Thread by @IMMikhailHafiz

#REDISCOVERINGMALAYSIA

04 NEW MALAYSIA: DEMOCRACY, INTERRUPTED? - PART IV

[THREAD]

PART I :

https://twitter.com/immikhailhafiz/status/1592668789153288193?s=21

PART II :

https://twitter.com/immikhailhafiz/status/1592759384949465088?s=21

PART III :

https://twitter.com/immikhailhafiz/status/1593031193238286337?s=21

*REMEDIES*

"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment."

- Robert M. Hutchins (1899-1977)

"Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)

If we subscribe to the notion that political governance In Malaysia is skewed in favour of unapologetic authoritarianism, what initiatives can be undertaken to arrest the unrelenting, turbulent waves of democratic degradation and stem the surging tide of authoritarian expansion?

Can our democratic decay be halted, and subsequently, reversed? If so, how can the state, civil society and citizenry counter such nefarious attempts to dismantle the guardrails of democracy?

It is humbly submitted that a bifurcative stratagem of reform and education can be employed to address both the short-term and strategic consequences of competitive authoritarianism.

Levitsky and Ziblatt counsel that while the pushback to authoritarian expansion should undoubtedly be muscular, it should also seek to preserve, rather than violate, democratic rules and norms.

Redoubtable academic and farsighted political scientist Wong Chin Huat of Sunway University outlines three pragmatic and feasible institutional reforms that are indispensable in the dismantling of authoritarianism:

"First, civil and political liberties must be reinforced to emphasise the freedoms of expression, assembly and association", which are enshrined in Article 10 of our Federal Constitution.

"Second, there must be juridical and prosecutorial reforms regarding the appointment, promotion and retirement of judges as well as the establishment of an independent prosecution separate from the attorney general."

"Third, political impartiality of the state apparatus - bureaucracy, police and the military - must be enforced. State agencies and officials must be checked by independent anti-corruption and ombudsman institutions with real regulatory teeth."

Wong acknowledges that "[s]uch reforms may produce a majoritarian democracy, but leaves the risk of democratic winner-takes-all politics which will likely further tear at Malaysia’s bipolar social wounds."

As such, two additional institutional reforms are needed to dismantle majoritarianism:

"First, electoral, parliamentary and cabinet reforms must be enacted - this includes a more proportional electoral system and a term limit on prime ministership.

Powers need to be devolved to the states, the senate should be directly elected and local elections restored. These reforms will end a concentration of power at the top of the leadership, the root cause of the 1MDB scandal."

"At the same time, [the incumbent opposition] should also promise to avoid sweeping change without national consensus on divisive issues like the pro-Malay ethnic preferential policy, Islamisation as well as language and education.

These issues should be deliberated by broad-based consultative bodies to produce new policy alternatives, which may be modified to become party manifestos in the 15th General Election (GE15)."

eastasiaforum.org/2017/08/29/can…

It would also be prudent to consider the role of education in the cultivation of a substantive democratic culture by addressing the concerning issue of political illiteracy in the younger generation.

Political anthropologist Sophie Lemiere, an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Strategic Research and International Studies (CSIS-Washington DC), notes that "[l]ong-term initiatives targeting youth civic education are urgently needed in both English and vernacular languages",

as "[g]eneral knowledge about democratic values is poor in Malaysia and the universality of these values is sometimes contested. There is also a need for more civic education focused on equal rights (gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc.)

and the inclusion of minorities and vulnerable populations that often remain outside of the Malaysian policy debates and are ignored in the general discourse on democracy."

On the other side of the pedagogical equation, Lemiere believes that "Malaysia's democracy would also benefit from stronger support for outside voices such as journalists and academic researchers", since "Malaysia's low levels of civic awareness and the absence of public debates

about democratic principles is partly due to censorship and self-censorship, but also to tie limited training offered to journalists and/or political commentators."

"In Malaysian academia, while there are researchers conducting excellent research, they often lack external funding. This dependence on public funds tends to subject them to administrative and political constraints."

brookings.edu/articles/democ…

In an interview with Mitja Sardoc of the Educational Institute of Slovenia, Amy Gutmann, author of the seminal 1987 book length feature 'Democratic Education', which addresses two crucial educational questions -

why and how should democracies educate free and equal citizens, and who should be authorised to do so - emphasises the importance of both democratic education and democratic deliberation as central elements of public education in a plurally diverse polity:

"A democratic citizen enjoys liberty, opportunity, and the respect of others, which she reciprocates. These three core democratic values - liberty (personal and political), opportunity (education, healthcare, security) , and mutual respect among persons [...]

are not self-evident or self-perpetuating. They must be carefully taught or else opposing values - authoritarianism, plutocracy, intolerance, bigotry and hatred - will dominate in our societies."

*DEMOCRATIC PUSHBACK IN AN ILLIBERAL AGE*

"Discourse and critical thinking are essential tools when it comes to securing progress in a democratic society. But in the end, unity and engaged participation are what make it happen."

- Aberjhani

William Case, Head of the School of Politics, History and International Relations at the University of Nottingham Malaysia, duly notes that "the record of governance and judicial independence remained mixed in 2021."

While "[t]he courts [have] dropped sundry prominent cases over corrupt payments and tax avoidance", delivering what he regards as "a sheepish judgement of ‘dismissal not amounting to acquittal’",

it does not necessarily "signal the weakening of governance in Malaysia," as "Najib’s conviction on 1MDB corruption charges were upheld in December by the Court of Appeals."

eastasiaforum.org/2022/01/07/umn…

However, the Federal Court’s recent unanimous decision to uphold the conviction has, according to Lee Hwok-Aun, Senior Fellow with the Malaysia Studies Programme and Regional Economic Studies Programme at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute,

"restored confidence in this key national institution", although "Malaysia's judicial consolidation shows that the road to reform is long, often winding, and far from complete."

"Will the judiciary’s stand have lasting impact? Unlike the Najib verdict, what happens next is anything but simple and straightforward. The question is whether Malaysia pivots for good."

fulcrum.sg/the-najib-verd…

Fellow academic Bjorn Dressel concurs: "The verdict, remarkable in its clarity and assertiveness, focuses the spotlight on the Malaysian judiciary - an institution long thought to have succumbed to the executive.

More than five decades of UMNO party dominance and the constitutional crisis in 1988 raised doubts about the independence and professionalism of the judiciary - particularly in high-profile cases."

He adds: "Najib's conviction has sent a clear signal that Malaysi's judiciary led by Chief Justice Tengku Maimun is re-asserting itself as an independent institution. But whether Malaysia's judges can stay the course is not yet clear."

eastasiaforum.org/2022/10/06/naj…

Also, despite the general sense of
despondency and despair demonstrated by an electorate that has not only succumbed to political fatigue, but also continues to be antagonised and agitated by the dubious, dithering and diabolical leadership

displayed by the current cadre of political elites, another sliver of hope has emerged amidst the pervading gloom.

As Welsh acutely observes:

"In the cloud of negativity surrounding political developments over the past 2 years, there is little appreciation of what is going right in Malaysian politics. There are elements of democracy taking root, with all of their messiness and uncertainties."

"Among the positive changes is a strengthening of some of Malaysia's political institutions, notably Parliament. Inside the legislature, there are marked improvements in consultation, transparency, inclusiveness of stakeholders and even, the quality of debate."

While mainstream media attention has been focused on legislation targeting the participation of students in politics, extension of suffrage to a younger generation of first-time voters, the securing of accountability from renegade lawmakers for their party-hopping antics,

the provision of proper protection and redress for victims of sexual harassment, and the restoration of East Malaysia's special position within the Malaysian Federation,

encouraging progress has also been made in a range of lesser known and publicised issues, from migration and intellectual property to social security for homemakers.

"Whether this more responsible law-making and reform of Parliament are sustainable is not clear", Welsh concludes, but "when one looks back on this period in Malaysian history, the changes in Parliament are bright spots deserving recognition."

betweenthelines.my/against-the-od…

*CONCLUSION*

"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination for injustice makes democracy necessary."

- Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

"A great democracy has got to be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy."

- Theodore Roosevelt Jr (1858-1919)

While our political establishment continues to be dominated by unsavoury actors who bear more than passing resemblances to the villains that populate various Shakespearean dramas (King Lear, Macbeth, Brutus and Iago, just to name a few),

Malaysia's current political climate, metaphorically speaking, more accurately resembles that of the Weimar Republic in the early 1930s, in the lead up to what promises to be an eventful, and possibly even fratricidal and purgative GE15.

Life is most definitely not a cabaret, old chum.

Has Malaysia's democratic recession degenerated from a showpiece of the "théâtre of the absurd" to a Shakespearean tragedy of epic proportions? Will our hopes for democratic consolidation remain as futile as Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot'?

Will a multifarious (and multicultural) Malaysia, a regional constituent of what the American journalist Stan Sesser described as "The Lands of Charm and Cruelty" in 1993, become increasingly muzzled or muted, and consequently, more monochromatic?

Or will Malaysia, just like other countries around the world, continue its intermittently interrupted yet inexorable march towards what renowned American political scientist Francis Fukuyama

believes to be the apotheosis of humankind's ideological evolution - liberal democracy* - in lockstep to the beat of the Reformasi drum?

(*Fukuyama defines liberal democracy in the following terms: "liberal insofar as it recognizes and protects through a system of law man's universal right to freedom, and democratic insofar as it exists only with the consent of the governed.")

Will our frequent forays into the realm of authoritarian expansion merely serve as diversionary detours on the perilous route to consolidated democratic stability?

Also, will Malaysia prove to be an increasingly fertile ground for the embryonic buds of deliberative democracy - an approach to political decision-making that places emphasis on inclusive, reflective, and other-regarding discussion -

to germinate and multiply, in order to function as a countervailing force against erstwhile established elite deliberation, despite Southeast Asia's uncharitable reputation as a region often associated with authoritarian resilience and democratic decline?

As the current electoral cycle approaches its truncated denouement, will a keenly contested and an inevitably combative electoral tempest that is GE15 mark the definitive end

of an epoch indelibly characterised by turbulent political disarray and the arrested development of democratic consolidation?

Only time will tell.

As we peer into the blackened heart of Malaysia's darkened democracy and ponder its inscrutable future, our nation's confounding and crippling political sclerosis finds its ideal idiomatic expression

in the veritable words of the quintessential Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937):

"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

To which I would add: the most significantly morbid symptom of the interregnum that is Malaysia's blighted 'Democracy: Interrupted' era of disordered politics,

Is the conjuring of not just one, but two consecutive lumbering and moribund otherworldly political creatures that should never have been willed into existence in the first place.

Meanwhile, the disheartened, disaffected, disenfranchised and disenchanted can perhaps seek succour and support in the words of American poet Langston Hughes (1901-1967) as they continue to hold out for a more democratic, egalitarian and progressive Malaysia:

"Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow."

And so:

Quo vadis, Malaysia?