Najib bin Razak, the sixth Prime Minister of Malaysia. Since April 2009, Najib bin Razak has been under pressure from the opposition for a long time and from the Malay ethnic politics in which he is involved. So what is this pressure and what does it mean for Malaysian politics? First and foremost, this pressure is not a recent phenomenon; on the contrary, it has a long history dating back to the pre-independence period of Malaysian politics. Of course, in this short text, I will not go through these long processes in detail, but rather I will limit the discussion to the recent past, and make some points about what is going on.
The first issue to be addressed is the political atmosphere in which Najib bin Razak emerged as a 'name'. The most important development that led to Najib bin Razak becoming Prime Minister was the failure of the 2008 General Elections under Abdullah Badawi, the country's fifth Prime Minister. Not only did the National Front coalition, which had ruled the country since independence, lose its two-thirds majority in the Federal Parliament for the first time, but five of the 13 states were handed over to the opposition, the Popular Front coalition. The resulting earthquake in the United Malay National Organization (UMNO) paved the way for Najib bin Razak as deputy prime minister, but also placed the onus on him to deal with the aftershocks of the earthquake. The 2008 political tsunami revealed that UMNO was losing the votes of ethnic minorities, especially the Chinese, despite its government partners, the Chinese and Indian Parties.
In this sense, the solution hinged on the Prime Minister's political approach that invoked the concept of economic and socio-political reform. The 'Economic Transformation Program' (ETP) was the first step in the search for a formula to revive the economy in the face of the global economic crisis of 2008-2009, as well as the relative weakening of Malaysia's advantages and the decline in foreign investment as other countries in the region, like Malaysia, aimed to develop with manufacturing industries. Socio-political reform was centered on the abolition of the Internal Security Act (ISA) and the Sedition Act, which had been a sword of Damocles over the opposition for decades, and which left freedoms at the discretion of police chiefs, and opened the door to freedoms in press and communication. Another concrete initiative of the Prime Minister was his 'rapprochement' attitude towards the Chinese and Indian masses, in a sense extending the 'peace pipe'. The political equivalent of this was the 'One Malaysia Project'.
In addition to these domestic political processes, Najib bin Razak also assumed the task of "being the voice of Malaysia" in the regional and international arena, and in areas such as the Mindanao-Patani talks, ASEAN, and the presentation of 'moderate Islam' at the UN Security Council, he was actually pleasing the eyes of some. However, the fact that Najib bin Razak presented these processes with a kind of 'one man' approach suggested that a new leadership perspective was being put on the agenda. However, I have to raise the question here whether Najib bin Razak has the 'charisma' to encompass a political party like UMNO in Malaysia, which is based on ethnic Malay nationalism and has an unquestionable determinism in determining the entire political and social structures of the country. The time and place to test these policies was the 13th General Election held on May 5, 2013.
This election was an even bigger political tsunami than the one in 2008. Although the opposition lost two of the five states it had won in the previous election, it demonstrated its strength by once again eliminating the government's two-thirds majority in the Bundestag with around of the total vote. However, the structuring of the electoral system and interference in the election in one way or another ensured that the same coalition bloc remained in power. The most important result of the election, of course, was the collapse of the policies of Najib bin Razak, who claimed that he would return UMNO to its old days in the country's politics with his 'one man' profile. And while there was heavy criticism from UMNO insiders, including the Prime Minister, especially from Chinese voters, it also revealed that the Prime Minister's aforementioned 'reformist' efforts were in fact election-oriented palliative approaches. Of course, it was not difficult to predict that similar criticism would eventually be directed at the Prime Minister. And so it happened!
In Najib bin Razak's second term, post-election, he has demonstrated his ambition to continue his political survival by leaning on 'Malay nationalism' as the defining vein of Malaysian politics. The strong 'theatrical' expression of this was undoubtedly the raising of the discourse of ethnic Malay nationalism once again in a 'heavy tone' at the UMNO General Assembly. Of course, this approach meant that there was no longer any such thing as 'reform'. The first indication of this was the Prime Minister's announcement in 2012 that the 'Sedition Incentive Law' would be abolished and that this law would be further 'operationalized'. There was no longer reform, but a Prime Minister who was increasingly taking on the role of 'ultra Malay nationalism'.
Despite all the developmental efforts and economic expansions, the budget deficit, the plane crashes, the irregularities in the 'One Malaysia Development Fund', the new tax law, the Sedition Incentive Act' sledgehammer landing one by one on certain segments of society, and perhaps the biggest blow to Prime Minister Najib bin Razak, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad's questioning of whether Dr. Mahathir Mohamad was Najib or non-Najib in the run-up to the 2013 elections, has turned into heavy criticism, suggesting that there is a serious problem.
In fact, the picture of Malaysian politics presented above is not new. First, the Southeast Asian Crisis of 1997-98, the reform movement in Indonesia and Thailand, and then the first trial of Anwar Ibrahim, which immediately hit the headlines as a bombshell, are noteworthy developments that shook Malaysia as well. After the wolf politician Dr. Mahathir Mohamad won the 1999 elections and ended his 22 years as Prime Minister in 2003, a 'leadership deficit' within UMNO came to the fore. And since then, although first Abdullah Badawi and then Najib bin Razak, inspired by the political and social programs of the reform movement initiated by Anwar Ibrahim, clung to the concept of 'reform', no real reform structure has emerged to date. In this context, the problems facing Najib bin Razak in the country's politics today are not limited to his political approach. On the contrary, there is a systemic problem with roots going back at least as far as 1998 that still needs to be addressed. Despite the existence of an opposition that could force this process, the established order has not allowed for any opening up, which in turn has led to an increasing radicalization of the 'elites' in charge of the system. This is the challenge that Prime Minister Najib bin Razak is facing.
English and Indonesian versions translated with DeepL AI
