Post-Anwar: Malaysia’s Gloomy Future

On February 12, Malaysia’s highest court decided to reject an appeal and uphold a sodomy conviction against opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, threatening to end his political career. While the verdict was not altogether surprising, it raises several lingering questions about Malaysia’s direction during a year when the country has taken on a much more prominent role on the regional and global stage.

In the 1990s, Anwar initially rose within Malaysia’s ruling United Malay National Organization (UMNO) to become deputy prime minister before falling out with the country’s then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad. He has since spent several years in prison after being convicted of what many have called politically motivated corruption and sodomy charges. The sequel to this trial, dubbed “Sodomy II” locally, has been marred by questionable evidence and glaring inconsistencies and was roundly criticized by several human rights groups and experts. According to Human Rights Watch, the sodomy charge – which carries a punishment of up to 20 years in prison – has only been invoked seven times in the country’s history but has been used repeatedly against Anwar. The Malaysian government has fiercely denied any foul play, but many close observers of the country’s politics find that claim rather difficult to believe.

The verdict could influence the future trajectory of Malaysia’s politics. On the one hand, some say that Anwar’s imprisonment will play into the hands of UMNO and Malaysia’s current prime minister Najib Razak by undermining the opposition which has already been beset by political infighting in spite of winning the popular vote in the 2013 polls. Anwar’s imprisonment is expected to last five years, and barring a few outs, most notably a pending royal pardon sought by his family, he will lose his parliamentary seat and role as opposition leader. This means the 67-year old Anwar, a charismatic, experienced, and well-connected politician, will no longer be able to hold together the unwieldy opposition coalition known as the Pakatan Rakyat.

The three-party coalition – comprising a conservative Islamist party, an ethnic Chinese minority party, and Anwar’s multiracial, secular party – has been bickering over divisive issues such as the role of religion in the secular, Muslim-majority country which also has significant Chinese and Indian minorities. With Anwar gone and no other leader with his status and ability to bridge these chasms, some worry about the future of the coalition. In an interview with The Diplomat on March 1, Sim Tze Tzin, the strategy director for Anwar’s party, said that while there were challenges, he expected the coalition to continue to operate in the future because of its grassroots support and second-line leadership. But as he himself acknowledged, the coalition will first need to survive, something which will itself be difficult to achieve.

Najib Struggles

On the other hand, the fate of Najib and UMNO in the post-Anwar era is arguably just as unclear. While UMNO remained the world’s longest continuously elected ruling party following the 2013 election, it was the party’s worst ever performance. Najib has since been increasingly flanked on the left by the opposition and on the right by opponents from within his own party, including former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad who still retains significant influence. Whispers of a leadership challenge from within UMNO are growing louder, and recent allegations of financial mismanagement of 1MDB, an investment fund overseen by Najib, only provide more fodder for his critics. Meanwhile, around ten thousand Malaysians rallied in the streets of Kuala Lumpur to protest the Anwar decision and show their dissatisfaction with the government earlier this month, suggesting that neutralizing the political threat the opposition leader poses may not be as easy as first thought.

Nor have domestic and global conditions worked in Najib’s favor. In his 2015 New Year message to the nation, the prime minister called 2014 the most challenging year of his career, with twin airline tragedies – the disappearance of MH370 in March and the downing of MH17 in July in Ukraine – and the worst floods in decades, which displaced more than 200,000 people. The floods, along with falling oil prices and a weakening currency, made for a rather gloomy economic outlook in late 2014, which has carried into early 2015. In January, Najib was forced to announce a revised budget due to the country’s worsening economic prospects. Fitch Ratings reiterated earlier this month that Malaysia’s credit rating was more than 50 percent likely to be downgraded due to a number of concerns, including a trade imbalance and the 1MDB incident.

In the face of these constraints, Najib, who had initially promised bold changes such as economic reform and scrapping the British colonial-era Sedition Act, has increasingly cracked down on dissent and moved to secure his own survival. Last November, he said the sedition law would be retained and even strengthened, and dozens have been investigated, charged or convicted under it over the past year, including several top opposition leaders. On March 16, just over a month after the Anwar verdict, authorities temporarily detained his daughter Nurul Izzah Anwar on a sedition charge after a speech in parliament, where Malaysian law states politicians are supposed to have immunity from prosecution. Najib also held private meetings with his cabinet and party officials this month to secure votes of confidence.

It is still far too early to tell what Najib or UMNO’s fate will be. The next general election must be held before 2018, and the next UMNO election is expected to take place in 2016. Najib has survived a similar intra-party challenge before – at the November 2013 party elections – and could do so again next year. But according to a recent poll by the respected Merdeka Center, his popularity rating has fallen to just 44 percent as of January 2015, and could dip even further if economic jitters increase this year in the wake of the 1MDB scandal, painful economic reforms such as the introduction of a new consumption tax system in April, as well as worsening global economic conditions.

If he does not survive, that will add more uncertainty to Malaysia’s political outlook given the other candidates who might challenge him. For instance, Muhyiddin Yassin, the deputy prime minister and deputy party leader who many speculate has long been eying Najib’s job, is viewed as a Malay nationalist who lacks Najib’s reformist instincts. Moderate Malays and the country’s sizable Chinese and Indian minorities fear that the emergence of UMNO politicians with strong Malay nationalist leanings could stoke racial and religious tensions in Malaysia and distract the country from urgent reforms.

Abroad, this domestic political uncertainty risks tarnishing Malaysia’s image during a landmark year for its foreign policy both regionally and internationally. Regionally, Malaysia is chairing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2015. The country is unlikely to come in for direct criticism from its neighbors on the Anwar verdict or related issues. Despite the best efforts of more reform-minded individuals within ASEAN, including Anwar himself who proposed a policy of “constructive intervention” in the 1990s, ASEAN’s norm of non-interference in internal affairs has persisted and Southeast Asian states are hesitant to criticize each other’s politics. Nor will these domestic political concerns significantly undermine the government’s priorities during its chairmanship, such as furthering regional economic integration and community-building initiatives.

Still, the optics are not good. During a year in which Malaysia – one of ASEAN’s five original founding members – is supposed to lead the grouping on progress towards a more integrated ASEAN community, the fate of its own leader hangs in the balance. And while the Malaysian government’s chairmanship vision of a more “people-centered ASEAN” – an effort to bring the organization closer to the needs of the region’s citizens – is a worthwhile one, critics have asked how Najib can lead such an mission when his government did not even win the popular vote in the 2013 elections, while Anwar, the opposition leader who did, languishes in prison.

Regional Uncertainties

These questions about Malaysia’s leadership come amid broader regional uncertainties. All five of ASEAN’s founding members are undergoing leadership crises of some kind just as the group is trying to accelerate community-building efforts. Thailand’s generals are trying to retool the political system in ways that undermine the country’s democracy as its much-revered monarch is in frail health, while Indonesia’s reformist president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has run into familiar obstacles – including his own party – as he tries to institute change. Philippine President Benigno Aquino is facing a turbulent end to his tenure after a botched counterterrorism raid, and Singapore is preparing for the possibility of an uncertain post-Lee Kuan Yew era sometime soon.

“Due to a mixture of misfortune and mortality, Southeast Asia is now as volatile as it was when the Asian Financial Crisis struck in 1997,” prominent regional commentator Michael Vaitikoitis wrote provocatively of ASEAN’s leadership woes in Malaysia’s The Edge Review on March 19. Distractions of leadership in these countries, including this year’s ASEAN chair Malaysia, Vaitikoitis argues, “dilute ASEAN cohesion and effectiveness” and makes the region “vulnerable to external predation and interference.” Given these unfavorable circumstances, he does not put much faith in Malaysia’s ability to forge significantly greater cooperation within ASEAN beyond what is already expected, as he believes the country itself will be struggling with a combination of an internal revolt against Najib and mass protests erupting to force Anwar’s pardon.

Internationally, too, Malaysia’s image has taken a hit, though this has mostly been in the form of rhetorical concerns by several countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and several European nations, rather than any specific punitive measures per se. Even the United States, which under the Clinton administration was much more vocal about Anwar’s earlier arrest – with vice-president Al Gore infamously rebuking the Malaysian government publicly during a November 1998 visit – has taken a much more cautious approach this time. National Security Council spokesperson Bernadette Meehan merely said of the matter that Washington was “deeply disappointed” and noting that the decision raised “serious concerns” about rule of law and the fairness of Malaysia’s judicial system.

The Obama administration, which inked a comprehensive partnership with Malaysia following U.S. President Barack Obama’s historic trip there last March, seems unwilling to risk undermining crucial bilateral cooperation across several areas ranging from maritime security to countering the Islamic State threat. Malaysia is also one of eleven other partners aside from Washington keen to conclude the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which the administration views as the cornerstone of its economic policy in the Asia-Pacific. Obama and Najib also get along well personally, and both played golf in Hawaii over Christmas last year. Plans to have Najib visit the White House this year are reportedly still in the works despite the Anwar verdict, and Obama is scheduled to visit Malaysia for this year’s round of Asian summitry since Malaysia is chairing ASEAN this year.

Nevertheless, critics continue to draw international attention to Malaysia’s domestic troubles. An online petition drafted by former U.S. ambassador to Malaysia John Malott – now one of the Najib administration’s most vocal critics – on the White House website following Anwar’s verdict reached the threshold of 100,000 signatures, forcing the Obama administration to respond. And as Malaysia pursues agenda items such as its Global Movement for Moderates – an initiative designed to counter extremism using moderate voices – as part of its two-year term as a non-permanent seat holder in the United Nations Security Council, the contradiction between its global leadership ambitions and domestic struggles is clear. In one notable case in December 2014, a group of twenty-five former senior civil servants signed an open letter urging the Malaysian government to review the application of Islamic laws in the country in the wake of fears of rising religious intolerance and a crackdown on dissent.

Following his verdict in February, Anwar told the judges sternly: “In bowing to the dictates of your political masters, you have become partners in the murder of the judiciary…You chose to remain on the dark side.” As the opposition leader now sits in prison, Malaysia looks to be headed for a rather gloomy and uncertain future, with Anwar’s shadow looming large over the country’s politics both at home and abroad.