Is Malaysia Sliding Toward Dictatorship?
It is worth noting Malaysia’s score up till 2013 is listed consistently as a 6, which means it barely makes the “democracy” category (scores 6 to 9) and just misses the “open anocracy” one (scores 1 to 5).
Prashanth Parameswaran, The Diplomat
Last week, Malaysia’s former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad grabbed headlines when he suggested that the country was heading towards becoming a dictatorship like North Korea under its current premier Najib Razak.
And as I reported over the weekend, Najib’s former deputy prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin also warned that the country was witnessing “the collapse of democratic institutions and the emergence of a new dictatorship.” Muhyiddin was sacked last year after criticizing Najib amid the 1MDB scandal, a high-profile corruption saga where the premier has been accused of mismanaging funds linked to debt-ridden state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).
The aforementioned statements are no doubt heavily politicized and hyperbolic. But just how close are they to reality?
While Malaysia has at times received praise for being a moderate Muslim democracy, close observers have long recognized that this is far from the case. In the first iteration of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual Democracy Index released in 2006, before Najib even assumed power three years later, Malaysia was already classified as a “flawed democracy”, with the country ranking 81 among 167 countries (the other three types are “full democracies”, “hybrid regimes” and “authoritarian regimes”). It is also worth noting that Mahathir, now one of Najib’s fiercest critics, was himself responsible for the same anti-democratic transgressions he now fumes about, including weakening the country’s institutions and suppressing dissent, most famously in the case of his then deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim.
