Malaysia at 60: The Promise Fades
A cynical population has tired of promises and as Malaysia goes to 2018, when general elections must be called by June, there is more uncertainty than there ever was in the last 60 years.”
John Berthelsen, The Asia Sentinel
On Aug. 31, Malaysia will celebrate – if that is the proper word – the 60th anniversary of its founding with its people subdued and with a government widely regarded as a kleptocacy.
It is wracked with a continuing scandal that has robbed the exchequer of an estimated US$11.4 billion lost to fraud and mismanagement of its state-backed 1Malaysia Development Fund, its top government leaders being investigated in six countries including the United States.
It is the second big scandal wrapped around Prime Minister Najib Razak. Two executives with a subsidiary of the French munitions giant DCN have been indicted in France specifically for bribing him in the purchase of submarines during the previous decade, and his close friend and associate, Abdul Razak Baginda, was recently indicted in the same scandal.
It is a country whose every institution that exists in a normal democracy to protect its people is broken – the parliament, whose leaders exist on bribes from the prime minister to keep him in office. The courts function to repress the opposition and to exculpate the guilty among the leadership. The police investigate only the opposition on political matters. The mainstream press is in the hands of the government-aligned political parties and uses its monopoly to clout the opposition and protect the establishment..
The religious establishment – the leaders of Islam—the major religion in the country, are there to back the leadership when needed, loading onto the people a fundamentalism that most do not espouse. The opposition has been emasculated by sedition charges, police pressure, intimidation, hammering by a kept press, and gerrymandering.
“Perhaps the biggest travesty or paradox is that many of the troubled elite and urban class are now looking towards the man who actually started the decay as their savior – Mahathir Mohamad,” said an increasingly jaded source.
