to protect their own interests.  Every political party of real significance is communally-based.  The three big members of the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition are exclusively ethnic: the United Malays National Organisation, the Malaysian Chinese Association, and the Malaysian Indian Congress.  Most other parties–like the United Sabah National Organisation–are also ethnic (in the USNO case, for Kadazandusun).  Even the ostensibly non-communal parties have heavy communal connotations.  “Everybody knows” that the Democratic Action Party and the Gerakan Party are actually “Chinese” parties.

Taxi drivers are the regular folks whom we interact with the most.  Taxi drivers come in all ethnicities, and are normally quite happy to tell us what they think about the other groups.  It is sad, but just like the stereotypes that we hope are wrong, the cabbies seem to confirm the prejudices.  In just the past week, we have had the following conversations.

• A Malay driver told us not to take cabs driven by Indians because they always try to cheat Westerners.  He also said that Chinese always take taxi jobs from Malays.
• An Indian cab driver told us that the Malays are lazy because they eat too much nasi lemak (rice with coconut milk) for breakfast.  Also, Malay grandparents always commit incest with their granddaughters.
• A Chinese cab driver told us that the Malays don’t appreciate the Chinese.  If it weren’t for the Chinese, Malaysia would still be poor.

We have unfortunately seen that here, communalism is not fading away, and the government is still a long way off from creating a unified Malaysian nation.  This communalism serves the government well.  It disburses favoritism to its constituents, and in return they support it.  It plays the race card by warning of the not unreasonable threat of ethnic conflict.  It is the very fact that this threat is so credible that helps the regime to secure its power.  Maybe I am wrong to focus on communalism so heavily in understanding politics here.  But I don’t think so.