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[Music] after 69 you have this extensive New Economic Policy PR Malay policy so that omno can win back to Malay support and lock in their support for every elections to come and uh beyond the economic sphere we have National cultural policy we have natural n uh Stronger enforcement of national language policy M and so on so the idea is to make the Malay character of Malaysia more pronounced and of course theal felt uh resentful and therefore they would support the chines bace opposition party dap currently a

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professor at sanway University Dr chinat Wong is also the deputy head of strategy for the Asia headworks of the UN sustainable development Solutions Network or STD SN hosted by the university sponsored by the Ching scholarship chinhat Wong completed his PhD in electoral and political systems from the University of Essex a political Scientist by training Dr Wong has been engaging in Malaysian politics for the last 25 years he began his career as a political columnist in 1998 and later went on to work for suchu a Chinese

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communitybased reform lobby as secretary Chief chinat Wong has played a crucial role in forming the Electoral reform Lobby the Coalition for clean and fair elections and was actively involved until his recent retirement he also works closely with the free market Think Tank Institute of democracy and economic Affairs or ideas based in Malaysia he joins us today on our latest episode of advocat conversations Professor chinu Wong welcome to advocat conversation welcome to Sri Lanka thank youa please call me

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just chinat thanks for having me here okay so chinat we would first like to understand your story tell us a little bit about yourself well I am a third generation Malaysians my all my four grandparents came from Southern China they of an ethnic group called sub ethnic group called tiu and I grew up uh in a mixed neighborhood I had more non Chinese neighbors I probably know more of them before I went to school which was in China medium that give me the best of both words I learn to appreciate the great heritage of my nation I do not

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see the diversity as a challenge uh let alone uh a disadvantage but at the same time I had the opportunity to learn about my culture and from there developed that empathy and respect for other culture I went through uh Chinese medium primary school state funded and then went to high school that was still state funded but we had uh Chinese as a single language subject then I went to National University for my bachelor and master degrees um our medium of instruction was Malay the national language uh but the

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textbooks most of them we have to use English and in my free time I write commentaries in Chinese so have been trained to think in different languages to write and then to translate at any time and that had become a great Advantage for me right and since you learned in three languages does language have an association with the way you think uh I think to some extent language are light languages are like windows allow us to see the world from different perspective but I don't think it fundamentally shap us so much except

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that certain language would emphasize certain uh cultur aspect for example Malay is is a very polite language very cous language in the sense that if I use the word you I may sound disrespectful I would have to pick the right word to use unlike in English uh to some extent in Chinese that I could use use okay rather liberally so you went for your undergraduate in University of Malaya University of Malaya and then what did you do thereafter I uh continue my master about two years later at the national university of Malaysia uh in

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Psychology my first degree was in economics in between that time I wrote uh political mentary for the Chinese newspaper which led me to be employed as the Secretary of chief for perhaps Malaysia first parliamentary Lobby group called suu uh so we started uh making our visits to Parliament talking to parliamentarians uh take notes of what they do but in that process we also got attacked by the government at that time under prime minister mahad Muhammad as uh a pro anemy because at the time he needed to

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show up his supports among voters and there's no better way to cast a Chinese based group as a Boogyman even though that this was when huh this was in 2000 year okay and then you did your Masters and then are you today a political science Professor yes right yes so what got you to get into Political Science I always knew that uh I like politics right but uh when I first after my preview uh the marks allowed me to have a few choices and at that time I fell in love with economics and that was sort of

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more mainstream choice but at some point I knew that I probably would go back to political science okay yeah and did you speak a lot of politics at home not really my family uh was actually uh my parents were sundry shop owners so they don't talk much politics I'm I'm the most political of my six siblings I'm the youngest okay so in many ways I'm the odd one out okay so uh chinan uh before we get into understanding the real political economy of Malaysia yeah can you give us some historical context

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on Malaysia what its history is what its Colonial period was and what happened during Independence Malaysia is a postcolonial country um I think to some extent like Sri Lanka in the sense that we did not have uh same government governing all our territory today before the British so when did the British come the British First St food in the island of pinag in 17 uh 1786 10 years after they were kicked out from the America mhm okay yeah so it came as a trading post and did they have the whole country or

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they selectively came in no they came in to look for Port colonies right so they first got pinang and then later uh they got malaka temporary during the Napoleon war and at the same time they found Singapore as their own so this constitute what we call the street settlement and only as late as around 1874 M they stepped foot into the Inland Malay kingdoms so historically the Malay Peninsula it was never a unified uh Kingdom it was unified to a large extent by the malakan sulate with uh that rule

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across both both sides of malaka street right so part of Sumatra in Indonesia the large part of the Malay Peninsula but not saan mhm okay and prior to when did Islam come to Malaysia Islam came to Malaysia perhaps as early as around uh 13th century okay but it became really important in 15th century when The malakan Sultans adopted uh Islam as his okay as his fa so so The malakan Sultans were different to the th because towards the north there was a Sam Kingdom right yes so there was a barrier that the siames didn't come into

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the Malia Peninsula well at the beginning malaka was a wasel state to the tie but with the Chinese uh protection it again that autonomy from Thailand so Tha would told not to touch malaka and grew to be a maritime power in Southeast Asia so when did the Chinese come to Malaysia uh Chinese probably St foood as Trader as long as 2,000 years ago but they were very tiny right uh most Chinese that we met we have in Malaysia Today cannot claim to be descendants of those ancient Chinese right if if they have left behind any

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descendants is more likely would be the malays MH yeah so so when did the Chinese come to Malaysia uh the B of the Chinese uh came to Malaysia around mid early and mid 19th century right so partly because of the opening of port in pinang and Singapore but also during that time as uh the tin mining became more important the Malay rulers themselves brought in Chinese right uh for mining uh in jeho one of the state for Plantation this they brought them as workers they brought them in as workers or uh in in some case they were

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basically sort of entrepreneur the Chinese will came with a group they will work on the m a tetin m or on Plantation and they pay taxes to the Mal rers okay and why did they need to bring the Chinese in why couldn't the malays work uh I there were there were different part of that situation at the beginning at that time it was before the British officially stfo in so the Chinese were brought in for tin mining because they had the technology and in jeho it was very tinly populated at the time so they didn't

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bring in just the Chinese but also the Javanese from Indonesia and so on but later on when the British uh took over the inland Malay sudanes they did have a policy to not involve most of the malays in the modern economic sector and the reason had to do with India the 1857 mutini in India caused the British colonial rulers to have a policy to minimize social disruption and that incident had far-reaching consequences on Malaysian politics and economy in two way one by keeping most of the malays out of the

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modern sectors the malays were historically economically backward and that eventually led to the demand of an affirmative actions uh which some other people see it as pure nativism M to give preferential treatment to the malays and later other native uh in private sector employment in business licensing and in education later extend to publicate sector uh employment Equity ownership home ownership and so on the second implication is that because the British wanted to rule malays indirectly M they Preserve

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the Malay States or even strengthen the Malay States as a political entity but limited the su's power only to Islam and Malay custom that led to uh the identity of meanus and Islam which later on what it meant is that uh the the missionaries Christian missionaries when not allowed to convert the Malay MH even though they set up many missionary school and therefore orales remains as Muslim and that led uh the cage structure to be uh both on the ethnic and the religious line at the same time dividing

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the malays and the non-malays and when did the Indians come the Indian were brought the Indian like the ch Chinese they were they were step foot as early as 2000 and they left behind uh many cultural imprints on Earth so 2,000 years ago 2,000 years ago so the early Malay civilization has very strong Indian influence so were they Hindus or both Hindus and uh later Buddhist Buddhist so for example our our NIS Trace their Origins to this idea of dear Raja okay yeah the Divine King so of course later when they Embrace Islam and all

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this Concepts were islamized and replaced by Islamic concept but we do have a strong roots in Indian influence much like Indonesia but unlike Indonesia but they're very comfortable uh with the Indian indianization pass uh Malaysia would like to stress more about uh Islam and partly that has to do with our ethnic politics MH so you are familiar with the concept of synchronism uh is is there a lot of these influences in the Islam that is practiced in Malaysia yes uh Islam is practiced in many way and that we had influences from

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of Islam directly come from Arabs mainly through Yemen and so on and also through India and in in the past uh I believe I'm I myself I'm not a Muslim but I believe that our practice of Islam was very inclusive uh you have you have uh you you have elements of sunnis and Shia practices blending together and so on that was not an issue as it is now today okay and uh so you said that from ancient times the Indians had influence but when did the mass migration of Indians happen they came for the

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plantations yes they came for Plantation and that's exactly because of the British policy of not to disrupt the social structure in the Malay community so uh for Plantation for constructions of Railways and roots and so on they brought in the they brought in Indians mainly from TAMU but also small portions of them as uh administrators m from the north panjab for example so uh what was the colonial economy like was it based on plantations and tin mining yes it was mainly based on plant uh rubber Plantation and Tin

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Mine M and uh and that that's the main part that how it was grown the capital ownership was very much foreign foreign so the Chinese basically worked in these Enterprises and they had their own private businesses yes the Chinese uh were brought in as basically miners but they came in as sort of uh sometimes as uh their own Clan sometimes basically underworld groups so they work all these things out many of them perish in very tough living conditions uh but those who survive they many of them make

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themselves to be millionaires okay and they were mainly from Southern China yes basically is from uh three provinces MH fuen quangong kwangi and today part of quangong is hyan so for provinces okay okay so the Colonial economy was controlled by British interests British interests and its main role was to provide uh raw materials for the Empire yes so during the colonial times uh was it was Malaysia very docile was the was the country very doile did they oppose colonial rule colonialist rule were

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opposed at the beginning stage right uh for for various reasons part of it for economic reason because many of the uh the local chiens will deny their income they have to become tax collectors for the British rather than collecting it themselves and give their share uh to The Sultans and so on so part of it was because of Crash of culture and custom and sometime for Better or For Worse uh there was there were instances where uh the crash was because of British opposition to slavery in in some some uh

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individual cases okay interesting so World War II happens yeah uh and the Japanese overran Mala yes and they occupy you for what 2 years 3 years 3 years and 8 months right yeah was it very harsh very hostile it was very harsh but also it left behind a deep scar on how uh the malan society mainly uh what happened was because that the the Chinese then who were not uh local citizens of naturalized citizens of Malaysia because there was no Malaysia yet so they were just overseas Chinese citizen and they were certainly uh

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naturally supporting China and so the Japanese were very harsh on them uh because they were in the Japanese were in China right were in China they were in China so that they were very crud to the Chinese in China and the Chinese in Malaya of course were supportive of their counterpart and their Homeland and and so I I I'm I'm very lucky to be here because there's a good chance that either of my my some of my grandparents could have been killed by them and I wouldn't be here mhm and and your uh

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grandparents where did they settle in Malaysia they were settle they they settled down in uh the west coast states of perah where you have famous for okay okay so uh then you have second world war the Japanese are there and then the W and the Japanese leave yes so then what was left go back a little bit to the Japanese Occupation they were using uh because as what they did in in in caughting the Indian nationalists the burmes nationalists they caught the Malay nationalists and Indonesian nationalists

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promising Independence eventually and in that process many of the Japanese uh apparatus were run by the malise mhm and fighting against the Japanese were guillas mainly consisting of Chinese back by the British so for two weeks after the Japanese surrender there was a v vacuum before the British returned this Gua who were mainly communist in leaning they took over they Pur all those collaborators with Japanese MH uh this was cross ethnic but within the Chinese Community it would be seen as just purging against

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the war as it happened in many parts uh in Europe after the war but for the malays they see this as they saw it and until today they see it as ethnically motivated so it was the Chinese as an outsider group trying to take over and that left behind uh this perception MH that uh the Chinese could not be led to be in power they would take control they would marginalize Malay and until today the term communist is very liberally used against the Chinese even those Chinese who are completely from free

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market but they put the term communist they call for example the main Chinese party now in government as communist with that implication that this was the Chinese who would take over and then marginalize the M persecuted the m so you said there was a two we window before the British Administration came and then you had this communist Insurgency that didn't go away right okay that two weeks was this uh anti-japanese Army right AMC ja that took control MH and when the British came back this Army uh was sort of

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dispersed but the communist as the backbone retain their influence the Communist Insurgency did not happen immediately it happened in 1948 but between uh 1946 and 1948 there was an important period that how Malaysian politics was Shi the British ban in preparation after the preparation for decolonization of the Indian subcontinent they wanted to merge all their possessions in British Malaya at the time there was the street settlements the port colonies and then you have a Federated uh Malay states which has more

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centralized structure and then you have another five unfederated Malay States so a whole strings of different possession they wanted to combine everything to prepare for its eventual decolonization except for Singapore m now what happened then was that this was meant to be a unitary state M with liberal citizenship for the non- Malay the Chinese and the Indians mhm so we are now still talking about just after World War II after World War so for that two years the British tried to push for this idea

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called Malayan Union and the Malay was staunchly against it because was it to be a Dominion to be it was called uh to be a Crown Colony at that time was not dominant yet to be a crow colony and because most of the we had including Singapore we have 12 States MH so nine of these states were protectorates to turn it into a colony is certainly uh was certainly an insult to the malays but more than that what they opposed was this idea of uh citizenships for non malays who have been there for at at least one generation so born there so

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they objected to that and that give birth that objection the a strong opposition to this Malayan Union structure give birth to Malaysia most powerful party until 2018 the Malay United malays National Organization am which went on to rule the country so during this period where the British were trying to create a Crown Colony yeah uh did they H um promote some kind of uh representation amongst the Malaysians we had not had election yet but there was towards that direction okay but however the Malayan unions were short life

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because of strong Malay opposition especially from omno uh which had influence across the aristocratic uh class but as well as some of the British colonial officer MH so in 1948 the British rot back the plan and and the the whole Malaya concept was revamp as Federation of Malaya but in the Malay words the word Malaya was in in Malay Malay Malaya was the land of Malay T malayu and so it it acquir a character the character of an ethnocracy mhm but what is interesting is that about 4 months after this birth of Federation of Malaya this

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Federated ocracy the Communist Insurgency explode and the British immediately then realized that it had to sort out the communal issue otherwise it would hand over Malaya to the Communist m and amno amno Leadership was then forced to or encouraged to find a solution so AMU later worked together with a Chinese party and an Indian party to form a multi-ethnic coalitions called The Alliance MH okay and this Alliance continues until Independence yes in fact they were the one who B the independence from the hand of British right so the

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communist played the role of the bad cup okay opposing Colonial rule right and uh the alliance was the good cup telling the British and say you have to give us independence otherwise yeah you're strengthening the Communist so you have uh India or South Asia gaining independence in 1947 1948 yes and Malaysia gets Independence in 1957 57 so there was a 10year period yeah uh why was this not hen what delayed the whole process well partly because that uh the political development was not as advanced as in South Asia okay yeah and

00:28:11 - 00:29:29
we we have Malay parties a Malayan parties coming out during that time but uh for example we had no solution so it was partly because of the Communist Insurgency that forced the Malay parties to work with the non Malay parties so everyone agree and say well we want to get independence and we do not want the country to be a communist so you have to work things out so what we had then uh that was characterized or mischaracterized as uh consultation democracy so 1957 comes and then you become independent from the British yes

00:28:49 - 00:30:17
so what we know as Malaysia uh what was that composed of uh Malaysia was formed in 196 Tre right other than Malaya it included Singapore right which gain his autonomous status in 1959 and Saban remains Crown colonies with no self-government until then the singaporeans under the leaderships of Mr Liang Yu wanted a merger or REM merger with Malaya because they could see it would be very hard for the island to survive on its own M they need an economic Hinterland so Malaya gets Independence 57 and

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Singapore remains a Crown Colony remain a crown crony but it became autonomous by 1959 okay and then Sabah and sarak were they Malay Kingdom so what were they before they were part of nominally territories Colonial territories colonies of brunai and suan brunai sutan and the Sulu in the Philippines but geographically if you look at these regions yeah how come they didn't go with Indonesia well because they were sarwa were taken over by a white uh British family right called the Brooks okay so they became the white Raja okay

00:30:17 - 00:31:37
and Sabah was a property of uh uh British North Bon companies like a charted company like the East India Company M okay so what were they doing there they were taking Timber or rubber or palm oil uh there's no palm oil then so it's mainly uh Agriculture and then some miningspeed together in 1963 as Malaysia yes and then this goes on till 1965 yeah and then Singapore is kicked out yes right and then you're left with Malaysia yes so we have three changes of international boundary right right so

00:31:04 - 00:32:32
let us know uh what the environment was like after Independence what were the politics like what was the national you know narrative the debate well when Malay in 1955 Malaya had its first national election at that time the alliance won 51 out 52 seats with over I think 80 % of votes because at the time we had no opposition but immediately after elections uh it's impossible for the parties not to have Rivals and the rivals came from both side from the Malay side you have the pan Malayan Islamic party pass and then from the

00:31:48 - 00:33:13
non- Malay especially the Chinese side you have uh Central left parties to Socialist Party so they oppose the government uh both the opposition oppos the governments on both class issue but also this is where they would agree with each other to some extent but also opposingly on identity issues especially at the time was language okay so that was and during the time of Independence do you remember what the demographic structure was What proportion was Malay Chinese Indian um that at that time Malay and non-malays were very close the

00:32:30 - 00:33:59
reason why Singapore was excluded is if you add in that Island right which was predominantly Chinese the non-malays would overtake Malay okay so is is that the main reason why they were booted out uh partly because when they were taken in the reason why we had Saban shwa was to balance up Singapore so in the federal Parliament Singapore was deliberately under represented babat SWA over represented but why it caused this Union to be short life was the Malayan federal government wanted to have a control on the new States in sabat andat

00:33:14 - 00:34:32
they managed to bring bring together the new local parties as their local versions of Alliance but in Singapore you already have this people Action Party so there was a crash right at the start and later on pap wanted to join the alliance in Malaya and say let us replace the Chinese party we we would be able to provide you a stronger basis uh for the non-malays and this was rejected because it was seen as the Singapore was seen was seen as too aggressive and when they were rejected they say now let us

00:33:53 - 00:35:12
form a colls of opposition to take you on and the Malaya say enough is enough we cut you off so instead of allowing that to become a two-party system which may not be very healthy uh what you see is a separation that produce two one party States M okay so both Sid of the white we became one party state so so you were saying that uh you know Singapore was under represented so it's a first past the post system it was a Westminister Style system yes but uh the allocations of seats were not proportionately

00:34:33 - 00:35:57
determined okay so at that time Malaya has 104 and Singapore was only given 15 seats but sabba and sarwat together had 40 seats wow and they had very small populations right no the populations of Singapore actually is larger than both States combined okay so that the representation in the federal Parliament was reversed to make make sure that Singapore would not have an uh very powerful say but in action Singapore has got more these devolved Powers so they control their own education uh health care and

00:35:14 - 00:36:40
labor so the federal Malaysia is a federal state yes and what level of uh uh delegation is there in the power structure in Malaysia what level uh so at at the state level yeah uh what level of subsidiarity is there all right okay we have nominally three levels of government right uh we have 13 states and three Federal territories like the union territories in India then underneath that we have uh districts in saan Sarat they have divisions uh but in practice after 1965 we no no longer have local

00:35:58 - 00:36:59
government elections so whoever control the state they control the local elections we have two tier in state of three and the so there there is no local government no loc there's local governments but all appointed by the state government so basically the state election no election it's buy one get one free okay you pick you pick the ruling party for state and the ruling party pick uh the Lo the local government for you and in the federal territory they have completely no state level election you pick the federal

00:36:28 - 00:38:12
government they give you the federal territory government so you have fpp system first possible yes right okay and uh so so the malays basically how did they start dominating the parliament do they do they have more seats than the proportion of the number of malays yes uh because that our constituencies were drawn uh with this buildin buildin uh Advantage represent even have a delineation process we have but that process has not the the Constitutional Provisions were not very tightly defined and then very Loosely

00:37:19 - 00:38:54
implemented our Constitution say since 1973 constituency within the same State have to have approximately equal numbers of electors before 73s there was a clause that say the largest cannot be more than twice the smallest so you have maximum to minimum ratios of two to one two is the maximum approximately equal to one after 73 this Clause was taken up and today uh in one of the worst example the largest constituency in Malaysia has around 300,000 voters within the same state the smallest constituency has only

00:38:07 - 00:39:35
50,000 so you have six to one now in the past it has been seen as merely uh disadvantaging the non-malays because there was a clear pattern that they would uh over represent the rural area and under represents the urban m however this is no longer no longer the case because of employment and education opportunities are abundant in urban area you have migrations from rural to Urban and what it means is that Malay become more urban than in the past and urban area also become more malays so today when we talk

00:38:52 - 00:40:22
about that constituency of 300,000 and 50 ,000 what we are seeing is not just about uh the non- malays being discriminated but younger Malay for example you will have a girl coming from this tiny constituency called sabam she got into the unity one of the top university in this large constituency she transfer her voter registration her political power would string by 83% and so this is a this is a good thing in the sense that we have a chance to change all this because what you are seeing Injustice no longer just cut on

00:39:36 - 00:41:06
one for line on the ethnic or religious for line but they cut across now generational for so explain to me that um you said that you have constituencies that are not equal in numbers yes so how did they use the delineation pro process to uh to kind of favor the malays so how did they kind of so if you are clustered together yeah then at least those constituencies the ethnic groups can dominate right yeah okay well uh we do have concentrations of ethnic groups at state level right but when you come down to local level uh

00:40:21 - 00:41:57
you can see clearer patterns of certain townships predominantly Malay others were Chinese and so on so technically they can draw that but it's important to see both male bman of the constituency and the Gerry mandering uh were not entirely on ethnic ground it was actually more on partisan ground so for example after 1997 1998 when an Ibrahim the then uh Deputy Prime Minister was Purge and caus half of the malays to desert amno in the following round of delimitations of this constituency the government deliberately

00:41:09 - 00:42:34
create created a lot of mix ethnically mix constituency because in that election just before the delimitation the non-malays were not supporting the opposition reason being that they were not sure that uh toering the government would cause an anti-chinese Riot because that just happened in Indonesia in 1998 so looking at the election outcome from 1999 the government decided to draw more multi- EIC constituency because they think that that's safer it would protect the government from Malay opposition but when it nine years later

00:41:52 - 00:43:17
in 2008 when the ground change all this multiethnic constituency was uh became opposition territory they keep changing the rules of the game to so the incumbent government so explain to us um you know you talked about identity politics yes how does identity politics work in uh Malaysia starting with the initial bumiputra policies when did they come around and what exactly were they well uh it it started right why even during colonial time for a good reason because the malays were kept out from Modern

00:42:35 - 00:44:03
sector they disappear from the urban area therefore you have these ideas of creating Malay Reserve Land in Prime area in town and that require a definition who are the malays as if like in in in in America you have Indian reserve then you have to Define who are the Indians and that first that led to uh the official definitions of Malay as an ethnic groups in the con state constitution eventually uh migrated to the Federal Constitution and at the time when Malaya G Independence when we had uh this what we call Meda Independence

00:43:19 - 00:44:50
Bain that Bain came at least on three parts one that the non-malays most of the non-malays like my parents uh were granted citizenship but in return they accept that say the Malay would have would be given a special position in public sector employment civil servant would be majority melee uh in education and business licensing but all these were not uh extensive there's still room for non- malays it's just that to help the malays were underrepresented in other way in however in 1969 an an ethnic Riot happened after

00:44:05 - 00:45:29
elections and this has to do with first part suppose not because that uh the first part suppose discriminated anyone but because of one problematic nature of his possible election outcome can be simply unpredictable MH in 1964 that was after formations of Malaysia Indonesia were against us and the the non-malay opposition parties were split between those who were more left leaning hard left supporting a sympathetic to Indonesia and those who were with Singapore with Malaysia who wanted uh a new country so the

00:44:47 - 00:46:26
opposition Chinese based non-malay based opposition was split uh they got around 25% of votes but uh only around I think around six s% of seats in 1969 the non-malay oppositions learned their lessons so they decide to make sure that they have no they they nominate nominated one single candidate in one constituency they pull their words together so they did very well with almost no change in the total percentage of elate M they multiply their seats gain by four times MH while the opposite Malay opposition make a substantial

00:45:36 - 00:47:09
gains about 10% of votes from the peninsula Malaysia but their seats increase only from 9 to 12 but the nor malays from 6 to 20 6 to 24 25 so the other one was only 9 to 12 so that get an impression that was this was mainly a non- Malay uh political reward against Power sharing with the malays and and there was uh Victory Parade by the oppositions all this prepared the ground for a riot because people were not sure where this country is going for and after that Riot amno sees the opportunity to

00:46:22 - 00:47:43
redraw uh the rules of the game M because the 1969 election was very much a Malay tsunami even though it was not wellknown by Ordinary People we knew that because we look back at the number but I'm quite sure the politician knew it because they lost the Malay support so that the riot was explained as the out an outcome of relative deprivation the Malay feel deprived therefore we need to help them more otherwise this country would not so you you mentioned that there was a tsunami by the Malay so that means they voted

00:47:03 - 00:48:15
against incumbency yes and what prompted them to do that because they expected the government to be much more interventionist okay but the early Malay government were very much Pro Western they were lazy fair in economics uh policy so the Malay feel like Independence did not give us much looking back at the number I could tell that perhaps most of the Ws that went to the opposition were new wats mhm so it was young WS who moveed towards that so during that period you know what has unfortunately impacted Sri Lanka yeah

00:47:40 - 00:49:04
was you know some of the more educated people who ran our countries in the 1950s 60s they were romanticized with socialism okay uh was that fabianism socialism also there in Malaysia yes but this were with the the leftist party right so some of them who went to become closer to the Communist party but the others remain uh as just Central life and okay so uh these riots happen in 1960s 6 and then you had the identity politics and how did it start changing and also for the benefit of our viewers explain how mahad came about okay after

00:48:21 - 00:49:56
69 you have this extensive New Economic Policy pralay policy so that omno can win back to Malay support and lock in their support for every elections to come and uh beyond the economic sphere we have National cultural policy we have natural n uh Stronger enforcement of national language policy and so on so the idea is to make the Malay character of Malaysia more pronounced and of course the n felt uh resentful and therefore they would support them Chinese based opposition party dap until which today become the main Chinese

00:49:09 - 00:50:31
party in the government and they were the the the the non-malays was split between whether to support the opposition or the Chinese parties or the non-malay parties the government because you need some representation but at the same time you knew that the system was set against you so there was always this uh pendulum effect between them but what is more interesting is on the Malay ground at after the riot i'mna try to bring all parties together except VP and a regional party everyone including P for a moment was in

00:49:49 - 00:51:22
this Grand Coalition called National front barisan National but this two Malay party could not last for long because the first part support system does not build in a primary mechanism so when you have two parties competing for the same ground the conflicts were about to explode at some point and so this two party broke apart the Malay nationalist party which was then you could say somewhat secular modernist and then pass was more traditional and eventually become uh full Brown islamist and by the time because we have

00:50:36 - 00:51:59
NEP the economic policy we have emphasized much more on Malay language which of course changed the landscape in employment and so on language became less important the Malay parties no longer compete over language because both party would say yes we want to support Malay language and they compete over Islam so over time uh the Malay parties is pass even though pass did not win seats uh sizable seats until many years later pass managed to pull amno moving to the right so when you say that the two parties would compete on Islam

00:51:18 - 00:52:40
is it that they were trying to make it more fundamentalist or what exactly was the competition on Islam about well is is the questions that the older amno Elites were angry siiz Aristocrats right so they very much um like the angry in South as brown yes in South Asia and so on and uh but the younger Generations you talk about mahha Muhammad he was our first prime minister Not educated in the UK right not a lawyer so someone came from a different background some someone who felt that they have been wrong by

00:51:59 - 00:53:18
the British colonialists and then uh slighted by the Chinese and the malays he himself was half Karan yes yes that's what I heard yeah so and around that time in amongst the malays is there also a class struggle between the the elite Aristocrats and the not much the reason being that the leftist Malay party have been crushed by them okay so past was supposed to be more uh grassroot based right less elitist and so on so past was the counter counter Elite party if you like but because that it emphasized so

00:52:38 - 00:54:05
much on Islam so that cleavage was much more on identity than on class or I could say that it was it's a fusion of both uh underneath the undercurrent maybe economics but on the surface is much more ideological so identity you keep saying that they were focusing on Islam so what exactly were they focusing on on the fundamental nature of the religion no pass uh by early 80s wanted to have charia law as a basis of the country okay they want uh implementations they want to islamize the society using the

00:53:22 - 00:54:52
states um it would be wrong to characterize it as many in Malaysia do as Taliban isation it's not what pass one is somewhere somehow based on otoman but in a much more restriced fashion you think of it somewhere between ottoman andab so so uh the uh the independence Constitution was it secular huh was the Independence cons it yes it was secular at least for people like me I believe that it's secular uh but it was not framed in uh unambiguous language because what we have is Islam is the religion of the

00:54:07 - 00:55:31
Federation because the states have Islam the Malay States already have Islam as a state religion so this is to cover the entire feder Federation but it was meant more for ceremonial purposes okay it's like anglicanism in the UK UK right right but later on uh the islamist claim and say no because this is uh article three that Islam is the religion of the Federation then it has to be given prominence is no longer just as the religious or cultural basis of a secular society but rather they want it to be the driving force the the

00:54:49 - 00:56:06
central pillar of of how our nationhood should be so back to what the government did in in respond to past competition the government came out with islamization on the other part for example Islamic finance that was introduced by anir Ibrahim when he was brought in as the government answer to pass so we have Islamic International Islamic University we have all this introduct inations of Islamic values in administrations and so on it was softer that the Govern then the opposition won uh but they were

00:55:28 - 00:57:03
not fundamentally opposing each other so we talked about syncretism yeah um so the Malay culture has yet been preserved so Islam and the Malay culture coexisting yes but in the past that you would have many things that had the roots of uh from Indian civilizations from Hinduism or Buddhism Preserve are tolerated as much as you find in Indonesia but today uh there's a conscious and active process to cleanse Malay culture from all those pre-islamic influences okay for example we have a very famous uh art

00:56:14 - 00:57:40
form uh what we call Wang kulit this uh play using shadow puppet puppet right yes and um all those traditional shows have a lot of things going back to ramayana and so on and it was effectively banned in the state where it was most famous for Clanton wow what a Pity yes in my few visits to Malaysia I have seen one of those shows yeah course this was some time ago so uh going back to mahat yeah so he comes he he's a disruptor uh and on what platform form does he come to power he came he came

00:56:58 - 00:58:39
through amno he was a strong staunch critic of the first prime minister right tangu abahan a prince a layback easygoing Prince whom mahti criticized as abandoning the Malay so he came as uh an ultra nationalist he was kicked out from his party and then came back later and then Rose to the top uh it would be wrong or oversimplify to see him as just a disruptor he's as much as disruptor also a Constructor he he met the the the aspirations of many Malaysians to be known internationally uh so not just a Malay

00:57:49 - 00:59:07
nationalist but also Malaysian nationalist but his form of nationalism is not based on Democracy he doesn't believe that I I think he fundamentally doesn't believe that everyone is politically equal not just talking about ethnic line but this contempt that uh the ordinary people can be equal and make decision and they can be trusted uh to to decide how the country should be run so he is in authoritarian he's illiberal illiberal authoritarian but neveress is um he does a good job right I mean he really

00:58:28 - 00:59:49
develops the country exactly that's the part that what it what we really need to recognize he's very complex I believe if mahadi were to be a British politician he would be someone perhaps close to Margaret Tater okay right he'll be very effective sh but still Democratic but facing a society like Malaysia he has no pretend to be in any way democratic right so he comes uh on this ethnic platform um he's authoritarian he's illiberal yeah uh but he he develops the country so does he does he promote

00:59:09 - 01:00:40
further identity politics whilst he's there he was actually very pragmatic when he first came into Power his slogans was BR CH amama clean efficient and trustworthy so he was actually talking about reform trying to make Malaysia much more uh dynamic as compared to the previous government and at a time when he was challenged by uh his own party Rival in late 1980s he play up the annic club but when he survived that immediately he launch liberalizations open up the higher education sector that's the reason why

00:59:54 - 01:01:21
we have many private university today he did all this thing talk about uh a Malaysian Nation for a while until anwa uh fell off with him when an challenged him uh during this East Asian economic crisis then he play up the EIC card again so he is a politician capable of whatever script that is necessary for his Survivor MH so Jin what um you did say that you studied economics yeah uh explain to me the economic policies that mahad followed mahad basically uh his policy is one of State capitalism so he

01:00:37 - 01:02:09
beli in in Market Force driven by the state uh during his time he privatized a lot of uh State Enterprises but not to promote competitions and what you see uh under magret Tater or Ron reagin and so on this was basically from public Monopoly to become private Monopoly so he he had a lot of crony businessman right yes yes but if you compare him to say uh Naj the last prime minister from BN before is aler najib's chrism was unproductive because very much speculative and mahti would PR himself and say that his chrism

01:01:24 - 01:02:43
was prod because he did bring about Economic Development and just that a big CH of that undeservingly went to the pocket of his crony but they still deliver right so uh it was prot trade it was premarket pro trade yeah Malaysia was open to trade right yes and it also attracted a lot of FDI lot of fact yes yes we were very pragmatic on all this ground right so for example that we may be uh taking an anti-west stand on geopolitics and so on but when it come to traits we are very pragmatic and then he also

01:02:03 - 01:03:23
permitted the Chinese entrepreneurs to really Prosper well I would put it this way that I think that uh he had being a pragmatic politician he wanted the country to grow he picked his crony and he is not a race is not an a genuine or inherent racist at many like to believe him to be it's not he's just a pragmatic man so when he needs to when the circum when the circumstances is a profitable for him to be racist he would sing all those team the all those tunes that he is doing now but in other time he is

01:02:43 - 01:04:09
very pragmatic he appreciates smart people so uh that's therefore it's not surprising that uh among those crony businessmen he promoted many of them were non males so for him to do this dramatic uh transformation of Malaysia he would have had very capable leant would have also had very capable civil servants so how did the government apparatus work during that time well you would say that uh okay I think there are two changes that he emphasized more on the private sector uh so you see a stronger business

01:03:26 - 01:05:03
influence to the government but on the other hand the old British trained Civil Society uh sorry Civil Service faded into the picture so we we in in the older days you would see more uh honest uh upright civil civil servants that probably were more compromised later m MH and but also at the same time you see people who are much more aggressive because they were enterprising if you like on the other hand so Society moved on but we uh but our prosperity came with a huge price on our institutions uh we used to have a

01:04:14 - 01:05:38
Judiciary that was respected throughout the Commonwealth that was almost destroyed and during his time and it took us one generation time is slowly be back so Malaysia had this bura policies yeah which uh necessitated a business run by a non- Malay to have a Malay partner yes but they were called sleeping Partners right so how does that work well because that if you sometimes what happen is that you could have uh Malay businesses being the main contractor and then they have non Malay as sub contractor okay so basically rans

01:04:56 - 01:06:18
scking but we have to look at the picture as a whole we do have many smart enterprising Malay entrepreneurs but these people may not themselves be the one who got the best government contracts okay because it was based on cronis okay when cronyism operates so you have more people all these businesses went to the cronies who then look for their own cronies and that's why it makes our development much more costly we could have done more without all this and but that come back to the whole questions of political

01:05:37 - 01:06:52
competitions we can't talk about free market unless you have the incentive right in the political market and U as long as we have democracy we have multi-party competitions you parties would parties and politician would have to have product differentiation they have to be different from their rival to attract woods and that come back to say uh basically three types of differences the easiest is identity politics you argue about who God to be more powerful whose ancestor came to this country first but

01:06:15 - 01:07:44
those are completely unproductive because it doesn't solve our problem now the second one is just merely patronage if if someone who get into power who can dish out more money in one way or another uh that may even that may even uh mellow identity politic but it is very costly because we would end out uh with a about uh a boning state with heavy Deb with Corruption mismanagements of resources and the third thing that if we want to move away from from Identity politics and patronage politics we need politics that

01:06:59 - 01:08:25
are based that is based on policy differences whether it's left right whatever Direction it's more pro- environment or Pro development we need politicians to debate about that but unfortunately Malaysia is prevented from seeing such Optimum competition because the rules of the game have different incentives the wrong incentives yes also because that our system is fundamentally majoritarian right with a divided society when you have a majoritarian system uh those who already control Power the majority

01:07:42 - 01:09:15
groups have a strong sense of fear of losing everything if they're not United right that and reinforces identity Politics on the other hand the minorities were forced to be wanting to team up with the government instead of offering their own uh their own competitions or otherwise if they if they stand their ground they may be very radical so you do not have competitions where uh rival groups with comparable strengths core AIS and challenge each other so for me uh what happened after the out of amno is a good thing even

01:08:29 - 01:10:04
though we have not seen the by the the benign competitions of two multi-ethnic colls what we have seen so far is always a multi- EIC groups whether in government or in opposition and then you have another uh on the other side a monic one this is bad but I see in this challenging situations we have the opportunity for Malaysian politics to move away from majorian ISM so um up to 1997 Malaysia was a spectacular success story yes and then you had the Asian financial crisis yes of course it didn't

01:09:16 - 01:10:36
falter as bad as say Indonesia or Thailand because you never had to go to the IMF you had enough reserves yeah but ever since that you know the real hyper growth that you enjoyed has never come back right structural transformation never it came to you you got into the middle- income trap yes uh yeah uh what's going on and how is the political system influencing this transformation that is it inhibiting Malaysia going to the next plane yes uh the reason why we we get caught in this uh midle income trap

01:09:55 - 01:11:23
partly was China getting into WTO so they China drove away a lot of FDI so in the past what could have come in in emper Supply uh to offsets all our problems no longer there and particularly because you have a big export sector right yes but also internally we did something stupid not as big as a challenge to uh to what what happened in China to us is that we have a monopolization of the banking sector okay we merg a lot of the banks and that prevented uh small medium Enterprises from getting easy

01:10:40 - 01:12:20
liquidity that stopped them from going further but overall I would say also because we are stuck somewhere because we were good enough uh to maintain the situation not desperate enough for us to push ourselves to go very far MH so so show us the linkage between the political system and how it is inhibiting this transformation well if we have a proper democracy based on policy differences the parties today in Malaysia would argue about what kind of policy that brings our country further instead of arguing that Dr could or uh

01:11:30 - 01:12:45
how different religious Festival should be regulated whether concert should be allowed and so on we spend a lot of times on all those culture War because that's excite people more effectively instead of mundane technocratic issues but for the country to move forward we really have to make all those important is issue interesting and not make the interesting culture War issues important so it's a whole question of how do we move from there to move from there we basically need the parties to recognize

01:12:08 - 01:13:28
that everyone uh everyone is legitimate stakeholder of the country the main party have to accept that we would have to come into power we we probably have to share power with each other at some point and therefore while we have to emphasize the differences between us in election so that we can all of us can draw woods we cannot push that differences too far to the extent that after election we cannot work together and that's the problem because our politics have been so majoritarian everyone in government try to

01:12:48 - 01:14:11
marginalize the opposition everyone in opposition try to delegitimize the government seeing it as evil it doesn't help us from competing in a professional manners so for Malaysian politics to move forward I would set the bar maybe rather pragmatically low if our politics can be as good as Sports things would have been better because what you need are for politicians to compete with each other professionally to talk about issues and to accept election outcome to work hard to win the next election rather than

01:13:30 - 01:14:47
pulling each other legs during uh between elections we we need to change all these incentive we need to embrace politics in uh healthy manner you talk about uh Avoca institutes is educating the youth so that they they they can bring about changes in some sense that's what we need in Malaysia you talk to Malaysians you ask them and say do you think that politics is dirty most people would say yes dangerous yes difficult yes but what it means is that when you think about politics as dirty dangerous

01:14:08 - 01:15:25
and difficult this is basically a treaty job subconsciously you say this is a job that we should Outsource to some cheap foreign workers and how can we expect the country to move forward we can't so we have to make politics safe clean easy to understand we have to reverse the 3D so people can get into politics and what it means is that Ordinary People should acquire the skill to politically mobilize and also make compromises know when you were speaking I was thinking of the saying that history doesn't repeat but it Rhymes I

01:14:46 - 01:15:53
was thinking of my own country and many of the issues that you just now spoke about similarly that you know the average people have given up on politics but it is politics that make change possible and you know there's a very good book by Michael Porter on politics you know he was a famous strategy Guru and he analyzed American politics he had a clinical analysis so he says it's a wrong type of competition which is what you are also alluding to um if I could move towards a conclusion now how would

01:15:20 - 01:16:51
you fix the problem I would say change electoral system okay introduce a party Le component M which is interesting if you compare with Sri Lanka you move very fast from first pass supp post to a party list and it has a different Dynamics we wouldn't be able to survive that kind of dramatic changes but it's important for us to have party list for two two reason one when you have party list it would be very hard a party list component even just like Thailand a mix member majoritarian not a mixed member

01:16:06 - 01:17:45
proportional like in Germany or in New Zealand even with a mmm system it would be very difficult for you us to have a simple majority government political parties would then have to accept that they have to strike some compromises after election to be in power that would cause them to restrain during election campaign and once politicians do not preach to their hardcore supporter that people on the other sides are evil democracy would be possible so in in most of the electorates in Malaysia under the fpp do they get

01:16:57 - 01:18:23
50% uh not not in the last two3 elections okay because when it split out so you do have about 40% of winners are priority wiers so we spoke about you know what the US is trying rank preference voting you don't think that that will encourage a middle ground no in Malaysia it would be counterproductive because if you have a preferential voting system meanings that the voters can rank uh candidates with first second third choice and so on it would be very easy for the Nationalist to uh manipulate because what would they

01:17:41 - 01:19:02
say is like it would be say for example for the Muslim nationalist would Muslim first so you pick all the Muslim National and then the minority would say for that reason we have to vote our people first so then you produce constituency that would just generated uh parliamentarians who get support from one group and the other there's no incentive for them to come back the second reason why I think a mixed member system is important for Malaysia is then we would have the chance ofhs of some non-communal based party that cut across

01:18:22 - 01:19:31
uh The Divide because come from a different dimensions other than uh you know all these economic cultural issues which somehow can be can so what you're advocating is a mix of fpp and proportional representation a mix of fpp and proportional repr would you Advocate two votes so you vote one for the fpp which is your local candidate and the second for the pr or you have one vote two VES two VES two vs is important you can split them and also only with two VES you get the chance for some small

01:18:56 - 01:20:08
party to get into Parliament we need parties to talk about environmental issue to talk about generational issue to talk about gender issue to talk about class when we have all these thing cutting across then the ethnic divide would not be so Salient as it is today so your your system do you think that it doesn't attract the best and the brightest to run for office no we do have L people going in but often they cannot get out to the top and that's part of first pass post problem because in Malaysia first pass post first pass

01:19:32 - 01:20:49
post leads to permanent cision and therefore every party cannot contest in all the seats they want to that leads to the party negotiating what seats they contest and party president then decide candidates so it become very difficult for someone who is uh bright and young going to party hoping to run in a good seats another person uh support the right faction leader so the party leader decides yes who who who the list is who's going to represent which electorate there is no system of primaries no there's no

01:20:11 - 01:21:29
primary because mainly because that we have this permanent Collision okay it primary becomes ineffective okay okay so are you optimistic that this can be fixed to some extent yes because I think ultimately for all the complex situation we are talking about it boil down to two things can we get people are in boid out to there two types of people especially for politicians gamblers or Insurance buyers if people like to believe their lack is good they'll be they would continue gam they will be continually

01:20:50 - 01:22:15
gambling okay but if they believe their life maybe bad they start buying insurance for democracy to be sustainable and stable we need more people to buy insurance than those who gamber and with what happen now when things become so uncertain I believe politicians would learn from this circumstances that they should buy insurance okay and you know Leon you famously said about Sri Lanka the Sri Lankan elections is auction on non-existing resources so do your politicians also promise all kinds of freebies yes they do yes unfortunately

01:21:31 - 01:23:03
we have so much in similarity okay um so what brought you to Sri Lanka um I was invited by the University of paradia to give a key note in their postgraduate Institute research Congress uh to share about Malaysian uh experience in democ democratization identity politics and majorian ISM and you did take a d tell us a bit about your D I after Candi I went to jafna and um what I would say is that Sri Lanka is a very complex society uh I'm still trying to learn more about how the society evolved

01:22:18 - 01:23:45
because from what I have learned Sri Lanka has had a much more stronger inclinations to political violence and so on in many way by the same time when I look at Sri Lanka at a discursive level Sri Lanka is actually much more open uh it would be very hard for me to imagine uh well to see in my eyes that you see the triing girl signs everywhere from airport to uh government offices and so on I know that the trism is not practiced in full force but the fact that this is actually REM this remains legitimate in

01:23:01 - 01:24:15
the Pro discourse is something amazing because in Malaysian context while we very restrained in resorting to political violence our narratives are much more exclusivist okay on that note professor chinu Wong it has been a fascinating conversation thank you for speaking with us thank you so much for having me here it's a great honor thank [Music] you