Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
May 08, 2013 Editorial
The recent general elections in Malaysia are instructive. Like Guyana, Malaysia is a former British colony that ended up with a racially and ethnically diverse population due to the importation of foreign labour – in their case, Chinese and Indian – to satisfy imperial economic interests. After independence in 1957, the government was forced to deal with this diversity – something that we still have not resolved in our country.
The elections in Malaysia show that there are no easy answers and even when a particular mechanism might appear to succeed, it should always be viewed as a work in progress that must be constantly modified to deal with exigent contingencies. To deal with the imperative in plural societies for individuals to vote along their ethnic or other cleavages, as has been suggested for Guyana recently, the ethnically based Malaysian parties joined together in a grand coalition, the United Malays National Organisation (UNMO) that ruled the country since independence. Unlike the model suggested for Guyana, however, the parties accepted that they were ethnically based, went into elections separately, and only coalesced after the elections.
But in 1969, ethnic riots wracked the country as the native Malays protested their economic marginalization in what they considered to be ‘their’ country. The Chinese and Indian labourers had been brought in to work in the British tin mines and rubber plantations, but quickly established themselves in business and the professions. The native Malays were left in a rural, economically depressed backwater.
A modus vivendi was worked out by the three ethnic parties in which under the New Economic Plan (NEP) of 1971, a program of affirmative action was adopted to increase the number of native Malays in business and the professions. The quid pro quo was that the Chinese and Indians, who had been given citizenship, conceded the legitimacy of the native Malaysian aspirations. In the next three decades, Malaysia became one of the success stories of the developing world as it moved from being a primary producer to a world-class manufacturing power. By many economic indicators, it can now be considered a developed country even though at independence, Guyana was considered to be a more attractive economic prospect.
One of the reasons for its success was that unlike Guyana, it stuck to the rigour of crafting five-year development plans which accepted that the state should play a very strong, dirigiste role. In Guyana, after the failure of state capitalism adopted in the seventies, this option has been studiously avoided by all successor regimes. Another reason was that in tandem with the state directing the development thrust, it was accepted that some entrepreneurial groups and families could benefit more than others once they could compete strongly in the global marketplace.
In the first few decades after the NEP, the country almost matched China in regularly chalking up high growth rates as foreign direct investment and speculative funds flowed in. In the 1997 Far East Financial crisis, when all its neighbours almost imploded under the double whammy of fleeing foreign funds and the later IMF medicine, Malaysia refused the latter’s “help” and came out comparatively unscathed.
But with all its overall economic progress, the contradictions of the modus vivendi soon began to manifest themselves more obviously. Corruption became rampant as Chinese businessmen went around the requirement for Malay ownership by having token individuals act as “fronts”. The bottom line was that while a substantial section of Malays were enriched, the rest of their ethnic group remained basically rural and underdeveloped. Their Muslim religion was accorded priority to encourage them to go along with the progress of the country.
Simultaneously, however, a groundswell of resentment developed in Chinese and Indians at the preferences accorded to the Malays and they began to clamour for these to be now removed. In this last election, the Opposition won a majority of the popular votes, but only came away with 89 of the 222 seats. It has helped that a native Malay is the head of the Opposition, which consists of most of the Chinese and Indians. But many Malays are now tired of the corruption.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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