TM, ®, Copyright © 2022 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
- (december 2022)
Malaysia in 2022.
Malaysia has traditionally been a very stable country although a de facto one-party state run by the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) for more than 60 years.
In 2018 Mahathir Mohamad (at the age of 92), Malaysias longest serving prime minister, switched sides and led an opposition alliance to victory.
The culprit was long-time prime minister
Najib Razak (first elected in 2009), suspected of embezzling
billions of dollars that are missing from a state investment fund.
In 2020 Najib Razak was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
The main beneficiary of these events appears to be long-time dissident Anwar Ibrahim, who was jailed for "sodomy" by
Najib Razak (after winning the popular vote against him in the 2013 elections)
and has finally been released from jail after the 2018 elections.
The most recent elections, following several months in which the country had no government, have yielded a hung parliament, but Anwar Ibrahim's coalition won more seats than anyone else, followed by another new coalition, the National Alliance.
UMNO came third and Mahathir Mohamad's new party failed miserably.
And so Anwar Ibrahim is not only free from jail but has even been appointed prime minister.
However, this is unlikely to end Malaysia's political instability.
Anwar Ibrahim's Pakatan Harapan coalition won 82 seats
but that's far short of the 112 that he needs to run the country with a
majority, and so he made an alliance with the devil, the party of
Najib Razak, the UMNO, that has 30 seats. In order to get UMNO's support,
Anwar Ibrahim had to accept humiliating conditions, like having
Ahmad Zahid as his deputy prime minister (Zahid was involved in the scandals
that destroyed Najib Razak's career and may well end up in jail with his former boss).
Further instability originates from the multi-ethnic nature of Malaysian society.
Anwar's coalition Pakatan Harapan mainly consists of his own multi-ethnic Keadilan party (31 seats) and of the Chinese Democratic Action Party (40 seats).
His coalition does not represent the ethnic majority, which is (narrowly) ethnic Malays.
Perikatan Nasional, consisting of an Islamist party and of Bersatu, a splinter of the old UMNO led by former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin,
is the party that openly defends the privileges of ethnic Malays and of Muslims,
the role which used to be UMNO's.
Those privileges are currently enshrined in the constitution, but ethnic Malays
and Mulims fear that Anwar Ibrahim's multi-ethnic Pakatan Harapan could change it.
Further flaming the religious and ethnic divisions is Indian-born Islamic televangelist Zakir Naik, founder of the Islamic Research Foundation and the Peace TV network, who has been living in exile in Malaysia since 2016 because India issued a warrant for his arrest. His TV program is influential in both Malaysia and Indonesia.
(See alo Malaysia and Chinese colonialism)
TM, ®, Copyright © 2022 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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