Another May 13 in the offing?
For the sake of this country, the writer hopes his entire analysis is rubbish, and that he will be proven absolutely wrong and a pessimistic idiot.
Before moving on let me just clarify that this analysis is not meant to monger fear or accuse the government of anything. It is a hypothesis based on my historical analysis of post-election trends in Malaysia, and as with all hypotheses, is unproven and certainly not set in stone.
By Ong Kar Jin, FMT
May 13 has arrived and passed with no major incidents. For many Malaysians who sit uneasily with the date, there is a culpable sense of relief. However, is the threat of a nationwide disturbance over?
Is it possible still in this day and age for something on the scale of the May 13 riots to reoccur?
Before moving on let me just clarify that this analysis is not meant to monger fear or accuse the government of anything. It is a hypothesis based on my historical analysis of post-election trends in Malaysia, and as with all hypotheses, is unproven and certainly not set in stone.
This article seeks to analyse and answer two main questions:
How possible is it to have some sort of disturbance that will spark unrest?
What form might it take?
Through a careful examination of past incidences of civil unrest in Malaysia, three incidents in particular stand out for their scale, their impact on the political narrative of Malaysia, and their nature.
The three incidents I speak of are the May 13, 1969 riots, the 1987-1988 Operation Lalang and judicial crisis, and the 1998 sacking of Anwar Ibrahim and the subsequent Reformasi movement.
In considering the events leading up to, during and following the events, three key traits stand out.
Internal Umno struggle
Firstly and perhaps most importantly, all three incidences have taken place in the foreground of internal Umno struggles.
In Dr Kua Kia Soong’s thesis of May 13, he posits that the riots were in fact a coup d’état initiated by the ascendant Malay capitalist class under Razak to replace the Malay aristocratic class lead by Tunku Abdul Rahman.
The validity of Kua’s statement is subject to debate, but the swift and stunning reversal of fortunes that Tunku Abdul Rahman suffered cannot be discounted as coincidence. Even if the riots were not facilitated by the top leadership of the right wing of Umno, Razak certainly made full use of the opportunity to grab the reins of government.
Recently, Gerakan veteran Dr Goh Cheng Teik and ex-Umno strongman Mohd Tamrin Abdul Ghafar came out to clarify that May 13 was indeed an internal coup orchestrated by irate Umno members against Rahman.
The 1987-1988 Operation Lalang also had similar internal rumblings. In fact, the judicial crisis roots lay in the dismissal of Umno as an illegal organisation due to complaints from Tengku Razaleigh’s Umno Team B.
The same goes for the mass arrests that followed the Reformasi movement. Again, it was an inside Umno fight between then deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim and Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
Time and time again, Umno leaders especially those from the right wing have shown that they are more than willing to externalize internal struggles to distract people from the real issues and to eliminate opposition.
Come this October, Umno internal elections will be held, and it will be a titanic clash between the reformers under Najib Tun Razak and the Mahathirists under Muhyiddin Yassin’s tutelage.
The first shots have already been fired by Mahathir, calling Najib’s performance a “disappointment” and openly stating before elections that given a slim victory Najib should give way to deputy Muhyiddin.
Need for consolidation of power
The second trait is a need for constitutional/ law changing. As we all know, the last time Umno was in government with a minority of the popular vote was in 1969. Post-1969, constitutional amendments made the EC beholden to Barisan Nasional and various laws such as the Sedition Act were strengthened.
Similarly, in 1988 the threat from the Semangat 46’ coalition formed posed enough of a threat to the Umno hegemony of power that the Mahathir felt was necessary to cripple the judiciary and rob it of its independence.
These changes in law to consolidate Umno dominance have however often been met with significant opposition. It is because of the backlash that comes with these changes in the institutions and dilution of the rule of law that such exercises have needed to be preceded by mass arrests/ unrest preventing any coordinated response.
The Reformasi movement of 1998 was rife with similar arrests, but with a firm 76.56% of seats, BN could comfortably continue its gerrymandering, mal-apportionment exercises.
One must also bear in mind that due to 1998 being led by Anwaristas, it took on a different nature.
At the end of this year, there will be a re-delineation exercise that threatens to entrench BN firmly in power, no matter what the popular vote turns out to be in GE14. Civil society, opposition politicians and proactive citizens have already begun raising awareness of the exercise.
The rakyat, especially urban folk, are acutely aware of their rights and attendance at rallies such as the May 8 Kelana Jaya rally have shown that from here on escalation of civil action can be only grow.
It would require a major distraction on an unprecedented scale to divert attention away from the re-delineation exercise.
Incitement of racial sentiments
The third trait that has preceded such incidents is the exacerbation (or in some cases manufacturing) of racial sentiments.
This has largely been the domain of the government-controlled mainstream media. In 1969, the mainstream media reported Labour Party processions as shouting “Malai-si!” and provoking the Malays.
However, such accounts are doubted and are contradictory to the foreign press accounts that reported the procession as a show of “discipline” and “genuine restraint”.
In 1988, Utusan Malaysia blew the issue of Chinese educationists out of proportion. What followed were the mass arrests of not just prominent members of Dong Zong but also of activists and opposition politicians.
In 1999, BN blew up fears of Islamisation, loss of non-Malay rights etc to secure a win despite losing the popular vote of Malays to the Barisan Alternatif.
Now the racist rhetoric has reached an all-time high. From Utusan Malaysia’s “Apa Lagi Cina Mahu” (What More Do The Chinese Want?) , an ex-judge’s warning of backlash against the Chinese, to PM Najib’s “Chinese Tsunami”, all Umno media seems to be blasting out racism at every avenue.
