Najib the Reformer

By The Wall Street Journal

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak deserves praise for his bold promise to reform Malaysia’s legal code. In a speech on the eve of National Day earlier this month, he pledged to repeal repressive laws left over from the days of the communist insurgency. Among them are the Internal Security Act and the Emergency Ordinance that allow authorities to hold suspects without charge.

The announcement is the most solid evidence so far that Mr. Najib will live up to his promises to reform Malaysian politics. Even so, some Malaysians believe that this is a ploy to win the next general election, expected early next year, and that the new laws promised to replace the ISA will also be used to silence political opponents. Given the ruling United Malay National Organization’s authoritarian past, the skepticism is understandable.

One only has to look back at July’s Bersih 2.0 rally, a protest demanding electoral reforms, to see why Mr. Najib’s reforms are not taken at face value. The police treated the peaceful rally as if it were another insurgency, arresting those wearing the movement’s yellow T-shirts and attacking the protesters with tear gas and water cannons. The prime minister added insult to injury by defending the tough response.

Even if the rally was illegal, the regression to heavy-handed tactics alienated middle-class voters, who demand protection of their civil liberties. This dissent wouldn’t have mattered 30 years ago, when the urban population was only 36% of the population. Today, however, the proportion has passed 72%.

That means that UMNO can no longer rely on the rural Malay heartland for a parliamentary majority. And if anything, the Chinese and Indian parties within the coalition have seen their support erode even faster. The voters are increasingly too young to remember the poverty and racial violence that created a desire for a paternalistic government that would shepherd development and stomp on populist passions.

The biggest challenge to Mr. Najib comes from within his own party. Even in his own cabinet, Malay nationalists have undermined his reforms by making inflammatory statements about ethnic minorities and defending special privileges for the Malay majority. Former Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has warned that these elements will try to stop the repeal of the ISA and other laws that underpin their power.

The only way for UMNO to win elections and maintain control over the state resources it doles out to its supporters is to move with the times on the rule of law. While the opposition Islamist party PAS has put its own radical firebrands out to pasture to gain wider support, UMNO is a highly conservative and seniority-based organization. As a result, Mr. Najib has had to concentrate power within his own office in order to push reform over the objections of UMNO and the bureaucracy.

Mr. Najib continues to tack back and forth, and just last week the government charged an opposition politician with criminal defamation. But this risks pleasing nobody. He stands a better chance if he doubles down on reform.

For instance, the Malaysian media is still heavily censored by the government, as officials use the power to withhold the renewal of publishing licenses that expire every year. Mr. Najib pledged to repeal the annual process, but the government will still hold the power to revoke licenses. This breeds public cynicism about the media, since journalists make no secret of how officials order them to alter coverage. The government might get fewer puff pieces and more critical analysis, but renouncing control over newspapers and television stations would, on balance, improve the ruling coalition’s image.

Likewise, the government’s resistance to electoral reform is only hurting its chances of winning re-election. The prevalence of phantom voters and dead voters on the electoral rolls, as well as individuals registering multiple times while others have trouble registering at all, convinces urban voters that there will be no change until the opposition is in charge. The government says it wants to create an elaborate biometric system to tackle voter fraud, but this won’t be ready in time for the next election. Acceding to the Bersih movement’s call for simple and effective measures such as indelible ink to prevent stuffing of ballot boxes would help to restore trust.

Opposition figures tell us that it’s unlikely they can defeat Mr. Najib in next year’s election, and so he remains the best hope for political reform in the next few years. He may have shown his true colors, but his gambit to transform UMNO won’t work if he goes halfway. Otherwise Malaysians may legitimately suspect that once he has a mandate he will revert to defending the prerogatives of his party’s elite.