AFP

Abdullah Ahmad Badawi(left) greets his successor Najib Razak at the United Malays National Organisation general assembly in Kuala Lumpur on March 26.

MULTIRACIAL politics in Malaysia has been in a state of flux since the snap general elections a year ago. The outcome of that round was shaped in part by the politics of race. And the impact was felt most by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the leader of a long-ruling coalition called Barisan Nasional, which in fact retained power.

The Barisan Nasional is still a coalition of race-based parties, each of which represents the Malay majority or the minority Chinese or the ethnic Indians. Unsurprisingly, the dismay among Malays over the rise of articulated anger in some sections, notably the Indian minority, affected the UMNO’s score. The party led its coalition to a clear win, but the margin of success, smaller than the “customary” two-thirds parliamentary majority, caused an internal crisis. And, for nearly a year now, the UMNO leadership has been grappling with the internal debates over the need for party reforms.

In this political milieu, the UMNO general assembly, which met in Kuala Lumpur in end March, elected a new party leader. It is a sign that the party conference, which should have been held last year itself, could take place only now.

Fifty-five-year-old Najib Tun Razak, son of a former Prime Minister, is the new UMNO president. And he is poised to succeed the outgoing UMNO president, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, as the country’s Prime Minister as well. This is in line, of course, with the political conventions of the Barisan Nasional (National Front), in power at the federal level since Malaysia’s independence in 1957. The UMNO leader is invariably the country’s Prime Minister as long as the Barisan Nasional is in a position to form the government.

Najib’s close political associate Muhyiddin Yassin emerged as the UMNO’s deputy president. This was no surprise to either Abdullah or external observers because Muhyiddin led a campaign for leadership change after the 2008 snap polls. For the outgoing leader, a silver lining was that his son-in-law, Khairy Jamaluddin, won a hard-fought contest for the UMNO youth leader’s post. He defeated Mukhriz Tun Mahathir, son of Malaysia’s former Prime Minister and near-legendary leader Mahathir Mohamad. This aspect, compounded by the new political ferment in the UNMO youth wing, is expected to dominate the party’s politics in the immediate future.

Najib’s ascent to power as Prime Minister, an indisputable proposition by March-end, is also not without some political nuance, if not high drama. What cannot be missed is that Abdullah was forced to vacate the top UMNO slot despite his success in ensuring the party’s continued hold on power. This does not mean that he lost the party post and, therefore, his job as Prime Minister as a result of some intense power struggle. Najib, until recently the UMNO deputy president and Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister as of March-end, was surely in line for this succession. So, a prime political nuance is that the UMNO should see the 2008 snap general elections as a wake-up call for reforms in the party and the government.

Significantly, there has been no suggestion that the UMNO should now let any of its coalition partners have the Prime Minister’s post. Sharing power with the UMNO at the federal level are parties representing the ethnic Chinese and the people of Indian origin.

The Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), despite its poor performance in the 2008 polls, remains a power-sharing partner of the UMNO.

Within this immutable power-sharing formula of the Barisan Nasional, plans for the reforms in the UMNO are seen to require a leadership change. And, even as this recognition began taking root within party circles, Abdullah found himself with the Hobson’s choice of bowing out of office. So far, no comprehensive blueprint of coherent reforms has been unveiled within UMNO circles for either the party itself or for the government.

In a sense, the formulation itself of any such blueprint has been discreetly left to the discretion of the new party leader.

If the UMNO has taken a year to have a new leader, the reason for the delay can be traced to Abdullah’s own sense of dismay and the party’s inertia.

ZAINAL ABD HALIM/REUTERS

Khairy Jamaluddin (left), the new UMNO youth wing chief, with Mukhriz Tun Mahathir, whom he defeated.

It is relatively rare that a party’s leader has to step down when the party has actually retained power in a round of general elections. Snap polls are generally called as a way out of some political impasse, and the results are viewed in that light. For Abdullah, the benchmark of poll success in 2008 was very stiff. He had earlier led the ruling coalition to a historic landslide of over 90 per cent of the parliamentary seats. So he was seen to have failed when the coalition fell marginally below the two-thirds parliamentary majority in the 2008 polls. Such an assessment, regardless of its political accuracy in Malaysia’s present circumstances, was surely unwelcome to Abdullah.

His critics, especially Mahathir, viewed the issues through an altogether different prism of qualitative politics. Abdullah was seen to have resorted to acts of omission and commission that “deflected” Malaysia away from its earlier path of stability and progress. Mahathir, seen by many as a visionary and a pragmatist in the country’s development context, was critical of Abdullah’s “soft” politics. Not only that. For Mahathir and others with his line of thinking, the main issue of Malaysia’s racial balance of power was long settled. In their reckoning, the “Merdeka pact”, which the country’s ethnic leaders agreed upon at the time of independence, was the key social contract.

The UMNO-led coalition of race-based parties has in fact governed the country for long under the Merdeka pact. Abdullah’s critics, however, feel that his policies facilitated the emergence of an opposition coalition of largely multiracial parties. In this view, the rise of such an opposition coalition, now known as Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Pact), “threatens” to reopen a settled social contract.

So, the opposition’s gains in the 2008 snap polls reflect a qualitative political challenge to an established order, not just some quantitative electoral sums. In short, the argument against Abdullah runs on these lines, as against his virtual self-portrayal as a hands-on leader with a soft touch.

Where does Najib stand in this paradigm of contrasts? Malaysia’s current social context is acquiring a new dimension: cyberspace chats on political issues of concern to ordinary people. And, inevitably, questions about racial equality, the rule of law, freedoms and social equity get discussed. In a sense, the old boundaries of politically correct public discourse are no longer respected by some younger citizens. It is in this milieu that Najib will have to adopt policies of fairness and equity across Malaysia’s multiracial matrix. Equally importantly, he will have to be seen as a leader with a pan-Malaysia perspective in the true sense. He has already shown political courage in apologising for the demolition of a temple, which had triggered an unprecedented wave of protest by ethnic Indians. With that kind of a record, Najib will hope to woo all Malaysians, including those among the minorities with a sense of “estrangement”.

As for the Muslim-Malay majority, Najib faces challenges on two distinctive political turfs – the UMNO’s internal theatre and the wider people’s domain. Within the party, he begins his term at the helm with the comforting thought that his immediate lieutenant is a close associate. However, the youth wing, the terrain of his party’s future, requires to be unified if the latest indications are any guide. Abdullah, commenting on his son-in-law’s victory as the youth wing chief in a politically fierce contest, called for priority for unity.

In the wider public domain outside of the UMNO, Najib faces a formidable political opponent in former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. As the leader of the Pakatan Rakyat, Anwar has been projecting the idea that Malaysians now have a choice between two competing coalitions. The Opposition alliance had captured power in several States in the 2008 snap polls. Encouraged by that, he first tried and failed to unseat the Barisan Nasional through defections from its ranks at the federal level. With that, the opposition’s focus gradually shifted towards the idea of consolidation as a shadow government in the first place. In this milieu, it remains to be seen how Najib will address the issues relating to Anwar’s political travails in the form of the cases against him.

A matter of particular interest to Najib is Mahathir’s decision to rejoin the UMNO after his brief exit in protest over Abdullah’s policies. For Mahathir, the defeat of his son is a political blip.

The former Prime Minister had carved a niche for himself globally through his bold domestic moves during the last regional financial crisis. If he now evinces interest in Malaysia’s strategy to stay afloat in the current global crisis in the real economy sector, Najib may well feel thankful. However, the new UMNO leader may have to reckon with Mahathir’s political style as a “super leader” and not just with his out-of-the-box ideas. •