The Limits of Protest and the Prospects for Political Reform in Malaysia - Nair

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Nair / Limits of Protest

THE LIMITS OF PROTESTAND PROSPECTS FOR

POLITICAL REFORM IN MALAYSIA

Sheila Nair

ABSTRACT: The 1997 Asian currency “crisis” affected Malaysians in profound waysand complicated dominant nation and modernity narratives centered on economicgrowth and development and the stability of ethnic relations. In the ensuingmonths, Malaysia’s political landscape — dominated by one party and its leadership— was also reconfigured. The ouster of Malaysia’s deputy prime minister, AnwarIbrahim, heir apparent to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad set the stage for theReformasi movement, which was arguably the country’s first organized large-scaleprotest movement to embrace a range of social actors, including nongovernmentalorganizations, grassroots groups, and political parties. By 2001 Reformasi was indecline and meaningful political and social reform had failed to materialize. Whathappened to this once vibrant movement? How can we account for its decline?This article analyzes the challenges encountered by Reformasi in confronting thesedominant narratives and in reframing political discourse. The article situatesReformasi’s decline in the context of its struggles with the dominant BarisanNasional-led state as well as the complex relationship between different elements ofthe movement. It also explores how democratic deepening, the movement’s inabil-ity to provide an alternative discourse that takes into account ethnicized divisions inMalaysia, and the tensions between the party political and movement aspects of pro-test politics have contributed to Reformasi’s demise.

The dominant or official Malaysian narratives of nation and modernity havelong emphasized rapid economic development and income parity among eth-nic groups and a form of ethnic pluralism resting on the premise that each ma-jor group knows its place and respects the status quo. Official statements bypolitical elites and bureaucrats have also downplayed political democracy andhuman rights, ostensibly in favor of the collective good and a community cen-

Critical Asian Studies39:3 (2007), 339–368

ISSN 1467-2715 print/1472-6033 online / 03 / 000339–30 ©2007 BCAS, Inc. DOI:10.1080/14672710701527345

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tered on “Asian values” — or a “government knows best what’s good for the na-tion” philosophy. In 1997 when Malaysia became a casualty of the Asianfinancial crisis, these interrelated discourses were challenged by a new idiom,one marked by calls from the street for political reform, expressions of inter-ethnic solidarity, and a resurgence of advocacy-oriented nongovernmental or-ganizations (NGOs) and opposition political parties. A reform movement, orReformasi,1 uniting disparate groups in the political opposition and galvanizingcivil society agents, including NGOs involved in human rights issues and Islamiccauses, became the locus of opposition to the state. On the one hand, Reformasichallenged political authoritarianism and its compatibility with official articula-tions of Malaysia as a modern, industrializing state. On the other hand, Refor-masi revealed the cracks and contradictions in the official narratives, the state’sdemonstrable failure to suture ethno-social differences, and the cultural contra-dictions of Malaysia’s postcolonial condition. These contradictions have onceagain risen to the forefront of Malaysians’ collective anxieties about “race”2 andethnicity and their relationship to politics.

The Malaysian political model has generally been viewed as an exemplarymultiethnic one in the developing world in part due to the absence of overt andenduring political conflict. The diversity of religious life despite Islam’s domi-nance and the coexistence of different ethnic groups — Malay, Chinese, Indian— in peninsular Malaysia, where the distinction between indigene and immi-grant underpins political, economic, and social arrangements, supports theview that the Malaysian model is worthy of emulation. Yet Malaysia’s post-colonial history was also shaped by “race” riots mostly involving attacks be-tween Malay and Chinese especially in and around Malaysia’s capital city in May1969. The riots, which were a turning point in Malaysian history, became the ra-tionale for political dominance and control of the state by one coalition, theBarisan Nasional (National Front) or BN.

Malaysia’s ethnic pluralism should not, however, be confused with the ab-sence of ethnic divisions or an ethnicized or a racialized discourse and politics.On the contrary, these divisions have historically been used very effectively byruling elites to shore up electoral support with the claim that only the BN, a co-alition made up of predominantly ethnically based parties, can best serve the in-terests of all Malaysians and provide political stability. However, recent state-ments by political leaders and rank-and-file members of Malaysia’s United

340 Critical Asian Studies 39:3 (2007)

1. Generally translated into English as “reform” or “reformation.” Reformasi in Malay-sia is consistent with the push for democratization, human rights, transparency, ac-countability, and justice.

2. The use of “race” in Malaysian political discourse has colonial roots. It was used incolonial censuses and official documents to distinguish among the numerous eth-nic groups in Malaysia and as a cultural marker of difference (see Hirschman 1986,1987; Syed Hussein 1977; Abraham 2004). Scholars generally prefer the term “eth-nicity” over race in analyses of Malaysian politics and society (e.g., Husin Ali 1984).I use these terms interchangeably and often together throughout the text, seeingboth as social constructs and as essentially referring to the same set of meanings,centered on cultural identity, in the Malaysian context.

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Malays National Organization (UMNO),3 which dominates the BN, attacks onHindu temples, Muslim fears of Christian proselytization, the controversy overthe rights of families of converts to Islam, and the blurring of the lines betweenchurch and mosque in political and civil society, reveal deep ethnic divisions inMalaysian politics and its potential instability. In this light, the dynamic Reform-asi phase from 1998 to 2001 appears as an aberration given its early promise of adifferent counter-hegemonic vision, one that subsumed ethnic interest, of Ma-laysian society and politics. The very public keris-flashing4 rhetoric of somemembers of the ruling party, and the manner in which the debate over Malaydominance has played out in recent years, suggests that ethnic identity and itsclaims continue to shape the contours of politics in Malaysia.

Nair / Limits of Protest 341

Supporters of Anwar Ibrahim, 53, hold Anwar posters and shout “Reformasi,” as police ledthe ousted deputy prime minister out from the courthouse after the first days of his trial,on 25 January 2000 in Kuala Lumpur. (Credit: AP Photo/Teh Eng Koon)

3. The salience of ethnicity in Malaysian political life is evident in statements andspeeches by various UMNO delegates at the November 2006 UMNO General As-sembly in which warnings against questioning the status of Islam and Malay hege-mony were issued. Further, the seriousness of racialized discourse incontemporary Malaysian politics is shown in the official admission that ethnic plu-ralism, which has long defined social relations in Malaysia, is in trouble. See “PakLah says race relations fragile,” Malaysiakini, 7 December 2007, and “Malaysia’sruling party congress ends; lingering concerns over race relations,” InternationalHerald Tribune, 17 November 2006.

4. The keris or kris, commonly described as a sinewy ceremonial dagger, is often asso-ciated with the legendary Malay warrior of precolonial and colonial times, and in-vokes Malay manhood and cultural identity, despite its more complex origins andmeanings (see Farish 2006). At the November 2006 UMNO General Assembly, a dis-gruntled delegate asked Hishammuddin Tun Hussein, the UMNO Youth leader and

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Unlike neighboring Indonesia, where an authoritarian regime in place since1965 collapsed in 1998 in the wake of the currency crisis, the crisis produced nosignificant change in patterns of political rule however much it shook Malaysiansociety. While this was hardly a surprise given the hegemonic position of the rul-ing coalition in Malaysian politics and its coercive capabilities, the outcome wasnot the only plausible one particularly given developments in Indonesia. Thisdifference in political outcomes in the two contexts provokes a number of inter-esting questions, but they are beyond the central question addressed in this es-say, namely, How can we account for the decline of Malaysia’s once vibrantReformasi movement? The core of the argument elaborated in these pages isthat the demise of Malaysia’s Reformasi movement reveals not only the en-trenchment of the discursive/structural aspects of state power, but also its artic-ulation with civil society and movement politics. In other words, state power isinformed by a productive tension in civil society among different competing el-ements, which limits the ability of protest movements to elicit a more radical re-structuring of existing political and social institutions, in turn reinforcing statepower and ideological hegemony. This tension is manifested in the often con-flicting demands and issues that Reformasi espoused and in its limitations as amovement in mobilizing widespread resistance. Resistance to overt state powermay thus be seen in the forms of protest that emerged through Reformasi, but“consensus” over the social and political logics underpinning the state, such asethnically defined political arrangements and policies, has not been signifi-cantly undermined. I argue also that the limits of “democratic deepening,” inwhich democracy is understood not merely as a “political regime but as abroader set of social relations,”5 may help explain the decline of Reformasi de-spite its efforts to reach down to the grassroots, articulate a wide range of issues,and project itself as a viable multiethnic and more democratic alternative to thestatus quo.

In elaborating these points I explore the impacts of the financial crisis andhighlight elements of the official narratives to better situate Reformasi dis-course. The emergence and characteristics of Reformasi, as well as tensionswithin the movement and its sympathizers, are discussed with a view to under-standing some of the challenges the movement faced in reshaping political de-bate and discourse. Finally, I assess the broader implications of protest forstate-society relations in Malaysia, looking more closely at NGO–political partyrelations and their impact on Reformasi. The analysis that follows is situated inreference to turning points in Malaysian politics during the period 1997–2002,the critical time frame for conditions enabling the growth and decline ofReformasi politics, although events before and after this period are also ad-dressed where relevant.


education minister, whether he would use his keris to defend Malay privilege. Thisreference, far from being benign, seems to signify a more aggressive stance in Malaypolitical discourse around Malay rights.

5. Roberts 1998, 29. I elaborate more fully on this concept below.

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The State, Ruling Relations, and Crisis

The dominant conception of the Malaysian state is that it is quintessentially anauthoritarian structure with some democratic features. According to this view,general elections held every four to five years, the presence of a legitimate andautonomous political opposition, the growth of NGOs, and economic liberal-ization capture these countervailing but coexisting tendencies. William Case,for example, argues that it is this “pseudo-democratic” or “semi-democratic”character of the Malaysian state that has contributed to its longevity.6 The vari-ous restrictions on political mobilization and expression enacted through re-pressive laws, despite the provision of constitutional parliamentary democracy,and the chilling effect on Malaysian society of detention and prosecution ofpolitical and social activists appear to provide conclusive evidence of the Ma-laysian state’s so-called semi-democratic structure.7 The Malaysian state’sstructuring of dissent through liberal openings and authoritarian closures, ac-cording to Case, offers an opportunity to analyze political change and transi-tions, and provides a window into the political stability of such systems andtheir possible demise. He maintains that Malaysian semi-democracy wasstrengthened under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad through patronage net-works, privatization of key sectors in the economy, and a populist approach (tar-geting ethnic Malays) to economic policy particularly in the implementation ofthe New Economic Policy (NEP).8 However, despite some discussion of socialactors’ responsiveness to what is conceived as a top-down process, Case sub-scribes to a view of political change that can only be effectively measured againstthe experiences of institutionalized political democracies.9

An alternative perspective addresses the question of hegemony in state-soci-ety relations. Anne Munro-Kua, for example, suggests that a form of authoritar-ian populism prevailed in Malaysia during the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. Inthis view, the Malaysian state’s domination is obtained in and through the state’srole as benefactor and protector of class and elite interests, although it simulta-neously presents itself as acting in the interests of the citizenry as a whole.10 Re-lated to the theme of state hegemony, I have challenged elsewhere the state-civilsociety split evident in conventional approaches to Malaysian politics, arguingthat it would be more useful to view the civil society-state dynamic in Malaysia asmutually constitutive, with each providing the “conditions of possibility” for theother.11 Utilizing a Gramscian perspective, I suggest that civil society far from be-ing a realm autonomous of the state is implicated in the relations of rule thatstructure state power. Consequently, dissent is not merely contained, butmuted in part through the production of a nationalist narrative or discourse in


6. Case 2001, 43–57.7. See also Crouch 1992, 21–43.8. Case 2004.9. Other writings in a similar vein include Emmerson (1999) and Weiss (2005).10. Munro-Kua 1996.11. Nair 1999.

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civil society.12 John Hilley in a similar vein claims that with the ascendance ofneoliberal ideology and practices around the globe, political control underMahathir needed “a more hegemonic form of authority” to sustain it.13 He ar-gues that the state pushed notions of economic development and modernitypremised on the Vision 2020 ideas promoted by Mahathir in an effort to secureconsent.

These distinct but overlapping arguments on the nature and role of the Ma-laysian state and its relationship to civil society suggest that the question of po-litical democracy and its associated meanings in Malaysia remain a source ofcontention and struggle. The state-society dynamic may thus be seen to rest onrelations of rule.14 Such relations of rule evoke the everyday discourses of rulingelites: specifically, the construction and production of language, ideas, andtechnologies of control and servitude around nationalism, on the one hand,and a form of consensual control in which state and society are mutually impli-cated, on the other. This does not of course mean that direct repression is ab-sent, but control of dissent may be enacted in a number of different ways as wesee in Malaysia. According to Gramsci, the production of ideology as “practical,everyday consciousness” or “common sense” is what ultimately enables the he-


12. Ibid.13. Hilley 2001, 7.14. I borrow this concept from Smith 1989. In its usage here relations of rule refer to

hierarchical power relations that structure class, gender, and ethnic relations inany given social formation.

In the aftermath of the 1997 Asianfinancial crisis, Malaysia’s primeminister Mahathir Mohamad (pic-tured here on the cover of BibliografiDr. Mahathir [Perpustakaan NegaraMalaysia, 2004]) “constructed a na-tion under siege, a country about tobe brought to its knees by currencyspeculators and foreign fund manag-ers, but ready to hold its own againstthe marauding forces of global capi-tal. Once a key advocate of privat-ization, the accumulation of privatewealth, and of international oppor-tunities presented by globalization,Mahathir saw the financial crisis asan outcome of neoimperialism, ar-guing that it constituted no less thanan attack on Malaysia’s very sover-eignty and yet another form of West-ern colonization.”

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gemonic power of the state.15 At the same time, hegemony is seldom completeand invites disruption, struggle, and resistance in the relationship betweenstate and civil society. In a Gramscian view the disjunctures or contradictions inideological production also allow for dissent. Stuart Hall illustrates this nicelywhen he argues that hegemony is a “very particular, historically specific, andtemporary ‘moment’ in the life of a society.”16 In the aftermath of the currencycrisis in Malaysia we see a reassertion of dominant narratives as envisioned anddisseminated by the state, as well as challenges to these from newly mobilizedsocial agents.

Constructing Nation and Modernity:Responses to a Crisis and Its Aftermath

The official reaction in Malaysia during the early days of the financial crisis, rep-resented best by the rhetoric of the prime minister (Mahathir) and several keycabinet members, was critical, at least initially, in preventing a social crisis overthe precipitous decline of the Malaysian ringgit. Mahathir constructed a nationunder siege, a country about to be brought to its knees by currency speculatorsand foreign fund managers, but ready to hold its own against the maraudingforces of global capital. Once a key advocate of privatization, the accumulationof private wealth, and of international opportunities presented by globaliza-tion, Mahathir saw the financial crisis as an outcome of neoimperialism, arguingthat it constituted no less than an attack on Malaysia’s very sovereignty and yetanother form of Western colonization: “There will be no occupation of the terri-tories but already we are seeing how the choice of leaders of these countries canbe influenced by pressures on the currency.”17

Mahathir’s attack on external forces may have been anticipated given hislong-standing criticisms of Western hegemony and promotion of various initia-tives that put a premium on South-South relations. One example of Mahathir’schallenges to Western power was a short-lived “Buy British Last” initiative thatresulted from a hostile takeover by Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB) — an in-vestment arm of the Malaysian state — of Guthrie Corporation, a once domi-nant corporate British presence in Malaysia. Another was his “Look East” policy,which meant looking toward Japan and other countries in East Asia as exem-plars of a late capitalist modernity, a modernity Malaysia could emulate withoutlosing sight of its own cultural values. As Khoo Boo Teik explains, Mahathir’scriticism of Western economic and political power reflected a worldview inwhich there were

two basic camps. One side comprised poor, developing countries, formercolonies, and other nations of the East and the “South.” The other sideconsisted of rich, developed countries, former colonizers, and other na-tions of the West and the “North.” By Mahathir’s scheme of things, such a


15. Hall 1986, 20.16. Ibid.,15.17. In Murray Hiebert, “Read it and weep.” Far Eastern Economic Review, 21 May

1998, 28.

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division of the world, while it did not portend of mortal combat betweenthe two sides, contained a leitmotif of ceaseless competition which deter-mined the fates of nations.18

Mahathir’s Third World nationalism constituted a reformulation of themeslaid out by early leaders of the Malayan anticolonial movement, although hiswas a nationalist narrative articulated in response to newer, and seemingly lessovert, forms of Western power and domination. It was a posture that broughthim much acclaim and wide support among leaders and countries in the globalSouth. Yet despite his criticisms of the West, Mahathir remained a staunch advo-cate of an economic system underwritten by the logic of global capitalism, albeitone attenuated by the development priorities of an industrializing, moderniz-ing Third World state.

Several key premises underpin the dominant Malaysian nation and moder-nity narratives: (1) the state is the only able arbiter of ethnic politics; (2) ethnicdivisions are informed by class inequalities, which are best addressed throughaggressive state intervention in the economy and a developmentalist agenda;(3) political conflict cannot be mediated through civil society but ratherthrough access to the state; (4) political stability and order are central to na-tional survival and political opposition generates instability; and (5) statepower is exercised in a manner consistent with the interests of the nation as awhole. These premises, which I have explored elsewhere, situate Mahathir’srhetoric in the face of a disciplinary neoliberalism (epitomized by the financialcrisis).19

The question Mahathir implicitly (ex)poses in his response to the crisis iswhether national autonomy should be sacrificed at the altar of economic liber-alization and its promises. His position reflects the broader contradictions of of-ficial narratives on nation and modernity, which Mahathir himself played an im-portant part in constructing. As Partha Chatterjee has noted, the nationalist elitein India was able to forge a singular nationalism around the struggle againstBritish rule and yet at the same time foundered in its efforts to quell resistancefrom subaltern groups in the postcolonial context.20 Similarly, while the nation-alist prelude in colonial Malaya signaled to some degree a unity despite sharpdifferences among key political elements around the idea of a common destinyand a shared history, deep ambivalence around the terms and conditions ofpostcolonial statehood surfaced in the first decade after independence. By thelate 1960s the Malays, Malaysia’s dominant indigenous ethnic group, werewidely viewed as underprivileged relative to the Chinese, a minority in thecountry but viewed as an economically ascendant immigrant community at thetime of independence from Britain in 1957. More than a decade later, in May1969, street riots and clashes, conventionally held to be the result of ethnic con-flict arising out of class divisions between Chinese and Malay, led to the tempo-


18. Khoo 1995, 65.19. Nair 1995.20. Chatterjee 1986.

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rary suspension of parliamentary rule. An economic restructuring program, em-bodied in the NEP and directed toward the transformation of Malaysian societyand politics, was also set in place after the violence of 1969. The NEP had as itscore objectives the reduction of poverty and the elimination of the identifica-tion of race with economic function. Designed to redress the economic gap be-tween Malays and the Chinese, the NEP was not only the cornerstone of eco-nomic planning by the state, but also its ideological template.21 The post-NEPpolicies set out in its successor, the National Development Policy (NDP), re-flected the urgency of the earlier plan, but placed greater emphasis on social ac-commodation to the imperatives of rapid industrialization.22 The modernizationimperative accompanying nationalist objectives and inscribed by a belief in thevirtues of privatization and the capitalist free market system, envisioned Malay-sia’s transformation into an industrialized, globalized, and technologically driveneconomy by the year 2020. Mahathir’s outline for Malaysia’s economic future wasencapsulated in a set of policy statements known as Vision 2020 — a programof rapid economic modernization that included objectives such as culturaland moral development and the construction of a unified national identity.23

A hegemonic political compact among key ethnically based parties, partnersin the ruling BN has shaped postcolonial politics in Malaysia. The BN, formerlynamed the Alliance, emphasizes that its ability to maintain social harmony andpolitical stability in an ethnically divided polity derives from a delicate “balanc-ing act” involving the country’s major ethnic groups.24 The main componentparties of the BN include the UMNO, its de facto leader, the Malaysian ChineseCongress (MCA), and the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC). Under Mahathir,who became prime minister in 1981, signs of an even greater erosion of civil andpolitical liberties became obvious, even though until 1997 key civil society sec-tors and groups, particularly those associated with commerce, were generallyseen as partners in the state’s modernization project. Driven by Mahathir’s vi-sion of a modern, economically resilient state, the middle class also appeared toignore executive encroachment on various institutions of democratic gover-nance.25 Further, seduced by the rise of Malay capitalists closely associated withthe state and dependent on state patronage, the expanding Malay middle classappeared willing to trade off civil and political liberties for economic well-be-ing.26 The state’s modernizing ambitions, however, glossed over deepeningpoverty and social inequality, problems that were mostly sidelined during theperiod of rapid economic growth that preceded the 1997 financial crisis in Ma-laysia. As privatization and deregulation of the economy were pursued with in-


21. Husin Ali 1984.22. Ishak 2000, 112–124.23. See Gomez and Jomo 1999, 168–76.24. For a lengthy discussion of this ethnic divide and its colonial roots see Abraham

2004.25. Khoo 1995; 2003.26. Saravanamuttu 2003; Abdul Rahman 2002.

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tensity, intra-ethnic inequality, especially the socioeconomic gulf within the Ma-lay community, grew even sharper.27

In the aftermath of the currency crisis a subtle discursive shift could be dis-cerned, one that calls into question the hegemony of official discourses aroundnation and modernity. John Hilley refers to this as a hegemonic crisis in re-sponse to “Mahathirism” — an ideological program he ascribes to Mahathir’s ar-ticulation of Vision 2020.28 With the financial crisis of 1997 an array of critics, in-cluding those within the ruling BN, challenged the state’s policy prescriptionsand growth targets. Mahathir, calling opponents of his crisis-related policiesagents and tools of foreign interests,29 now questioned the wisdom of Malaysia’sdeepening integration into the global economy. He was also unhappy withAnwar Ibrahim’s advocacy of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) positionon the economic crisis and proposed solutions for Malaysia. In an interview,Anwar, then deputy prime minister and finance minister, told Time magazine:“We will have to convince investors that we need them. I think we should be inthe [sic] league with the international system and its commitment to further lib-eralize. There’s no question of a reversal of public policy.”30

Mahathir took the opposite view. Allegations of nepotism and crony capital-ism in the party and government soon began to surface among the UMNO rankand file in June 1998 and were directed at Mahathir.31 Joined by some opposi-tion groups, the critics (and Anwar supporters) alleged that cronies andMahathir’s sons were being protected under various bailout schemes for theirbusiness ventures. Suspicious of those who were raising these matters and see-ing Anwar’s political ambitions exposed by such allegations, Mahathir retaliatedby disclosing lists of those who benefited from lucrative contracts resultingfrom privatization of huge national assets and other schemes.32 By taking on hiscritics unflinchingly Mahathir indicated his willingness to defend his policies,which privileged economic growth and modernization over democratic values,by force if necessary. He warned Malaysians that the national interest, translatedas economic survival, was at stake and accused his political opponents of sub-verting the national interest.33


27. Ishak 2000.28. Hilley 2001.29. “PM: Opposition parties mere agents to foreign prophets of doom,” New Straits

Times, 21 July 1998.30. “What is success without freedom,” Time, 6 October 1997, 23–24.31. There were signs that all was not well between Mahathir and Anwar even before the

currency crisis hit the country. At the 1998 UMNO General Assembly, the annualmeeting of the party for rank and file members, a defamatory booklet 50 Dalil:Mengapa Anwar Tidak Boleh Jadi PM (Fifty reasons: Why Anwar cannot be primeminister) was circulated to members and appeared to have Mahathir’s tacit, if notopen endorsement. For analysis on events preceding and leading up to the assem-bly and its outcomes see, for example, “Malaysia: The Feud,” Businessweek, 9 No-vember 1998; Tim Healy and Assif Shameen, “Can Anyone Save Malaysia” (availableat http://www.asiaweek.com/asia week/98/0828/cs_1_malaysia.html; accessed 1July 2006); and Hwang 2003, 276–306.

32. “Cronies All,” The Star, 17 June 1998.

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Notwithstanding these warnings, many Malaysians were still shocked whenAnwar Ibrahim was dismissed from all cabinet posts on 8 September 1998 andsubsequently expelled from UMNO.34 Despite their differences, the struggle be-tween Anwar and Mahathir had less to do with framing an alternative politicaldiscourse in Malaysia than with intra-elite and factional politics in UMNO. Inthis regard, the struggle meant wresting control not only of UMNO but of eco-nomic policy as well.35 At stake was the huge UMNO patronage machine that dis-pensed favors in return for grassroots political support, in part through theavailability of funds generated by a vast network of corporate interests that havebeen critical to UMNO’s political dominance.36 However, the struggle was argu-ably also about the ways in which the state’s modernity project could accommo-date conflicting class interests. The beneficiaries of UMNO’s largesse were polit-ically well-connected business people from all ethnic groups, but not the lowerincome or poor in the city or countryside. Under Mahathir and post-NEP, thestate has unquestioningly favored wealth generation and has given less atten-tion to the problems associated with capital accumulation in the hands of a few,well-connected business elites.37 Although the UMNO-dominated state in apre-1997 expanding economy was able to accommodate to some degree theneeds of its rank-and-file supporters in part through rural development, educa-tion, health, housing, and investment incentives and opportunities, the distri-bution of the spoils of Malaysia’s economic growth during the NEP period wasunbalanced. The 1997 crisis suggests, however, that intra-party struggles andcrises are grounded in the material, social, and cultural terrain of postcolonialMalaysia. Widespread dissatisfaction among those who were not so privilegedduring the boom years resulted in unexpected alliances among social forcesand political organizations and the emergence of more coordinated forms of re-sistance to the ruling party.

The Emergence and Contours of Reformasi

Studies on NGOs that address questions concerning the role and impact ofnon-state action in the Malaysian political process have been prolific since themid 1990s.38 Scholarly literature at this time began to utilize the “new social orsocietal movement” concept to explain how human rights, Islamist, and envi-ronmental movements could resist state hegemony.39 Recently, the use of other


33. “Malaysia: The Feud,” Businessweek, 9 November 1998.34. No deputy prime minister had ever been summarily sacked from his position.

When serious differences emerged between a prime minister and his deputy, thelatter was either forced to resign or left voluntarily. The treatment of Mahathir’sfirst deputy Musa Hitam and the political crisis that shook up the party and govern-ment in 1987 is a case in point. See Crouch 1992; Means 1991; Milne and Mauzy1999.

35. Gomez 2004.36. For a detailed study on the topic of money politics in Malaysia see Gomez 1991.37. Gomez and Jomo 1999.38. For a useful survey of the role of nongovernmental organizations in Malaysia see

Tan and Singh 1994.

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terms such as civil society organizations (CSOs)40 seeks to capture the same phe-nomena. All of these works address similar questions. For example, how shouldwe think about the role of the voluntary sector and cause-based NGOs in a polit-ical context such as Malaysia’s where the state assumes such a dominant posi-tion? My earlier work addressed this question in reference to the emergenceand resilience of the NGO movement in Malaysia from the 1960s and to theearly 1990s.41 In that work, I noted:

The growing anxiety of ordinary Malaysians over the currency crisis of1997–1998 and its accompanying economic implications, may create lessof an opportunity for NSMs (new social movements) to articulate and po-sition themselves on what may seem like abstract concerns over humanrights, environmental and religious issues.42

Yet “civil society remains a space where politics and identity continue to be ne-gotiated along a number of different fronts.”43 In the reform movement that ne-gotiation may be witnessed in the conflicts and tensions around movementdirections and politics. In his essay on the aftermath of 1997 and its implicationsfor democratization and electoral politics in Malaysia, Sharaad Kuttan points tosome of these tensions. Describing the ideological winds buffeting Reformasi,he suggests that NGOs were and remain conflicted about their relationship toopposition political parties as reflected in the desire expressed by some in themovement to maintain a critical distance from party politics.44 This ambivalencemay be in part attributable to the dynamics of the specific sociopolitical contextwithin which Reformasi evolved, a context that in turn shaped the future of themovement. The Reformasi movement in Malaysia may be characterized in thefollowing way: (1) it was a response to a concrete political event, which was theouster and detention of the Malaysian deputy prime minister by the prime min-ister and his allies — thus it came to be constituted initially as a pro-Anwar andanti-Mahathir movement; (2) it was also a “movement from the street” made upof participants from different class backgrounds and ethnic groups, albeit led bya cadre of individual activists spurred on by political events; (3) it came to bedominated by both noninstitutionalized (NGOs) and institutionalized ele-ments (opposition political parties) who worked together in opposition to thestate but who were not always able to forge a unified strategy; (4) it was ani-mated by a wide range of issues and causes, but centered on the arbitrary exer-cise of state power; and (5) it was hampered by access to organizationalresources and by state coercion. I elaborate on the implications of some of thesefacets below.


39. The concept was drawn from scholarly literature on social movements in NorthAmerica and Europe (Nair 1995; 1999). It has gained increasing currency in morerecent writings on Malaysia’s NGO sector (see, for example, Weiss and Saliha2003).

40. For example, Weiss 2005.41. Nair 1995; 1999.42. Nair 1999, 100.43. Ibid.44. Kuttan 2005, 166–67.

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The Reformasi movement emerged from the political turmoil and disaffec-tion resulting from Anwar Ibrahim’s ouster, arrest, and detention. Anwar’s sub-sequent calls for reform stirred thousands who took to the streets of KualaLumpur in protest against state power. In a brief statement known as thePermatang Pauh Declaration,45 issued on 8 September 1998, just days after hisexpulsion from the ruling party and government, Anwar outlined demands for acomprehensive reform of the Malaysian judicial, social, and political system.The estimated thirty thousand people who took to the streets of Kuala Lumpuron 20 September 1998, in the largest such protest in decades, supported thiscontention. In this sense, Anwar was a singularly important figure and a criticalfactor in the protest against state power and its excesses in post-crisis Malaysia.46

Paradoxically, Anwar himself was complicit in the propagation of the very sys-tem he now condemned and rallied his troops against. Yet despite his detrac-tors, Anwar’s calls for Reformasi appealed to many Malays disillusioned withUMNO politics, which had assumed an increasingly authoritarian and elite-driven character under Mahathir. Further, Anwar’s arrest after the 20 Septemberdemonstration under the Internal Security Act (ISA), which gives the govern-ment powers of preventive detention without trial, also triggered publicoutrage. Importantly, Anwar’s imprisonment galvanized an important segmentof Malay society long accustomed to UMNO’s projection of itself as the protec-tor of Malay interests.47

In the wake of Anwar’s arrest university students, NGOs, political parties, theunemployed, workers, civil servants, professionals, and cultural workers be-came involved in street protests and other forms of dissent. In his analysis ofthese events, Sabri Zain chronicles the resonance that Reformasi held for a widegroup of people, reaching across Malaysian society, including “elderly men,middle-aged men and women, young girls…senior managers in the private sec-tor…executives or civil servants, teachers, businessmen, lawyers’ and ‘Rockersin Leather jackets.’”48 Reformasi’s appeal cut across a fairly wide swathe of theMalaysian population, projecting a dissident discourse that initially held thepromise of meaningful social progress and political change.49 In its early daysReformasi drew a number of diverse organizations such as the Kuala LumpurResidents Civic Club and the Society for Christian Reflection, human rights or-ganizations such as Suaram (Voice of the Malaysian People) and Aliran (NationalConsciousness Movement), and Islamist NGOs such as ABIM (Islamic YouthMovement of Malaysia) and Jemaah Islah Malaysia (JIM). Islamist groups nowfound common ground with these non-Islamist organizations. Such an alliance


45. Permatang Pauh was Anwar’s parliamentary constituency.46. Kuttan 2005, 156.47. Chandra 1979.48. In Khoo 2003, 104. Sabri Zain’s widely circulated Internet journal, Reformasi Di-

ary, provided important documentation of the formation and momentum of themovement. For information on the diary see http://www.sabrizain.demon.co.uk/index2.htm.

49. Interviews with various activists and analyses of alternative media sources such asAliran Monthly, Harakah (the PAS newspaper), The Rocket (newsletter of the DAP)

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was not without precedent since many of these organizations had cooperatedon campaigns during the 1980s and early 1990s focusing on, among other is-sues, human rights in Bosnia, East Timor, and Burma, and political repressionin Malaysia.

Reformasi also reflected the tensions of identity politics, however, and theambiguities and contradictions of political solidarity among secular and reli-gious (principally Islamist) organizations, which were constantly under pres-sure from countervailing moves to solidify intra-group support. Despite theparticipation of non-Islamist entities, Reformasi would soon become a testa-ment to the power and influence of groups such as ABIM and JIM that success-fully mobilized their members and supporters in defense of Anwar andReformasi.50 Having been a founding leader of ABIM and the Muslim youthmovement of the 1970s, Anwar now found renewed support among these orga-nizations and their members. Under the Reformasi banner, meetings and gath-erings were organized and a new formal coalition, Gagasan Demokrasi Rakyator simply Gagasan (People’s Democratic Coalition), was formed in November1998. In addition to the Gagasan a second broad coalition, the GerakanKeadilan or Gerak (Malaysian People’s Justice Movement), was also establishedin late 1998. Throwing their support behind the movement, opposition politi-cal parties such as the Democratic Action Party (DAP), the Parti Rakyat Malaysia(PRM), and the Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) renewed their calls for reform.51

These parties had been articulating concerns about creeping and overt forms ofauthoritarianism for decades. While these coalitions reflected overlappingmembership and objectives, Gerak was led by PAS and dominated by theIslamists including ABIM and JIM, while Gagasan reflected greater diversity inmembership. Reformasi was further aided by the creation of another NGO,ADIL (Social Justice Movement), led by Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, Anwar’s wife,and made up of ex-UMNO members who followed Anwar out of the party.52

Reformasi thus mobilized several different social and political organizationsand ethnic groups whose conflicting objectives and asymmetric organizationalresources lent the movement a horizontal rather than a vertical structure.53

Anwar’s separate trials on charges of corruption (1998–1999) and sodomy(1999–2000) captivated the Malaysian public and fueled the reform movement.He was convicted and sentenced to six and nine years respectively on thecharges. His trials, conviction, and sentencing were widely condemned by hu-man rights groups and his supporters and seen as a sign of his political persecu-


generally support this view. Author interviews: Sharaad Kuttan, writer, journalist,and long-time NGO activist (Kuala Lumpur, May 2004); Tian Chua, Parti KeADILanvice-president (Kuala Lumpur, December 2003); and Cynthia Gabriel, executive di-rector of Suara Rakyat Malaysia or Suaram (Petaling Jaya, October 2003).

50. For analyses of the origins of Malaysia’s Islamic movement, see among othersChandra 1987, Nagata 1984, and Zainah 1987.

51. “Three more NGOs join reformists,” Star Online, 8 September 1998.52. ADIL would morph into a political party, Parti KeADILan Nasional (National Justice

Party) also known as KeADILan.

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tion.54 During the Anwar trials Reformasi groups utilized alternative media suchas the Internet to get the word out about Anwar’s persecution and to organizestreet protests. Numerous Reformasi websites such as Mahazalim, LamanReformasi, Laman Rakyat, and freeMalaysia sprang up between 1998 and 2000.In addition, alternative Internet news portals such as Malaysiakini and AgendaMalaysia emerged on the scene while web periodicals such as Saksi55 ap-proached issues in a more analytical style and provided good coverage of arange of topics including culture and civil society. These news sites, combinedwith those already maintained by other NGOs and parties and especially PAS’sHarakah newsletter, produced the sense of a widening (if not a deepening)public sphere and democratic possibilities.56 Peaceful protests at which peoplecarried placards and made speeches, were the typical means of showing solidar-ity with fellow reformers and developing a politics of resistance. In November2000 an estimated ten thousand people gathered on a major Kuala Lumpur ex-pressway to protest the government’s efforts to block yet another planned“100,000 gathering.” Similar demonstrations were called several times afterAnwar’s sentencing, but because of threats of police action, lack of skillful andcoordinated organization, and the difficulty of sustaining interest in a long-run-ning campaign to bring about justice for Anwar, the number of protestors dwin-dled over time. The “Black 14” first anniversary commemoration of AnwarIbrahim’s sentencing organized by Reformasi party activists in 2001, for exam-ple, drew only a “mere 1,000 or so die-hard” supporters, according to oneReformasi website.57 The following year and days before the second anniversaryof Anwar’s sentencing Reformasi leaders Tian Chua, Mohamad Ezam MohamadNor, Saari Sungib, Badrul Amin Baharon, Lokman Adam, Abdul Ghani Harun,and N. Gobalakrishnan all from the opposition party, Parti KeADILan Nasional(National Justice Party), along with activist independent filmmaker and essayistHishamuddin Rais, Free Anwar Campaign director Raja Petra Kamarudin, andBadaruddin Ismail of Suaram, were arrested under the ISA.58 The arrests alsohighlighted the flexible use of coercion by the state to silence or intimidateReformasi activists and the political opposition.


53. Aside from interviews with activists, the analysis in this section draws from a varietyof sources including Reformasi websites and news media.

54. Anwar won an appeal against his conviction for sodomy in September 2004 and hassince been released from prison.

55. Saksi ceased publication in mid-2000. AgendaMalaysia announced in December2000 that it would cease publication due to lack of revenue.

56. See Anil Netto, “Falling mainstream newspaper readership and the rise of the alter-native media: Exploring new opportunities for promoting media freedom.” Paperpresented at Southeast Asian Fellows (SEAF) Seminar Series, 24 October 2000, In-stitute of Malaysia and International Studies (IKMAS), Universiti Kebangsaan Ma-laysia. Author interview: Anil Netto, November 2003, Penang, Malaysia.

57. “Reformasi needs to reinvent itself,” 23 October 2001. Available at http://www.freeanwar.net/articles/article241001.html; accessed 20 June 2006.

58. See “Protest against the 2001 ISA arrests: Memorandum to Suhakam submitted byAliran, Hakam, and Suaram.” Available at http://www.aliran.com/oldsite/monthly/2001/3a.html; accessed 20 June 2006.

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The commemoration revealed theshifting dynamics of Reformasi from whatwas originally a grassroots, nonpartisanmovement into an opposition party–driven one. Political parties such as PAS,DAP, PRM, and KeADILan, which WanAzizah and Anwar’s supporters estab-lished in April 1999 shortly after Anwar’sconviction and sentencing on corruptioncharges, had initially worked together togive Reformasi a structure and organiza-tional coherence that could be chan-neled into electoral politics. Another keydevelopment was the formation, also in1999, of the Barisan Alternatif (Alterna-tive Front) led by opposition parties PAS,DAP, PRM, and KeADILan, which demon-strated the increased cooperation andsolidarity among different Reformasi in-terests and revealed conflict over re-sources, objectives, and strategies as well. For example, different groups com-peted for access to the OKT (orang kena tuduh, or “the accused”),59 who wereseen as more willing than most to take to the streets and risk arrest. Organiza-tions within Reformasi tried to identify key supporters to bolster their coremembership and ensure loyalty to the cause. Access to these individuals became acontentious issue.60 Yet Reformasi groups did cooperate on the OKT. For exam-ple, Suaram’s arrangements for legal assistance to the hundreds arrested duringprotests helped solidify its alliance with the Islamist NGOs and the political oppo-sition.61 In terms of priorities, Wan Azizah and Anwar allies had Anwar’s release atthe top of their agenda although this was not the main priority for many others inthe movement. PAS, the principal beneficiary of the fallout from Anwar’s trial andsentencing, held to a political platform not shared by others in the movement.This in turn posed problems for other reformists who shared a broad secular vi-sion of a post-Mahathir order in marked contrast to PAS’s consistent advocacy —with support from Islamist NGOs such as ABIM — of an Islamic state. The cre-ation of the Barisan Alternatif (BA), which became the vehicle for challengingthe electoral dominance of the BN, was significant in terms of Reformasi’s politi-cal momentum (more below). Yet in the words of one human rights activist themovement faced a “serious problem of leadership” by late 2000 and it looked asif “people are more ready for change than the organizers of Reformasi.”62


59. Individuals who were accused by the state of anti-lawful actions during theReformasi protests and arrested.

60. Sangwon Suh, “Reformasi’s on-going fight” Asiaweek, 17 November 2000.61. Author interview: Cynthia Gabriel, October 2003.

Anwar Ibrahim. “Anwar’s separate trialson charges of corruption (1998–1999)and sodomy (1999–2000) captivated theMalaysian public and fueled the reformmovement.” (Credit: Weatherhead East Asian In-stitute, Columbia University)

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The Malaysian reform movement’s difficulties thus reflect the challenges so-cial and political movements typically encounter, especially when they have lim-ited resources and are unable to effectively threaten or coerce opponents, or of-fer much in exchange for concessions from their opponents. As Medearissuggests,

social movements are usually understood to be collective challengesmounted by relatively marginal groups against powerful elites and domi-nant ideologies. And acting, as they do, in societies characterized by signif-icant inequalities of power, they face systematic barriers to democratic in-clusion for themselves and their arguments. In addition to their weaksocial positions, they are almost always bearers of ideas that are unconge-nial to prevalent institutions and practices.63

This view is generally consistent with the Malaysian reform movement’s experi-ence. In the next section I explore why the reform movement was unable to for-mulate an alternative discourse that could displace or de-center the officialnarratives of nation and modernity.

Reformasi and Its Discontents

Academic analysts generally agree that Reformasi presented an alternative toBN hegemony by formulating an alternative set of propositions that expandedpolitical participation, challenged the nexus between ethnic identity and politi-cal life, and democratized civil society.64 Like the reformists, several academiccommentators have viewed Reformasi in somewhat lofty terms; the movementpromised a new political awakening, the defanging of ethnic politics, and amore democratic framework of governance. Francis Loh, for example, suggeststhat “ethnicism” is no longer the overriding factor in determining national polit-ical outcomes.65 Yet despite such optimism it is debatable whether the move-ment disavowed the ethnic politics expressed by the BN. How effectively didReformasi refute the ethnonationalism embedded in the dominant discourse ofthe ruling party/state? Ethnicity, identity, and nation are mutually constitutivecategories in Malaysia. Reformasi’s seductive promises aside, why was it unableto significantly rework the underlying premises of the dominant nation and mo-dernity narratives?

The answers to these questions remain elusive. Significantly, the struggle todefine precisely the kinds of alternative national ideals Reformasi stands for hasfrustrated those activists who subscribe to the broad goals of social and politicalchange and democratic reform. I suggest here that the extent to which theReformasi movement subverted dominant political meanings has been exagger-ated in the literature. Contrary to claims made that Reformasi produced an al-ternative “cultural politics” or “cultural imperative” and facilitated the empow-


62. Author interview: S. Arutchelvan, then Suaram coordinator, November 2000,Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.

63. Medearis 2005, 53.64. Khoo 2003; Loh and Saravanamuttu 2003; Funston 2000; Shamsul 2000.65. Loh 2003, 278. See also Santiago and Nadarajah 1999, 31.

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erment of civil society, I argue instead that the movement reinforced theunderlying premises of the dominant narrative. Little has changed in the overallstructure and pattern of state-society relations in post-crisis Malaysia despiteReformasi’s hopeful interventions. I make three related points to support thiscontention. First , Reformasi emerged in a context where theinstitutionalization or deepening of participatory norms in civil society was se-verely constrained. The reasons for this lack of deepening can be traced to de-cades of tight state control over political expression and public debate on key is-sues such as repressive legislation and the hegemony of the UMNO/BN politicalformula. Several NGOs organized around human rights issues and pushed foran expansion of political and civil liberties in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, buttheir campaigns did not resonate widely in civil society, which remained largelyindifferent to the issues raised by these groups. When Reformasi came along itbreathed new life into NGOs and led to the creation of new groups, but thesewere mostly unable in the long run to articulate a deeper critique of politics andthe state beyond justice for Anwar and electoral gain. Second, as a movementthat initially manifested itself as a spontaneous outcry from the streets againstofficial abuses of power, Reformasi struggled to present itself as a viable move-ment for political and social change in the long term. Its message was anchoredin a general critique of the excesses of state power and the need for politicalchange, but it stopped short of grounding its alternative discourse in most Ma-laysians’ experience of a divided and racialized polity. In other words, ideasabout democracy and political change were presented in such abstract termsthat it underestimated the preoccupations of many Malaysians with identity, pri-marily ethnic identity, and its relationship to politics.66 It was also a movementprincipally made up of disparate groups and organizations, many of which hadoperated independently since their formation. A third point, and closely relatedto the second, is that as Reformasi evolved tensions emerged among differentcomponent parties and complicated the movement’s message, seriously dilut-ing Reformasi’s optimism and critique. I develop these arguments below.

Deepening Reform and Civil Society: Challenges for NGOs

Democratic deepening refers to the transformation of social and political struc-tures so that these are inclusive and extend full rights of citizenship and partici-pation to all regardless of caste, class, gender, ethnicity, or race.67 Emerging inpart as a critique of the political democratization literature, which emphasizesregime attributes and a teleological understanding of social and politicalchange as well as a preoccupation with “democratic consolidation,” democraticdeepening has a descriptive and normative content and impact “rather thanproviding a mere analytical tool.”68 Utilized in the literature to capture pro-cesses associated with institutionalizing participatory democracy69 and the rise


66. I agree with Mandal that transethnic solidarities in Malaysia exist and have been ob-scured historically. However, as he also acknowledges, this does not mean thatsuch constructions illustrate a false consciousness. Race and/or ethnicity becomenaturalized in ways that construct difference as primordial (Mandal 2002, 52–55).

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of grassroots social movements particularly in Latin America,70 democraticdeepening also implies a “deliberative” discourse.71 In this view democraticdeepening should involve the active participation of all members of civil societywhether through intermediary institutions such as political parties, civic associ-ations, and social movements or through more direct input from informal net-works established at the local town, district, or village levels. According toKenneth Roberts:

The deepening logic conceives democracy as a property of the social orderand not merely that of a political regime.…This conception of democracyis inherently continuous rather than discrete; it revolves around the cen-tral analytical dimension of popular sovereignty or empowerment.…Thisapproach treats democracy as an elastic and dynamic phenomenon thatcontracts or expands over time in accordance with the extent of popularcontrol over collective decision-making.72

I use the notion of democratic deepening in the Malaysian context mainly toillustrate the discursive boundaries of Reformasi and its structural limitations infacilitating wider citizen participation.

As noted earlier, modernity and nation narratives constructed around the im-peratives of growth and development and inter-ethnic relations premised onthe NEP and the NDP were dominant in the pre-Reformasi period and inhibitedcitizen participation. Democratic deepening in this period was truncated notonly by the Malaysian state’s coercive response but also by its ability to deployideological rationales when challenged by counter-narratives from civic associa-tions, NGOs, and opposition parties thus preempting more widespread opposi-tion. For example, periodic uses of the ISA kept criticism of state policies andgrowing state power in check through the 1970s, 1980s, and into the early1990s. Accompanied by the production of an official ideology around economicprogress, ethnic harmony, and political stability that only the UMNO/BN statecould secure, citizen involvement in the public sphere was severely con-strained.73 Yet citizen bodies, principally public-interest NGOs, have historicallyconstituted a distinct, politicized segment in Malaysian civil society and havelong been the standard bearers of alternative visions of democracy, humanrights, and political reform in Malaysia. Well before the emergence of Reformasi,Malaysian human rights, women’s, and environmental NGOs were criticizingkey state initiatives and seeking to shape public opinion and policy in key ar-


67. Harbers 2007, 40.68. Ibid. See also Schedler (1998) for a discussion of “democratic consolidation.”69. Alvarez 1993.70. Escobar and Alvarez 1992; Roberts 1998.71. According to Harbers deliberative procedures involve a “face-to-face setting” in

which citizens present reasoned arguments to persuade their fellow citizens ontheir positions and concerns. “Citizens should participate as equals in these pro-cesses, rather than as clients, and should contribute to the shaping and develop-ment of democratic practices” (Harbers 2007: 42–43).

72. Roberts 1998, 29.73. Nair 1999; Hilley 2001.

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eas.74 Some of the high-profile campaigns run by NGOs include the anti-ISA,anti-Official Secrets Act (OSA), and anti-logging protests of the 1980s. TheseNGOs, unlike Islamist groups like ABIM and JIM, generally disavowed party pol-itics and advocated alternative modes of political organization and expression.They also challenged a dominant nationalist discourse, one that privileged eth-nicity, and in the process drew attention to more fluid notions of identity. How-ever, NGOs appeared to have a more difficult time taking on issues and chal-lenging state policy by the mid-1990s in Malaysia. This failure may be due in partto the effects of an ISA crackdown in 1987 known as Operation Lallang whenmany key activists were detained and NGOs came under closer governmentscrutiny. The Mahathir government accused several NGOs of playing “politics”under the guise of being nonpartisan groups and targeted these organizationsas “enemies of the state” and “saboteurs.”75 The 1987 crackdown underminedNGO efforts to raise public awareness of the expanding reach of state powerand authoritarianism and limited more extensive citizen involvement in the po-litical process.

While the immediate genesis of the 1998 reform movement may be traced topopular disenchantment with state policies in the aftermath of the 1997 finan-cial crisis, it is also informed as noted above by pre-1997 struggles to redefinestate-society relations. Reformasi’s impetus thus lay also in the failure ofnon-Islamist NGOs and their allies in the political opposition to better articulatea post-1987 vision or movement for human rights and democratic values in Ma-laysia. Export-led growth had propelled Malaysia into the ranks of newly indus-trializing states and promoted the creation of a Malaysian middle class less at-tuned to the need for checks against the arbitrary exercise of state power by themid 1990s.76 As NGOs mobilized against the backdrop of economic growth andexpanding domestic consumption, they also found it more difficult to articulatean alternative set of ideals that, given their urban roots and base, was essentialto success in national campaigns on human rights, women’s rights, indigenouspeople’s rights, the environment, and so forth. The exception was the IslamistNGO movement, which has grown in its appeal, and in alliance with the opposi-tion party PAS constitutes a formidable obstacle to the advancement of an alter-native secular, democratic, multiethnic, and multireligious nationalist politicsin Malaysia. While it has always been more difficult for human rights NGOs andother opposition political parties to match the organizational skills and grass-


74. Tan and Singh 1994; Nair 1995, 1999; Weiss and Saliha 2003.75. Cited in Means 1991, 194.76. The Malaysian experience would no doubt contradict the conventional view that

economic modernization actually brings about demands for greater political liber-alization. Instead of a political modernity in which political debate can flourish, theMalaysian experience demonstrates all too well that economic modernization istypically accompanied as it has been elsewhere by the citizen consumer and thestate’s corresponding move to segregate the personal, familial, and the privatefrom the realm of the public (Kessler 1998: 55–56). On the role and significance ofmiddle classes in shaping social and political change see Rodan 1996 and AbdulRahman 2002.

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roots support of the Islamist NGOs and PAS before the Reformasi era, the situa-tion was no easier with the onset of Reformasi. The irony was not lost on manyin the Malaysian human rights NGO community that it took an ousted deputyprime minister from the ruling party to make the call for democratic reform res-onate with many Malaysians.77 After all, despite their demands for the abolitionof repressive laws, enhancement of judicial oversight and independence, andcivil and political liberties for many years prior to Reformasi, NGOs and some inthe political opposition were often lone voices of dissent.

Still, Reformasi signified a variety of possibilities for NGOs that actively mobi-lized behind it. On the electoral front, NGO leaders were now solidly behindopposition efforts to overcome the decisive two-thirds parliamentary majorityof the ruling party. In effect, this meant that those NGO activists who joined theparty opposition ranks were willing to dispense with the appearance of non-partisanship. The involvement of NGO activists in the electoral process on thesurface constituted a shift away from the noninstitutionalized politics espousedand practiced by NGOs in the 1970s and 1980s.78 In sum, this was a recognitionthat NGOs’ ability to effect change through civil society was somewhat limitedgiven the lackluster public response to past campaigns. The reform movementthus signaled an important shift in the modes and scope of protest from the1970s and 1980s when activists mobilized on a range of issues. Key figures in thehuman rights movement such as Chandra Muzaffar, president of the Just WorldTrust, Tian Chua of Suaram, activist lawyer Sivarasa Rasiah, and immigrant


77. Author interviews: Arutchelvan, November 2000; Kuttan 2004.78. Nair 1999; Loh 2003.

Parti Keadilan Rakyat’s youngest supporters protesting the Malaysian government’s delayin granting the party a publishing permit for its newspaper, Suara KeADILan. (Courtesy: PartiKeadilan Rakyat)

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rights advocate Irene Fernandez had become leaders in the political oppositionby 1999. The appearance of KeADILan as an alternative multiethnic party wascritical to the appeal that electoral politics now held for many of these individu-als who mostly joined the new party. The formation of the BA was also a movethat attracted support, formal and otherwise, from NGOs. It was, in short, themoment of politics.

Some activists believed that staying out of electoral politics in light of eventssurrounding Anwar’s arrest would be to abdicate responsibility for bringingabout change in the prevailing social and political order.79 NGO activists alsosaw the reform movement as an opportunity to transform the political and so-cial order and to promote an alternative vision of the good society in Malaysiathat would be popular with Malays. The wider NGO community believed that ifMalays did not support calls for reform the movement was doomed to fail. Un-like earlier unsuccessful efforts by NGOs to mobilize large numbers of peoplearound human rights violations and political repression, Reformasi hadbrought thousands to the streets of Kuala Lumpur in support of Anwar, humanrights, social justice, and other Reformasi ideals. The broad scope of Reformasi,even if it meant allying with conservative forces such as PAS, thus enabled thesecular human rights movement to anchor its critique of state practices in a con-crete political agenda. Toward the end of 1999 a number of important new ini-tiatives were being advanced by these NGOs and their allies. These initiatives in-cluded the People’s Manifesto for Change, Women’s Agenda for Change (WAC),and Women’s Candidacy Initiative (WCI). (WCI fielded its first candidate in the1999 general elections.) Key women’s NGOs such as the All Women’s Action So-ciety (AWAM), Women’s Aid Organization (WAO), and Women’s DevelopmentCollective (WDC) rallied behind Reformasi and in support of new opportunitiesfor political mobilization on women’s rights, while maintaining a skeptical dis-tance from the Reformasi movement. The skepticism in part stems from theawareness of paternalistic attitudes in society at large and a corresponding lackof consciousness in the larger NGO movement about women’s specific issuesand concerns.80 There was also much concern on the part of Muslim women’sorganizations such as Sisters In Islam (SIS) over the participation of PAS, ABIM,and even Anwar, for SIS and its allies saw them as undermining Muslimwomen’s rights.81 The latter are often encompassed within the human rights de-bate, but seldom consistently highlighted in critiques or analysis of state powerby key intellectuals within these movements.

Some of the main issues for the Reformasi movement, including the ISA, stateauthoritarianism, judicial independence, had been core NGO concerns for overtwo decades. Yet when linked to Anwar, these issues had a more palpable andimmediate impact among Malaysians, albeit at the expense of a deeper under-


79. Author interview: Tian Chua, December 2003.80. Author interview: Ivy Josiah, director of Women’s Aid Organization, December

2003.81. Author interview: Zainah Anwar, executive director, Sisters in Islam, July 2006,

Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. See also Derichs 2002.

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standing of the problems. To some critics, NGOs were not above opportunismand used Reformasi for their own narrow political ends such as raising theirprofile among potential international funders.82 Significantly, a broader anddeeper historical interrogation of the underlying structures of authority andrule and of the implications of long-standing policies aimed at curbing political,cultural, and social activism were seemingly obscured in the spirited protestsagainst Anwar’s plight. I argue that this was due in part to how the issues wereframed in the Reformasi campaign and to the failure to effectively link Anwar’splight to persistent executive control over other branches of government andthe state’s curtailment of political space and civil society. Anwar’s complicity inperpetuating authoritarianism while in power was not raised by many althoughit was of concern to some in the movement.83 Consequently, Reformasi did notengender a more profound debate over social justice, political democratiza-tion, and inclusion of all citizens, although it signified the promise of a radicalshift in the terms of political discourse.

Ethnicity, Identity, and Political Reform

Initially, the gathering of different groups in the reform movement revealed asensibility more attuned to commonalities rather than differences. As noted ear-lier, human rights and democracy campaigns coordinated by NGOs in the 1970sand 1980s had failed to garner broad support among Malays. In contrast, thecalls for Reformasi in the late 1990s galvanized Malays across the socioeconomicspectrum. Similarly, Johan Saravanamuttu writes,

it cannot be denied that for the first time significant numbers of the Malaymiddle classes were involved in the movement. Reflexively supportive ofthe BN government in times past, they now considered the BN govern-ment, or perhaps more pointedly the Mahathir government, zalim (re-pressive), tidak adil (unjust), and involved in “cronyism and nepotism.”84

Yet to other observers Reformasi may have reshaped the tone and temper ofMalay political discourse, but it did not have a similar resonance among otherethnic groups. Khoo Boo Teik suggests, for example, that Reformasi appealedmostly to Malays angry with UMNO while the Chinese electorate remainedlargely impervious to its message. He adds, “Where Reformasi reached the levelof Chinese voters, it renewed the 1980s discourses of democracy and civil soci-ety but it could not interject the reverberations of the Malay cultural revolt.”85 IfKhoo means by a “cultural revolt,” a politics that is shaped by alternative notionsof self, nation, cultural identity, and citizenship, then it would appear thatReformasi failed to promote a more pluralist and inclusive project, one thatheld wide appeal for all Malaysians. Farish Noor also suggests that some keyconstituencies of the reform movement had “injected the discourse of the


82. Author interview: Former NGO activist who chooses to remain anonymous, KualaLumpur, May 2004.

83. Author interview: Zainah Anwar, July 2006.84. Saravanamuttu 2003, 14.

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Reformasi movement with their ethnocentric Islamist concerns.”86 Reformasiviewed in these terms was infused by an Islamist ideology that erased differenceand privileged Malay religious identity above all others, even as it sought toframe a critique of the ethnicized BN framework. It is also the case, however,that even though the Islamists shared some responsibility for the underlyingracialized logic of Reformasi, others could also be accused of fostering the same,including members of KeADILan, home to former UMNO members and sup-porters, and the DAP, which in public statements and private comments under-scored the ethnic divide. In these seemingly more inclusive circles commentsabout defending ethnic rights and privilege were not unusual.87 Further, an“Islamist agenda” cannot be held largely responsible for the problems faced bythe movement when the BN-controlled state’s hegemonic constructions of eth-nic identity, and a nationalist politics driven by it, have been carefully main-tained for several decades.

The tensions in addressing equitably and democratically questions of faith,race, gender, social class, and cultural identity remained despite the joint mani-festo, Towards a Just Malaysia, the BA issued in the run-up to the 1999 elec-tions. This manifesto underlined the BA’s commitment to democracy, the pro-tection of human rights, and the socioeconomic well-being of all Malaysians,while decrying political repression and the Mahathir administration’s control ofthe judiciary, media, police, and civil service. Yet the BA was unable to provide aclear program or ideological template for economic, social, and political trans-formation consistent with the objectives outlined in the manifesto. It also didnot seriously grapple with the core cultural and ideological differences, such asdisputes over an Islamic state, evident in the BA’s internal politics or the ethnicchauvinism displayed among the rank and file. The general elections of 1999saw a surge in support for PAS while other parties in the BA, including the DAP,PRM, and KeADILan, were left with little to show for their efforts but for a hand-ful of new seats. The strength of the Islamist forces was underscored when thePAS held on to the state government in Kelantan and took control of Tereng-ganu from the UMNO. The party also made significant gains in the northern,largely Malay-dominated states of Kedah, Pahang, and Perlis.88 Even thoughReformasi highlighted solidarities that transcended ethnic and political differ-ences and brought together a cross section of Malaysians, advocacy groups, andpolitical parties focusing on human rights, political democracy, and social jus-tice, the movement seemed embedded in a similar ethnicized logic. As one ob-server — who was also a participant in the early Reformasi movement — sug-gests, the talk of a “new politics,” in which presumably ethnic politics would no


85. Khoo 2003, 138.86. Farish Noor, “Reformasi’s dead-end? Why hegemony matters.” Available at peman-

tau.tripod.com/artikel//29March2000farish.html; accessed 25 April 2004..87. Author interview: Sharaad Kuttan, May 2004.88. Useful academic analysis of the 1999 elections can be found in Khoo (2000),

Hussin (2000), and Puthucheary and Norani (2005).

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longer hold true, was an act of “self-mythologising”; “in part, wish fulfillment, aprojection of the observer’s desire for change.”89

The difficulty in articulating reform in the context of a dominant political dis-course overwritten by the logic of ethnic identity was also evident in the hotlycontested November 2000 by-election for a seat in the legislative assembly ofthe northern state of Kedah.90 While the DAP insisted that its candidate of Indiandescent should be fielded in the predominantly Malay constituency of Lunas,the BA chose KeADILan’s Saifuddin Nasution. The intra-coalition squabble ledto the departure of several DAP members of Indian descent from the BA (pre-ceding the DAP’s eventual departure from the BA). The opposition coalitionwon the Lunas seat — an upset for the BN — and the BA was reassured that is-sues aired during the 1999 election campaign, including the imprisonment ofAnwar, remained important to voters.91 For the opposition, Lunas signified amajor victory and added momentum to the issues raised by reformists, who hadput forth a “multiethnic” alternative to the BN’s formula.92 To some in the BA,the BN’s “racial politics” was evident in the dominance of UMNO, whose mainobjective was “to champion the Malay special position and ketuanan Melayu[Malay supremacy]” while the BA could espouse slogans like Long Live the Peo-ple! (Hidup Rakyat!) rather than Long Live the Malays (Hidup Melayu!).93 Yet theBA was itself dependent on the cobbling together of an alliance built on aracialized social structure and political history. How a party like PAS could beseen to represent the interests of non-Muslims, or how the DAP could erase itsimage of being a Chinese party was unclear. Unfortunately, for the BA and its al-lies many of the issues the opposition raised in 1999 were not as salient to votersin the 2004 general elections, which saw the opposition coalition — now with-out the DAP — suffer significant setbacks. PAS lost the state of Terengganu to theBN and barely held on to Kelantan, while suffering humiliating losses in the pre-dominantly Malay northern states of Kedah and Perlis. While the defection of asignificant percentage of voters to the opposition camp during the 1999 generalelection illustrates widespread dissatisfaction with the ruling party-state, Re-formasi was clearly unable to translate those gains into lasting political reformand social change. The merger of Parti KeADILan Nasional and PRM to form theParti KeADILan Rakyat (the People’s Justice Party, or PKR) in 2003 consolidatedparty resources, but failed to generate a stronger, unified political voice. Thisbecame apparent in the opposition setbacks in the 2004 elections. Aside fromallegations of mismanagement and outright fraud in the handling of the 2004


89. Kuttan 2005, 161.90. This was a seat vacated due to the slaying of a BN state assemblyman, Joe

Fernandez. It was a by-election that was hotly contested as the opposition frontcould deny the BN a two-thirds majority in the Kedah state assembly in the event itwon the seat.

91. For an analysis of intra-coalition politics, see Khoo 2003.92. Ang Hiok Gai, “Lunas, Racial Politics and BA.” Available at http://pemantau.tri-

pod.com/artikel/13Dec_prm.html; accessed 20 June 2006.93. Ibid.

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general elections by the BA parties, the voter swing toward the BN in key constit-uencies previously dominated by the Islamist opposition signals a perceptibleshift in support back toward the ruling party after 1999.94

Another problem for Reformasi was the framing of a coherent message,which given the movement’s fragmented structure, made it even harder to con-vey. Even supporters were not sure whether the movement espoused anIslamist agenda, presumably “hidden” by Reformasi rhetoric, or whether it wascommitted to a secular, democratic politics.95 The contention that Reformasiwas beholden to radical Islamists counters other criticisms that it was too frag-mented and represented every conceivable opposition position or group.96

While a strength of the reform movement may well lie in the pluralism ofgroups, ideas, and objectives,97 its alternative political and ideological messagewas seldom well defined. Further, as Reformasi shifted from being a movementthat mobilized ordinary Malaysians to one led by the party political opposition,signs of disaffection and contention in its ranks became evident, particularlywith the departure of the DAP and high-profile NGO activists such as ChandraMuzaffar from the opposition coalition.

Finally, the end of the Mahathir era in Malaysian politics in 2003 and the tran-sition to a different leadership style under the administration of AbdullahAhmad Badawi may be another step toward Reformasi’s marginalization. Afterall, the new leadership presented itself as reformist in tone and seemed inter-ested in a more consultative style. The BN–led state under Abdullah, however, isnot much different than its predecessor as seen in the longevity of key figures ingovernment, a holdover from the Mahathir era, and little meaningful politicalreform directed at providing greater accountability, democracy, and justice, allcore demands of Reformasi.

Conclusion

The Asian financial crisis triggered dramatic political developments such as thesacking of Malaysia’s deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, in 1998. TheReformasi movement that emerged in its wake initially won the support of manyMalaysians, but by the end of 2001 that support was declining and Reformasi be-gan to fade from the scene. I explore in this article how dominant narrativesaround nation and modernity have structured state-society relations, and con-


94. Factors cited for the BN’s better performance, compared with 1999, and the oppo-sition coalition’s losses include Mahathir’s resignation as prime minister in 2003and the assumption of that post by his deputy Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, popularlyseen as less confrontational than his predecessor and with better Islamist creden-tials.

95. As Kessler (2000, 108) anticipates, the reform movement would become ever moredependent on the Islamists’ “communications and organizational infrastructure.”

96. Countering his claim about the hijacking of the reform movement by Islamists,Farish (1999) offers yet another view of the reform movement in terms of its plural-ity, which he argues undermined Reformasi’s potential as a “counter-hegemonicproject.”

97. Shamsul 2000.

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sequently, state power and societal dissent. This became a backdrop for a dis-cussion of Reformasi’s demise, including the constraints that it faced inorganizing and mobilizing successfully around causes that dominant elites re-garded as a direct threat to their interests and survival. I acknowledge that coer-cion remains an important factor in explaining the inability of the reformmovement and its allies in Malaysia to successfully mobilize against the BNstate. The threat of arrest and detention under internal security laws and otherforms of intimidation constrain protest in Malaysia. Overt coercion or the threatof force, however, cannot wholly account for the difficulties the reform move-ment has faced. Despite the presence of such constraints, Reformasi’s declinemay also relate to the problem of democratic deepening, the movement’s in-ability to provide an alternative discourse that meaningfully addresses ethni-cized or racialized divisions and the tensions between the party political andmovement aspects of protest politics. Further, the overlapping nature of eliteand ethnic interests in Malaysia has made it even more difficult to frame creativealternatives that are inclusive of the equal participation of citizens regardless ofethnicity, class, gender, or other differences. The salience of ethnicity as a politi-cally relevant marker is also reflected in party affiliations despite efforts to thecontrary. For instance, KeADILan (now the PKR) and PAS have been widelyviewed as a Malay alternative to UMNO despite presenting themselves as “multi-ethnic.” This perception is further underlined by statements from some of itsmembers identifying the DAP as a “Chinese” party. Such messages emergingfrom the coalition of party political forces in Reformasi thus signal a political ex-pediency rather than a well thought out, coherent ideological alternative to theBN state. Calls for political reform, which continue to be aired in Malaysia, inter-sect in critical yet contradictory ways with hegemonic discourses around moder-nity and nation. These intersections make it more difficult, but not impossible, todeconstruct the older hegemonic scripts and reconfigure a politics that reflects amomentum toward a more inclusive, participatory democracy.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: I thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and TomFenton, CAS editor, for his generous assistance and fine editing. I am very grateful toactivists and friends in the NGO community in Malaysia who shared with me theirmany insights and experiences over the years and without whom this article wouldnever have been written. I am also indebted to Mik Jordahl for the considerableemotional support that made the writing of this article possible. This article is dedi-cated to the memory of my late father, K. Bhaskaran Nair.

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Documents

The Limits of Protest and the Prospects for Political Reform in Malaysia - Nair