Reformasi, Perpaduan, Madani — Anwar Ibrahim and the Search for a Sense of Common Purpose

RSIS Seminar by Ooi Kee Beng, 21 March 2024. Keypoint, RSIS, NTU

Abstract

The political life of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has been a very long one, but it is the last 20 years that have provided him with a role and a purpose that go beyond what would have been normal for an UMNO politician. Finally becoming prime minister in November 2022, the path he travelled to get there not only contours the post-Mahathir era of Malaysian history, but also envisages a remedial alternative to the excesses of the previous two decades. The Unity Government is aptly named, but the conditions for its establishment and the rationale for its existence going forward would not have manifested, and would not be comprehensible without the discursive struggles that began with the Reformasi Movement that Anwar Ibrahim generated in 1998, the Bersih social movement, coalitional deconstruction of the last two decades, and the return of East Malaysian political assertiveness. Where ethnic fragmentation had been the persistent and ironic logic for nation-building since the 1970s, the legitimacy of the Unity Government now depends on a search for common purpose for the nation as a whole.

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GOOD MORNING, everyone.

I am most grateful for this opportunity to speak to all of you. Good to see you all.

Thank you RSIS, also for the chance to be based here for a couple of weeks so that I can talk to RSIS researchers, and to scholars at NTU such as Prof Alan Chong and my old friend Prof Euston Quah. Thank you, Ambassador Ong Keng Yong and Ariel Tan, David Han and the Malaysia team, for your assistance and support.

As some of you may know, I have been attached for a long time to ISEAS Yusof – Ishak Institute, and during that time, we had collegial ties with RSIS, but never as much as should have been the case.

My job at ISEAS was to study Malaysia, among other things, and to comment on events there. I ended up writing several biographies on first-generation leaders of Malaysia like Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, HS Lee and Lim Kit Siang, and of Singapore like Goh Keng Swee and Yusof Ishak,

This immediate-post-colonial leaders fascinated me. I believe that good biographies about them are the best alternative histories we can produce. Now, I won’t be writing one about Anwar Ibrahim, but his role in Malaysian has been interesting, and may be getting ever more interesting in the coming years. He is not really of the first generation of leaders, not even of the second. We can perhaps place him more easily in the third, along with all the post-Mahathir leaders such as Najib, Muhyiddin and Ismail Sabri.

I moved to Penang in 2017 to run the Penang Institute, the state-funded think tank, invited back by the state government. One of the reasons for my decision to move was that I felt that the Opposition could actually pull off an upset and bring down the BN government. Should that happen, then policy work from Penang, an opposition base, would be extremely interesting.

And that did happen. The BN government fell.

For 22 months thereafter, Penang Institute actually had five “alumni” – if I may borrow that term to use here, in the federal government—Three ministers and two deputy ministers were people attached to PI or salaried by PI until the day they joined the federal government. There was great promise of Penang, and Penang Institute, being able to influence matters at the centre, finally.

But as you know, toppling what the BN had come to stand for is not a simple matter of winning an election. Since 2018, Malaysia has seen three more changes in government at the federal level.

But in November 2022, the Pakatan Harapan was back in government, this time, instead of relying on Mahathir and his unreliable Bersatu, Anwar Ibrahim is now Prime Minister, and leading a coalition of coalitions, including by UMNO, believe it or not.

What are we to make of all this?

Now, my latest compilation of articles written between 2018 and 2022 has just come out, and as the first pilot publication of the Singapore indie publisher, FACTION PRESS, which has the objective of encouraging “critical non-fiction” writing. I am actually quite happy to have my writings classified as such.

Now, I titled the compilation “Signals in the Noise”. I mention it here because it expresses the intellectual struggle of analysing Malaysia, especially at this time. It is more like doing an interview in the middle of a rave party. Noise noise noise. But therein, we must also agree, likes the signals that we have to pick out, using analytical and academic tools.

What lenses can we use to improve our understanding of what is happening in Malaysia today? What larger context can we best use to observe Malaysian politics today, one that can make sense of the Anwar Ibrahim saga as it unfolds today? Where lie the signals in the noise?

Perhaps the so-called Unity Government Malaysia should be considered to be of the Fourth generation, but run by a man who came to prominence already in the early 1970s, who was a key oppositional figure under the First generation, a key leader under the Second generation, then a key oppositional figure again under the Third generation.

You see why there is so much noise to filter out today?

THE AI SAGA

But let us stick to the last three decades, from when Anwar Ibrahim was sacked and jailed in 1998. Looking back, what was happening in September that year? The top two personalities in an administration that had governed the country since 1957 was having a no-holds-barred falling out. One, an authoritarian leader whose political acumen and survival instincts had seen the country impress the world in its economic growth throughout the past decade; and the other, his apparent chosen heir moving too fast and losing his boss management skills in a crisis.

What Mahathir Mohamed did not count on when he sacked Anwar Ibrahim was that the younger man would fight back. What should interest us here is the building up of a discursive dichotomy personified by the old leader on one side, and the young deposed deputy on another. This dichotomy opened up channels for political action and colloboration that came to determine a new path for Malaysian politics over the coming decades.

Refusing to go, Anwar’s camp—bouyed by the spirit of the times in Southeast Asian politics—found easy ammunition in the depressed situation of 1998 and 1999. It was an easy matter painting Mahathirism black—it was corrupt, it encouraged corruption at the highest levels of society, it was elitist, it thrived on cronyism and confrontation, it was a one-man show, it used geopolitics to maintain a divisive discourse domestically, and it was basically racist. One could go on.

To fight a powerful enemy, one has to, as far as possible, stand for the polar opposite. And so, the Reformasi Movement grew forth, proposing Good Governance, in a term. This was enough to capture the imagination of an impending post-Mahathir Malaysia. Most Malaysians agreed that reforms were needed, and so the Reformasi could grow through this sense of inclusiveness. Soon, the Bersih Movement calling for electoral reforms became a lightning rod for reformists in 2007.

But let’s skip the chronological details of the last 26 years, and consider instead the promise of institutional reforms, fairness and inclusiveness in governance in the extraordinary context in which Malaysia finds itself today—16 years after the 2008 elections, 6 years after the 2018 elections, and 15 months after the 2022 elections.

In short, I am trying to express in simple terms what the Anwar Ibrahim moment in history is. What is the AI Phenomenon and its role in the future path of Malaysian history?

1. Can Anwar Ibrahim’s difficult career be understood as merely that of an ambitious individual or as parallelling the political trends that the country was going through? And how were his actions and the fateful twists he experienced impactful on how the country’s political trends evolved?
2. He is often called a political chameleon, a master rhetorician, a demagogic campaigner.
3. He is also considered to be poor in management skills, a bad judge of character and a showman
4. He is also a bridging personality—across secular-religious divides, across ethnic divides, across ideological divides, across political party divides. In that sense alone, he is already a reformist in effect.
5. Well-read, and consciously weaving that fact into his public persona, he is also the most articulate Malaysian leader on the international stage, and his jail terms have gifted him with a reputation as a social activist.
6. Jailed for the second and third time since 1998 for a total of 12 years (he was jailed in 1974 for two years for his social activism, 25 years after being toppled from the height of political power, he gained the position that was almost in his hands—the prime ministership of Malaysia. This is the stuff of legends, of Hollywood, maybe more appropriatel, of Bollywood. His resilience is legendary, and in the end, Fate decided to smile on him.
7. What my talk today wishes to focus on is to highlight the fact that his rise to power is a Shakespearean tale intertwining the beatings he suffered in his political career with the loss of direction in the nation-building process of his country.
8. As Prime Minister today, writing a closing chapter to make proper sense of his difficult life is within his grasp. And that solution cannot but also be a push in a new and hopeful direction for his country’s nation-building process.
9. What he has to accomplish is to bring economic growth and political stability. The first alone will not be enough, given how politicised, and prone to politicisation Malaysians are. The second will require, for starters, all the skills he has as a rhetorician and demagogue to make his words sound like those of an international statesman.
10. What Anwar Ibrahim has at the moment, which other Malay leaders do not have, is an international presence and reputation. For now, it would seem that domestic discourss are overshadowing his capacity to define Malaysia through distinctions from and relationships to the world at large.

1. What he has working for him, despite all the fearmongering in the first year or so since he took power that his adminstration could not last, are:
   1. He leads a coalition of coalitions. Unlike a coalition of parties, such a network of support should be stabler the longer it lasts. The comfort and power that comes with incumbency, especially for those newly in power, is habit-building.
   1. He has the support of the Council of Rulers, and of the new Agong.
   1. He has a two-third majority in parliament, something that even Barisan Nasional had not had since 2008.
   1. His government is properly multi-ethnic, albeit that the opposition is now largely a Malay-based one
   1. The deep involvement of East Malaysians in his government provides new and positive dynamics for the role of the term “bumiputera”, tending towards weakening “The Malay Agenda” that had been posing as a “Bumiputera Agenda” for many decades.
   1. Malaysia will be chairing ASEAN in 2025, and this holds the potential to put Anwar Ibrahim’s skills and reputation as an international statesman to good use.
   1. Thus, we come to the sense of common purpose that I wish to talk about. Basically, much of Malaysian political discourses over the decades had tended to be introverted by identity politics. Externalising these discourses are necessary for a new openness and optimism to take hold across the ethnicities.

In summary, allow me now to be a historian, and ask the more general question, “Has Malaya or Malaysia not had a Sense of Common Purpose before?”

I am one of those not prone to use the phrase “Divide and rule” with which to caricature British colonialism. Instead, I would say that the colonising of Malaya and Singapore was part of the building of the political economy building of Great Britain, in Wang Gungwu’s words, of its national empire.

Independence for Malaya and for Singapore, allowed for the building of the political economy in these former colonies. The Merdeka process for Malaysia was a search for common purpose via Alliance, via the Constitution and via the federating of the sultanates.

The forming of Malaysia and the separation from Singapore made the project much more confused and unrealistic.

The search took a vicious turn after the May 13 riots, and the country now sought to exercise majoritarianism instead, based on ethnic demographics. In a phrase, the Malay agenda since 1970 sought to dismantle national common purpose, believing that ethnocentrism and ethnic majority rule would offer enough stability for the Malay nation, if not all Malaysians, to thrive.

In this light, one could simplify the post-Mahathir period as a challenging time for the management of the deepened divides of the last few decades.

Now, allow me to the political theoretician. What I believe Anwar will seek to achieve is to regionalise Malaysia’s nation-building, or even globalise its discourses. This will simultaneously involve localising globalisation and global economics. ASEAN chairmanship can be a useful mechanism for facilitating this process.

Multilateral trade agreements like ASEAN, the ASEAN FTAs, RCEP and Tp11  should function in concert , pushing the country out of its discursive isolationism towards stronger international ties. 

A UNITY GOVERNMENT

I choose the notion of “A Sense of Common Purpose” in a decided manner for titling this talk. The same goes for “The Search for”. Searching usually involves a lot of groping around. And I am claiming that Anwar Ibrahim has no choice but to move in that direction of discursive unification to transcend the debilitating politics of the last six decades.

Hopefully one is in the right room when doing that searching. And I suppose what I am trying to argue is that Anwar is in the right room. This is shown by his rise to power on the backs of his Pakatan coalitions and his Reformasi followers. But his bumpy ride into Seri Perdana also involved support from erstwhile enemies.

On its own, his Pakatan coalitions had never been able to command a majority in parliament. It would not be saying very much to state that his position is therefore compromised. This is democratic politics, after all, that we are talking about, and we are talking about a transitional process.

Of course Anwar’s position is compromised, and to study what is or will be happening in Malaysian politics in the coming mandate period will be like looking in through a badly cracked glass window.

More vitally, can his administration be stably technocratic enough, socially responsible enough, and economic savvy enough to drive a fragmented society addicted to divisive discourses towards sufficient development to sideline these debilitating tendencies?

Common purpose has to become a sense of common purpose. And a sense of common purpose is a mix of integrative language use and of governance projected and understood as rational and fair.

It’s a tall order. But that’s where he now finds himself. Be careful what you wish for.

UNITY AND THE EXTROVERTING OF DISCOURSES

Going forward, can he find the time and the contexts to take advantage of that side of his character? Malaysia becoming ASEAN chairman in 2025 certainly does offer that possibility. How he makes use of 2025 may determine whether he can take Malaysia out of its fixation with internal squabbles.

Thus, Anwar Ibrahim may be seen to have chewed off more than he can swallow; or he may be seen to be searching for a way out of the discursive chaos he himself had caused by breaking the BN (in that sense, he can be the saviour of the country, or merely its destroyer but one without the capacity to build something new); or he is in a fateful position where he can shift the national paradigm away from the conflict-prone domestic discourses that his Reformasi movement was trying to dismantle.

It is a considered decision that I use the phrase “a sense of common purpose” and not simply “common purpose”. To highlight common purpose risks drawing issues back into zero-sum squabbles on the domestic front. The best we can hope for, and perhaps that is also a more effective direction to take, is to stick with merely “a sense of common purpose”. This would be a sentiment that comes from relationships to externalities, to the rest of the world, and in the long run, from economic development being inspirational and enhancing of common daily goals.