Malaysia

D

Malaysia

On August 31, 1957, the Federation of Malaya was established with Tunku Abdul Rahman of the UMNO, the dominant member of the Alliance, as the first prime minister. In 1961 he proposed a pan-Malaysian federation comprising Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo (later called Sabah), and Brunei. However, although enthusiasm for the idea was largely limited to Malaya, all but Brunei joined an expanded federation, renamed Malaysia, on September 16, 1963. Economic and political disputes led to Singapore’s departure from the federation in 1965. Indonesia, under the leadership of President Sukarno, strongly opposed the membership of Sarawak and Sabah, and launched a cross-border campaign of harassment and military incursions, which lasted until 1966.

Malaysian politics have been at times beset by ethnic disputes that in the 1960s centred on language and education. In the 1969 general elections, the Alliance faced opposition from both Malay and non-Malay parties. Immediately afterwards serious rioting broke out in Kuala Lumpur, and at least 200 people were killed. Emergency powers were invoked, restrictions were imposed on raising ethnically sensitive issues, and parliament did not meet again until 1971. The new prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak, announced the New Economic Policy (NEP), which aimed to alleviate poverty in general—and specifically to improve the position of Malays by increasing their share of the country’s wealth, and their percentage of employment in and ownership of sectors in which non-Malays were predominant.

He also broadened the ruling Alliance coalition (already extended to include some parties in Sarawak and Sabah) into the National Front by bringing in the main opposition parties at federal and state level. The Front won the 1974 elections decisively and also, under Prime Minister Datuk Hussein Onn, the 1978 elections. The political scene, however, was still dominated by ethnicity, and the National Front was opposed by two major opposition parties: the Pan-Malayan Islamic Party, which left the National Front in 1977, and which placed increasing emphasis on religion; and the Democratic Action Party.

E

The Mahathir Government

When Hussein Onn retired in 1981, he was succeeded by his deputy, Dr Mahathir bin Muhammad. A constitutional conflict in 1983 between the Mahathir government and the hereditary sultans led to a compromise restricting the power of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong and the Council of Rulers to veto certain legislation. In 1987 the Mahathir government responded to the alleged threat of rising tensions between Malays and Chinese by arresting opposition leaders and suspending four newspapers. Elections in 1990 maintained the National Front in power with a commanding parliamentary majority. In 1993 Mahathir was involved in another constitutional wrangle with the hereditary rulers, which ultimately led to the removal of the rulers’ immunity from prosecution.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, serious disagreements emerged between the federal government and Sabah and Sarawak, which were evidenced in the election of opposition parties to the state governments. There was strong feeling, particularly among indigenous ethnic groups like the Dayaks, that the two states had lost out in Malaysia’s economic growth and industrialization of the 1970s and 1980s—although their oil, natural gas, and timber had provided much of the foreign exchange that financed this transformation. In Sarawak, Dayak groups strongly opposed the rapid expansion of logging. There were also fears that the Malay-Muslim majority on the peninsula was seeking to extend Islamic laws and practices to the two states, at the expense of traditional religions and customs, and Christianity. The fears were strongest in Sabah—where the majority ethnic group, the Kadayan, is Christian. In 1985 Sabah became the first state to elect a non-National Front party to the state government; in 1993 it imposed customs checks on Malaysians travelling from the peninsula, and at times during the early 1990s seemed to be considering breaking away from the federation. Following allegations in the British press about the financing of the Pergau Dam project, the Malaysian government took steps to limit British firms from trading freely in Malaysia, sparking a dispute between the two countries. The trade restrictions were lifted in September 1994. In the general election of April 1995 the ruling National Front coalition won a landslide victory. In October 1996 a general assembly of the UMNO unanimously re-elected Mahathir as party leader, and confirmed his supremacy against the rising generation of politicians grouped around his deputy, Anwar Ibrahim.

However, Mahathir appointed Anwar as acting prime minister during his two-month leave of absence beginning in May 1997, an act seen by some as an official endorsement of his claim to succession. During the summer of 1997, Malaysia was hit by the spread of the financial crisis in neighbouring Thailand, with the Malaysian currency, the ringgit, losing 20 per cent of its value between July and September and Malaysian share prices falling by up to 40 per cent. These difficulties were exacerbated by the reactions of traders to remarks made by Mahathir, who successively blamed currency speculators, the International Monetary Fund, and a Jewish conspiracy for Malaysia’s difficulties. After denying responsibility for the turmoil, in September the Malaysian government reversed its policy and announced a programme of economic retrenchment, including public spending cuts.

In September 1998 Mahathir dismissed finance minister and deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, apparently over disagreements on handling of the continuing economic crisis. The dismissal sparked demonstrations across Malaysia. Anwar was also expelled from UNMO. Later the same month, Anwar was arrested on charges of homosexual activity and corruption. During the trial, which was accompanied by continuing demonstrations, key prosecution witnesses were discredited and the terms of prosecution altered; Anwar protested that the case was politically orchestrated. In April 1999 Anwar was found guilty of abusing his powers while in government and sentenced to six years in prison; with an extra nine-year sentence added in August 2000, when Anwar was found guilty of sodomy. However, the case was felt to have undermined Mahathir and Malaysia's standing internationally, and drew international attention to Malaysia’s human rights record.

Parliamentary elections were held in November 1999, and the National Front was re-elected to give Mahathir his fifth five-year term in office, which he announced would be his last. The party’s large majority in the House of Representatives was weakened slightly with the loss of 14 seats to opposition parties.

In November 2001 the Sultan of the State of Selangor, and the current ruling monarch of Malaysia, died. He was succeeded as Sultan of his home state by his son. The new king of Malaysia, the Raja of Perlis, Syed Sirajuddin ibni al-Marhum Syed Putra Jamalullail, was sworn in in December.

A major issue facing Malaysia at the beginning of the 21st century was illegal immigration. Illegal workers, mainly from the Philippines and the Republic of Indonesia, were deported by Malaysia in their thousands—mostly from the state of Sabah but also from other regions of the country. International efforts were made to resolve the problem: talks were held with Megawati Sukarnoputri, president of Indonesia, and with Gloria Arroyo, president of the Philippines, but failed to establish a satisfactory solution. However, tough new legislation designed to curb illegal immigration was introduced in August 2002 and resulted in a mass exodus of foreign workers.

In an effort to combat international terrorism and to increase security in the region, representatives from Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines signed an anti-terrorism accord in May 2002 in Putrajaya; in the same month talks in Seoul between Prime Minister Mahathir and South Korean leader Kim Dae-jung resulted in an agreement to strengthen mutual cooperation, and in September that year Thailand and Malaysia pledged to coordinate their anti-terror endeavours. These issues were further debated as Megawati Sukarnoputri visited Malaysia in August 2003. In the same year Malaysia, together with several other countries in the region, faced an outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

After declaring in June 2002 his decision to step down the following year, Prime Minister Mahathir resigned in October 2003. He was replaced by Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, an Islamic scholar who pledged to fight corruption and to strengthen democracy.

F

The Badawi Government

In the parliamentary and state elections held in March 2004, Badawi’s coalition, Barisan Nasional, with its dominant party UMNO, won more than 90 per cent of parliamentary seats (198 in the enlarged 219-seat House of Representatives). Following the election, Badawi reshuffled his Cabinet; his critics observed, however, that the changes did not go far enough.

Malaysia was one of the Asian countries affected by the devastating Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that struck on December 26, 2004. However, the country’s coastline was largely protected by the Indonesian island of Sumatra and experienced fewer than 70 deaths out of an estimated total of 150,000 deaths in the region.