Najib the bold
By Banyan
WHEN Malaysia’ prime minister, Najib Razak, wants to do things—anything—it seems that he has do it in a big, all-consuming rush. He recently pledged to reform outdated censorship laws and to review the electoral system.
That alone was pretty controversial stuff in a conservative political system, but on September 15th he trumped it by promising to repeal the country’s most oppressive internal security laws, including the dreaded Internal Security Act (ISA), further relax the laws on the media and to beef up the laws relating to freedom of assembly. Taken altogether, the government has described these changes as “the biggest shake-up of the Malaysian system since independence from Britain in 1957”, a “package of radical reforms that will further transform the country into a mature, progressive democracy.”
The proposed reforms might also, so his supporters hope, further transform the image of Mr Najib himself, from grey, indecisive technocrat into—well, a radical, mature, progressive democrat. After all, he has an election to win within the next year or so. The political trimmer, it seems, is now very definitely The Man with the Plan.
The repeal of the ISA was the most welcome measure. This was introduced in 1960 to help the government combat an armed insurgency by Communist rebels, a conflict inherited from the British colonial era and known then as the “emergency”. Its sweeping powers permitted the police to detain suspects indefinitely. However, like other similar laws and regulations of the period, it proved all too useful for governments long after the Communist threat had disappeared, and was retained. The ISA was used for decades to jail opposition politicians, union activists, students, journalists—anyone that the government wanted out of the way. Neighbouring Singapore still has its own ISA.
Other laws on the way out include the Emergency Ordinance, introduced in 1969 following race riots, which also allowed people to be detained without charge; the Banishment Act of 1959; and a law restricting residency , dating from the 1930s. Human rights groups have acclaimed all these changes. The government has also promised that newspapers and journals will now only have to get a publication permit once, valid indefinitely unless revoked, rather then annually, thus reducing the scope for government interference and pressure on the media.
If all these laws are indeed repealed and changes implemented, then the political landscape in Malaysia might look very different in a few years’ time, and Mr Najib will be able to claim a lot of credit for that. Opposition politicians, many of whom have urged the abolition of the ISA for years, were unusually generous in their acclaim for Mr Najib, and broadly welcomed the announcements.
However, the real test as to whether these reforms will really make a big difference will come next year when the government unveils the two new laws that it say will replace the outgoing ISA and Emergency Ordinance. New laws will, apparently, allow for “far more judicial oversight”, but still allow the police “to detain suspects for preventive reasons.” The arguments will revolve around what “limits” the new laws will put on the police to detain people, mainly on grounds of the catch-all “national security” and terrorism. Expect a big political punch-up about that. And we will know more about Mr Najib’s credentials as a genuine reformer—as a radical even—when that debate comes around.
For now, though, Malaysians will be content with the promises made. The opposition feels vindicated, although they will worry that Mr Najib has swiped many of their most distinctive campaign promises at the next election. Democracy activists and netizens are proclaiming that Mr Najib has bowed to “people power” after a nasty government crackdown on a rally in Kuala Lumpur in early July backfired, leading merely to intense criticism of the overzealous tactics used to contain the protestors—much of the legislation used to crack down on the organisers of the Bersih 2.0 rally is now history. And even Mr Najib’s governing party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), will be relatively happy, feeling that they have a much clearer prospectus going into the next election than they did a few months ago.
Some on the extreme Malay wing of the party grumble that all this reform stuff is going too far, but they will go along with it as long as it does not touch on the most profound sources of oppression and grievance in the country, the institutionalised ethnic discrimination that privileges Malays over the country’s other races, mainly Chinese and Indians. It is the system of ethnic quotas and divisions that is really holding the country back—if Mr Najib started to take an axe to all that, then absolutely nobody would question his credentials as a radical reformer.
