At a time when neighbouring Singapore has embarked on an exercise in search of its next leader from the current crop of “4G” ministers, Malaysia turned to a larger-than-life 2G figure .
Incredibly, after a fifteen-year absence from high office (he was Malaysia’s fourth prime minister for twenty-two years) Dr. M is back in the Putrajaya house having pulled off nothing less than one of the most stunning upsets in electoral history. Not only did he and the Pakatan Harapan upend the sixty-plus-year reign of the ruling Barisan Nasional alliance (which he himself once led), Mahathir became, at a sprightly ninety-two-years, the world’s oldest head of government.
More incredulously, especially when viewed in the light of his increasing authoritarian rule when he was last in power, Mahathir’s return has been marked by unfettered euphoria both from the voters and the world’s press. How did he become the ultimate electoral disruptor whose victory has implications not only for his nation, but for both the entire region and the globe?
1.Flank Speed
Love or hate him, Mahathir Mohamad has never been one to flinch from a fight, or the potential of one. Neither has he ever been proven to be the least bit publicly indecisive when tackling challenges. In the days since Malaysia’s GE 14 he has wasted no time in initiating sweeping changes aimed at eradicating corruption, displacing the kleptocracy that held sway under predecessor Najib Razak (whose own arrest seems more impending with every passing hour) and to restore the people’s trust in government.
He has moved aggressively by first naming the key ministers in the great state offices of Finance, Home and Defence, laid out who the next tranche of 13 cabinet members will be and enhanced the credibility of the new government by setting up the Team of Eminent Persons (less a group of ‘Elders’ as the name might suggest than highly-experienced former technocrats who collectively bring to bear considerable experience in governmental service and advisory duties). Other institutions which should theoretically be impartial or have proven vulnerable to favouritism are also receiving new leadership. As these metaphorical heads of key government institutions continue to roll, Malaysians are evidencing genuine pride in their Prime Minister, their government and their nation. Social and traditional media are also rife with the exhortations of a people rejuvenated.
Why should they not be? After years of making the headlines for infamous reasons, in a single dramatic gesture, Malaysia has brought about its own Berlin Wall moment. By throwing off the shackles imposed by years of endemic state-sponsored stasis as manifested in the BN’s rule, this nation of hitherto unrealized potential has become, for a moment at least, nothing less than an exemplary example of democratic renewal. What is important for voters in this region with its history of gravitation towards juntas, jumped-up potentates, paper strongmen, corruption-infested bureaucracies and “guided” democracies, is the realization that things can change, and that while nations and cultures may indeed be different, the unquenchable human desire to try and make things better ultimately threatens to replace any politically sclerotic system that over time has come to think that it knows better than its population what is best for their welfare.
This is not new. Globally, Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party has held sway since 1955, yet lost power twice; Canada’s Liberals once saw themselves as ‘The Natural Governing Party,’ ruled for almost 69 years in the twentieth century; the Italian Christian Democrats dominated coalition governments for half a century. India’s Congress Party had a run of 64 years. Yet every one of the examples came to electoral grief for a variety of similar reasons (i.e. lack of new ideas, perceived/or real corruption having to undergo periods in the electoral wilderness until such time that had to retool their messages so as to outline to voters just how they were different and what they stood for.
2.Years in the Making
Whilst the opposition had come close to defeating the BN before (even winning the 2013 popular vote), it was Mahathir with his blend of guile, vision, strategy and planning that ultimately tipped the scales for victory. Yet for all of the accolades he justly deserves, the wily once-and-future PM had the good sense to do his homework on the current state of his opponents and to work with the other parties within the Pakatan Harapan coalition so as to be simultaneously ready for the campaign and to assume power shortly thereafter. Nothing happened spontaneously. Despite the international media’s portrayal of a “shock” victory, and to an at times impromptu feel to the opposition coalition, Mahathir actually left very little to chance. He built a viable opposition around the foundation of his obvious experience, promoted high-visibility to BN’s displaced or dismissed politicians and campaigned with discipline, hammering home the same messages with relentless ferocity.
To external observers the incumbent government’s optic challenges were obvious: Malaysian voters confronted a regime which blatantly refused to acknowledge neither the ongoing drip drip drip effect of the internationally embarrassing 1MDB scandal nor that people and businesses were suffering (in reality or perception) with the Goods and Services Tax, never having received a coherent explanation as to why it was both beneficial and ultimately necessary in the first place.
This impression of haughty disdain fed a roiling current of subsurface mistrust and anger expressed via intense chatter in Whatsapp chat groups, coffee shops, and people’s homes that could never be accurately measured via conventional polling. The administration’s seeming cavalier usage of key institutions -- the police, the MACC, government departments and the Election Commission -- inflamed the population. And at a time when the country’s electoral integrity was being scrutinized under the kleig lights of an internationally-observed election contest, new constituency boundaries were created with an arbitrariness that made race and voting patterns the primary factors in the latest delineations for Parliamentary and state seat boundaries.
In brazen contravention of the Malaysian Constitution’s Section 13 which prohibits gerrymandering, the sizes of federal parliamentary constituencies were “modified” to the extent that the value of a voter in one could be worth four or five in another. Traditional agriculturally-based voting blocs were promised increased FELDA subsidies, and civil servants promised pay hikes. Extra holidays would be added. All of these electoral tactics had worked before. That there was no single, coherent vision, much less new policies articulated by inspiring avatars, was deemed to be of no consequence as the ruling alliance had become expert both at identifying wedge issues and manufacturing consent.
But Najib and the BN were fighting the last election, not the current one.
Those in the local media who actually bothered to talk with people both in urban areas and in the Malay heartland were invariably left with the sense that there was a disturbance in the Force, and that an impending electoral earthquake might be possible. Others wondered if the anger reflected by the massive crowds at Pakatan Harapan rallies where Mahathir made his celebrity-like appearances.
Moreover, Mahathir had the intimate internal knowledge that years at the helm of the BN (and its predecessor UMNO) had brought, prior to his crossing the floor. He knew its factions, their potentates, stress points, not to mention its likely electoral strategies and tactics. Shrewdly, he also correctly grasped that under Najib’s nine-year stewardship the ruling coalition had become a sort of echo chamber, far removed from the daily needs of its base, full of yes-men whose fawning reports only served to feed the leadership’s delusion that they were still in touch.
This kind of cloud cuckoo atmosphere precluded the BN undertaking a thorough examination of where the organization actually was, which could have raised issues of accountability with various stakeholder constituencies. Frankly, we all like to think our organizations are better positioned than reality might otherwise indicate but no amount of staged “consultations” with the public can substitute for the real thing, when people feel that their voices are truly being heard, that politicians dare to admit errors, and that they can lead change and inspire.
Among the many ironies of the GE 14 result is that the man who shuttered newspapers and undermined freedom of the press during his previous tenure is the one who is now expected to liberate the media from its state and self-imposed manacles. He must also begin a systematic overhaul of the bloated civil service and undertake a complete revamp of the education system so that its curriculums reflect the reality of an increasingly secular world which places more emphasis on life experience than a piece of paper based on assessing one’s mastery of theory at exam time. If in the past, the system was geared towards providing students with the necessary knowledge and skills to help them secure jobs that have already been disrupted in today's environment, the future will depend on how technology can be integrated into student learning.
Governmental department sizes need to be reduced, red tape cut, unnecessarily created agencies and “public” companies with CEOs whose pay levels are either exorbitant or undisclosed, unaccountable to anyone exposed (after all, why bother to list a company as ‘public’ without the internationally accepted transparency standards for disclosure?). While other countries are adopting the Internet of Things, Digitalisation, Artificial Intelligence and such, Malaysian ministries are not even working interactively or even interconnected, despite unnecessarily replicating data and by so doing driving up operating costs.
Time is the fire in which humans burn. Mahathir seems acutely conscious that he has little measure of this irreplaceable commodity to lay the foundations upon which the recently-released defacto PH leader Anwar Ibrahim can build upon in order to make the country great again. But, having vanquished another in his long line of apprentices, the venerable master is clearly up for this last twilight struggle.
Amanah, Bersih, Cekap once more.
Everything old is new again.