Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News
Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
| GE13: What happened? And what now? (Part 1) Posted: 11 Jun 2013 03:22 PM PDT
After GE13, more even than before, the Umno's ability to head a government, and rule over the nation's core in peninsular Malaysia, now rests disproportionately upon the seats that its fractious East Malaysian partners hold in Sarawak and Sabah (34 seats, together held by 8 different parties, many of them loose, unstable personal alliances of mercurial, opportunistic and "gymnastic" leaders.) Clive Kessler, TMI In a brief commentary elsewhere ("Malaysia's election result — no surprise to the knowledgeable," Asian Currents, June 2013), I have noted one paradoxical but hugely important consequence of Malaysia's recent national elections held on 5 May. A paradox: anomalous domination The remarkable, perhaps "counter-intuitive", fact is that, while the election result itself ― namely, a fairly close but nonetheless comfortable victory of the Umno-centred Barisan Nasional side over the Pakatan Rakyat opposition ― came as no great surprise, that unremarkable result nonetheless had one quite surprising, even paradoxical, consequence. From GE13 an electorally weakened Umno emerged politically even more dominant than it had been before. While still embattled in the broader political arena, Umno was delivered a dominant position within the parliament, ruling coalition and government. By bestowing it with that now dominant parliamentary position, GE13 had delivered into Umno's hands an ascendancy over the governing BN coalition, government policy, Parliament's agenda and parliamentary process, and thereby over national political life ― over the nation's affairs and direction ― of a quite unprecedented and perhaps irresistible kind. What are the relevant facts here? The immediate challenge facing Najib Razak, it had been said in the run-up to GE13, was at best to win back the two-thirds majority (or 148 of the 222 seats in the Dewan Rakyat), or at least to improve on the 2008 yield of 140. More modest and realistic than demanding recovery of the two-thirds majority, some suggested that even 145 would have been a "good result", good enough to ensure his immediate political survival against critics, adversaries and doubters in his own camp. In the event, worse even than at GE12 in 2008, Umno/BN won only 133 seats. For those who might be satisfied with nothing less than assured domination ― a constitutionally unassailable and impregnable position ― a shortfall of eight seats had now almost doubled to 15. Yet ― as I noted in my summary review ― behind all its archaizing ceremonialism and cultural nostalgia, politics and political thinking within Umno is nothing other than Realpolitik of the most ruthlessly pragmatic kind. And realistically, Umno (if its interests, and nothing else, are to be the focus of analysis, as the party "hard men" insist) did not do at all badly. Why? Because, paradoxically, its political domination was enhanced, not diminished, by the election result ― despite the further decline in the government's parliamentary numbers and the opposition's advances. Drawing a contrast between the post-election situation of Umno/BN and its Pakatan Rakyat (PKR) adversary is instructive here. The PKR coalition won a total of 89 seats. The opposition coalition's parliamentary numbers are reasonably balanced. All three of its constituent parties have a sizeable and, if not an equal then a comparable, presence in the Dewan Rakyat (DAP holds 38 seats, PKR 30, PAS 21). The smallest of the three, PAS, contributes about a quarter of the opposition's parliamentary numbers, while the largest, DAP, more than two-fifths but less than a half. Contrast that with the situation on the government side. Of BN's 133 seats, Umno now holds 88 (up from 79 in 2008). Its MPs amount to two-thirds of the total BN parliamentary representation. Umno alone has a parliamentary presence that is virtually the same as that of the combined opposition. Its shortfall of a single seat, if that troubles anybody who matters, is one that might be readily reversed through a by-election victory, the timely defection of an "unhappy" opposition MP, or even a successful appeal against the result in, say, Bachok or some other constituency where the Umno candidate had fallen narrowly short of victory in the election night count. Now compare Umno's situation among its governing BN partners with the more balanced situation in the opposition coalition's parliamentary numbers. After Umno, the next largest party on that side of the house holds only 14 seats. The Umno's customary "primary partners" going back to Alliance Party times even preceding independence, the Chinese MCA and the Indian MIC, now together hold only 11 (7 and 4 respectively) and its newer ally Gerakan, 1 ― the decline in their public plausibility and electoral viability coming as the result of, and signifying, the increasing Umno dominance over its old BN partners in deciding national policy over the last decade. After GE13, more even than before, the Umno's ability to head a government, and rule over the nation's core in peninsular Malaysia, now rests disproportionately upon the seats that its fractious East Malaysian partners hold in Sarawak and Sabah (34 seats, together held by 8 different parties, many of them loose, unstable personal alliances of mercurial, opportunistic and "gymnastic" leaders.) Umno's task will be to satisfy, appease and manage its increasingly assertive, and at times even restive, East Malaysian partners who now so heavily underwrite BN's, and hence Umno's, ability to rule. But provided it can do that, in numerical and political terms Umno now dominates ― perhaps as never before ― the national government. Provided it can decide without internal strife what it wants to do, provided it "knows its own mind", it will be in a powerful position in the years ahead to have its way on all significant political and policy issues, so long as its Sabah and Sarawak allies can be kept "in line". In national government, an era of unprecedented Umno domination may now be in the offing.
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