Can Malaysia’s opposition survive without Anwar?

The Malaysian Federal Court’s upholding of the conviction of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim for sodomy of his former aide is but the latest episode of the decades-long struggle of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) to stay dominant in Malayan/Malaysian politics since 1948.

Barely 21 months ago, Anwar Ibrahim led his Pakatan Rakyat (PR) coalition to win a 51 per cent majority of federal votes, soundly beating Prime Minister Najib Razak’s National Front (Barisan Nasional, BN) coalition with only 47 per cent.

Due to malapportionment and gerrymandering of electoral constituencies a decade ago, Pakatan won only 40 per cent of parliamentary seats, while BN grabbed the rest.

With the Federal Court’s judgment, Anwar may spend the next five years in jail, after which he will be banned from electoral politics for five more years.

This means he will be 77 by the time he can be rehabilitated to the electoral arena by 2025.

This begs the first big question: Who will be the Prime Minister if PR wins the next general election, which must be held by August 2018?

And the next one: Can the coalition, consisting of three parties with different ideologies and constituencies, hold together without a clear successor accepted by all?

Already, the three parties in PR have had conflicts since July over various issues: The choice of Chief Minister in the state of Selangor, dominated by Anwar’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), the insistence of the Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party (PAS) to enforce Syariah law in its bastion state of Kelantan, and the advocacy of local elections by the Democratic Action Party (DAP).

If the void left behind by Anwar accelerates conflicts and rivalry within PR, resulting in its break-up, the BN will have a field day over the divided opposition.

A Kelantan prince steps forward

PR is the fourth serious opposition coalition formed to challenge the UMNO-led ruling coalition.

UMNO decisively crushed the short-lived first attempt in 1965, led by Singapore’s People’s Action Party (PAP), by expelling Singapore — then a member state — from Malaysia.

The next two were the outcome of the fourth Prime Minister purging his ex-Finance-Ministers-turned-challengers: Mr Tengku Razaleigh in the late 1980s and Anwar Ibrahim in the late 1990s.

Mr Razaleigh, a popular prince from Kelantan formed a third Malay-based party, Parti Melayu Semangat (S46), in the 1990 election to bridge PAS and DAP, whose hard-core supporters from conservative rural Malays and liberal non-Malay urbanites, respectively, could not see eye to eye. The Kelantan man creatively manufactured two fronts, one all-Muslim with PAS, as the other key partner, and the other, a multi-ethnic one with DAP.

However, his grand coalition immediately lost its momentum when the 47 per cent votes it garnered in the 1990 election returned only 29 per cent of parliamentary seats, failing to even deny BN its legislative two-third majority.

Mr Razaleigh dissolved his own party and returned to UMNO in 1996.

Charismatic from the start

Transforming himself from a firebrand student leader in the 1970s, the charismatic Anwar had risen meteorically within 17 years to be the No 2 in UMNO and Malaysia before his downfall.

His sudden purging and humiliating prosecution in 1998 for sodomy shocked most Malaysians and unleashed unprecedented sociopolitical revolt, especially among the Malays.

The tide of Reformasi — modelled on that in Indonesia which ended Suharto’s 32-year rule — captured public imagination in rejecting authoritarianism, corruption and cronyism.

Anwar’s PKR, PAS and DAP was swept into a single pact, the Alternative Front, but its mediocre performance in the 1999 election, winning only 21 per cent of parliamentary seats with 39 per cent of votes, saw its effective demise by 2001.

Unlike the two preceding opposition coalitions, PR was not a pre-election pact. It was formed after the political tsunami in 2008, which saw PKR, PAS and DAP winning 49 per cent of federal votes, 36 per cent of parliamentary seats and five state governments.

Anwar was clearly a key factor of PR’s success. He would have been Malaysia’s Prime Minister since May 2013 had the electoral system been fairer. And he would have commanded enough public trust and affection to lead the nation to move away from communal politics and policies.

However, what makes and breaks PR goes beyond personalities. The fundamental factor is the prospect of power.

Both Mr Razaleigh’s grand coalition and the Alternative Front collapsed because DAP left the coalition in protest against PAS’ aggressive pursuit of Islamisation in the states the latter ruled. But the very reason PAS abandoned a more centrist position for the communal flank was exactly because the federal power was still beyond reach of the opposition despite their inter-ethnic collaboration.

The 2013 election outcome was a more frustrating nightmare for the opposition: Unless you win by a huge landslide, winning the majority of votes may still mean a defeat.

Some put the threshold as around 60 per cent of votes. But winning such a majority is impossible until PR can convince the majority of Malays that they can offer a better deal than UMNO.

While the growing wealth gap among the Malays has induced many disaffected Malays to question UMNO’s ethno-nationalism, the party has allowed ultra-right groups such as Perkasa and Isma to whip up the Malays’ fear of minority dominance. Anwar and PR are accused of being sell-outs to the Chinese and non-Muslims.

The pursuit of Syariah law is one response by hardliners in PAS to both compete and cooperate with UMNO in the game of Muslim dominance.

The Islamist party is now at the edge of schism between the pro-PR and anti-PR factions.

The response so far to Anwar’s second jailing for sodomy has been relatively calm. The lack of surprise compared with when the first sodomy prosecution started 17 years ago is not the concern. The reaction speaks of a greater challenge before PR: It has yet to build a social coalition with an unsurmountable momentum to build a non-communalised future.

If PR leaders can transform the anger over the Anwar verdict into a determination for change, Anwar’s removal may unintendedly forge a renewed social coalition that ends UMNO’s seven-decade dominance.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dr Wong Chin Huat is a political scientist from Penang Institute in Malaysia.