|
A two-party system for Malaysia? |
|
|
|
Friday, 04 April 2008 10:18 |
|
The creation of a formal opposition coalition, and a weakened BN, makes for such a scenario
Today Online
FOR HALF a century since independence, the Barisan Nasional (BN) - Malaysia's ruling coalition of 14 political parties - has dominated parliament. Now, the days of a dominant-party system may be numbered.
In the recent March polls, BN suffered its worst electoral defeat since 1957. Not only was it denied the crucial two-thirds parliamentary majority it needed to make constitutional changes, BN also lost five out of 13 states to the opposition, which used to control only one.
Just how real then is the likelihood of a two-party state in Malaysia?
After the opposition's sweep of much of Malaysia's west coast, even sceptics would be wary of dismissing this scenario.
Here, the views of Tawfik Tun Dr Ismail, a former BN parliamentarian in Johor, are telling.
The son of Malaysia's former Deputy Prime Minister Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman told reporters on Tuesday at the sidelines of an Institute of South-east Asian Studies forum in Singapore that a two-party system is not untenable.
Recent developments lend credence to the two-party scenario, but the surest sign must be the birth of Malaysia's new opposition coalition, Pakatan Rakyat or People's Alliance.
Yes, it may have been formed on April Fools' Day, but it’s coming into being is not something to be laughed at.
Especially since this is the second attempt by Malaysia's three opposition parties - Parti Keadilan Rakyat, Democratic Action Party (DAP) and Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) - to officially band together.
In 1999, the trio came together to form Barisan Alternatif, or Alternative Front, to break BN's political hegemony, but disagreements then between PAS and DAP on the issue of the Islamic state led to BA unravelling some two years later.
Then came Mr Anwar Ibrahim, former Deputy Prime Minister, who managed to bridge the ideological rift between the two parties.
Now, Mr Anwar - whom some analysts had dismissed as a "spent force" - has graduated from being the de facto leader of Keadilan to the de facto leader of Pakatan.
But will debates on the Islamic state - once a central political philosophy of PAS- resurface as a divisive force?
A confident Mr Anwar does not think so. He told reporters during the coalition's launch: "It was not mentioned in the PAS (election) manifesto and has not been mentioned for a long time. It is no longer an issue."
But his word can only carry so much weight; it is still the PAS leaders who hold the key to Pakatan's shelf life.
In this light, it is perhaps noteworthy that while clerics such as Abdul Hadi Awang and Nik Aziz Nik Mat still occupy PAS' top two positions, the party's second-tier leadership is manned by progressives like vice-president Husam Musa, who holds an economics degree from Universiti Malaya, and youth chief Salahuddin Ayub, a former bank officer who was also trained secularly.
As long as PAS maintains this mix of clerics and progressives, the party will not dwell on its Islamic state rhetoric as the run-up to the recent polls proved.
Many did not expect PAS to field a non-Muslim candidate in the form of Ms Kumutha Rahman, a 29-year-old law graduate who is an ethnic Indian.
So Pakatan's message to voters is resoundingly clear: We made a mistake, we learned, and now we're back as a stronger force.
On the contrary, BN's message to voters must read a tad dodgier: We lost, we bicker, and now we do not know who is boss.
The ruling coalition's facade of a united stand in the face of its poor election performance - with heavyweight ministers like Hishamuddin Hussein and Najib Abdul Razak expressing full confidence in the premiership of Mr Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (Pak Lah) - is now withering by the day as factions emerge within the United Malays National Organisation (Umno), a key component of BN.
Umno veteran Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, or Ku Li, looks set to launch an offensive against Mr Abdullah in a much-anticipated Ku Li-Pak Lah clash for the party's top position at the Umno general assembly in December.
Whether BN can regain the trust of voters is dependent on whether its members can agree on who will be boss. Till then, a weakened BN - and a stronger Pakatan - could only signal that the winds of change in Malaysia could give rise to a two-party state.
 |
