The major political difficulties of Malaysia and Thailand

From 19th centuries, Southeast Asia become a place where European competing for their power. The sea provided an access for them to consolidate their power in Southeast Asia. Portugal, Holland, Spain, England, France, Germany and United States made conquests by the helps of sea power and naval technology. At the late 19th century, the whole Southeast Asia except for Thailand felt the immense impact of foreign colonization and dominance.

The World War II provided a huge change in Southeast Asia. As the War was finally over, European countries wish to control over their former colonies. However, circumstances had change because the European colonial have been shattered at World War II. As consequences, the colonies in Southeast Asia began to seek for independence and become the 11 countries in Southeast Asia,

Indonesia and Vietnam was the first countries to get independence and East Timor as the last country to get its own independence in 2002. Until today, among the 11 Southeast Asia countries, only Singapore and Brunei become a highly develop country. The others didn’t acquire a stable and wealthy maturation in political development. In this article, I will mainly discuss the major political problem in Malaysia and Thailand as two example that represent the major political problem of Southeast Asia.

The most evident problem of the political problem in Southeast Asia is the metamorphism of the government political system. After independence, many countries in Southeast Asia countries have built their government system according to the western democratic system. However, the political system which built in Southeast Asia countries is distinct from those systems in Western. For example, Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand used to have military coup and military dictatorship; while Malaysia and Singapore has problem of one-party dominance. The National Front in Malaysia and People’s Action Party in Singapore had been ruling the country for many years.

The first major political problem of Thailand is the instability of the democratic politics. Thailand is the first country who practices democratic politics among Southeast Asia countries; however, the stability and maturity of the politics in Thailand is much weaker than Indonesia, Philippines or Malaysia.
Since the political reform of the absolute monarchy in 1932, Thailand had experienced 20 military coups. Sulak Sivaraksa, a Thai social activism said that, “In Thailand, an unsuccessful coup d’état is like a reelection, a successful one is like a general election.”

The Royal Thai Armed Forces is always possess leading position in the Thailand coup d’états even it is against the democratic process. In fact, the Thai intellectual, political party, even their leader tolerate with the program of coup d’état without accused them openly. During the 2006 Thai military Coup, the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) was formed to oppose the military government. The UDD also accused the PAD for supporting the coup. Despite the UDD is oppose the political violence of military coup, until today, there isn’t a party which have ability to block the startup of military coup.

Even during the electoral government, the political parties can not last long because of the democratic system weakening. The political parties in Thailand continue facing the vicious circle of reestablishment and collapse. Although Thailand has western parliamentary democracy system, but in reality, the parliamentary system is quite distant from a mature western democracy political system.

In the case of Malaysia, the major political problem can be attribute to the transformed political system, a system used to be democratic but eventually become authority of bureaucracy.

Malaysia is a federal constitutional elective monarchy. The system of government is closely modeled according to Westminster parliamentary system, British colonial rule. However, in 1974, Tun Razak made some change to the political institution. He first brings forward an idea of a political party alliance, the National Front, as a coalition of three major and great political parties. Since then, the uneven distribution of power and authority become a serious problem in Malaysia politics.

Unfortunately, the imbalance of the political system gets worst after Dr. Mahathir Mohamad had been promoted to Prime Minister of Malaysia. In 1969, the 13 May incident, when Mahathir was a politician, he criticize Tunku Abdul Rahman, the Prime Minister because of the overly concession to Malaysian Chinese. Mahathir is a leader who totally practices dictatorship in his government operation. The famous political controversy in Malaysia, the “Anwar Ibrahim sodomy trials” is believed as a political purge from Mahathir.
The strongman politics of Mahathir has led to the serious problem of one-party dominance. Since his 22 years of holding the Prime Minister post, the National Front had winning five consecutive general elections. And his accumulation of power had led to the independence of the judiciary. He also deploys the Internal Security Act to detain activist and non-mainstream religious figures and political opponents.

The second major political problem of the Southeast Asia country is the diversification of cultural. Some countries has its own traditional factors and cultural while some countries have racial problem. Those background problems had led to the uneven distribution of authorities and power.

In Thailand, the traditional culture had interfered the Thai politics, either in psychologically or culturally. In Thai traditional culture and social hierarchy, every social relation is classified into level and status. The concept of equality is not highly spread in Thai people’s mind. The hierarchical relationships with the privileges due to the uneven distribution of social resources lead to the serious divide of rich-poor divide. The rich-poor differentiation then contributes to further strengthen hierarchical relationships.

Today, we can still see the impact of hierarchy in Thai social life. Thai people pay full respect to the Royal families, and this phenomena is less observed in other constitutional monarchy governments. The royal family’s news always appear on the front-page of newspaper, the media often published message of “insulting royal families” charges and sentences, which is also very rare in today’s world.

The royal family of Thailand has prominent position, they are widely respected by Thai people, Rich Thai people can also get royal nobility by donate to the royal. In rural areas, traditional local authority still maintain control power over the region, they also use improper way to obtain wealth.

In Malaysia, it’s a completely different story. The uneven distribution of authority and power is mainly cause by the multi-racial of Malaysia. In Malaysia, nationalism is often confused with racialism and it’s frequently used by some leader to against the minority in country. These led to the decline of cohesiveness, thus cause the people in country lack of unified thinking.

This is very evident when the political base of Malaysia is an “Alliance of Malay, Chinese and Indian”. The National Front which mentioned earlier is a coalition of three ethnic political parties, which include United Malays National Organization (UMNO) for Malay, Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) for Malaysian Chinese, and Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) for India. The National Front support racial harmony and they serve Malay as first priority. Until today, Malaysia government is mainly ruling by Malays. Although Malaysia didn’t have serious racial problem among the people, but the racial issues is always bring up by some politician.

As conclusion, before Southeast Asia countries gain their independence, they used to be rule by strong colonial government. Therefore, when they get their own independence, they cannot build a efficient government and political system. The military and one-party dominance problems are widely appeared in Southeast Asia countries. This kind of political violence had led to the uneven distribution of power. Thus, the political system which established according to western country then transform into a Southeast Asian authorities.

Besides, the representative democracy is too weak when it is incorporate with racial and social hierarchical problems. The political and social-cultural different in countries is still a topic that cannot be ignored. Only when the government pays more attention to human right and democratization, then these problems can be resolved,

However, the year 2011 seemed to have some of the biggest political developments in Southeast Asia countries. Thailand continued to move closer to worsening political infighting, Singapore had its most competitive election, Myanmar seemed ready for real democratic change, and Malaysia had the most massive street demonstration.

513有感——公民意識的崛起

今天對我而言，不單是媽媽節那麼簡單...有沒有人記得，43年前，一次流血事件改寫了馬來西亞的歷史?

2007年，柯嘉遜引用英國解密文件提出了對513事件的詮釋，我們才終於知道這起被官方謊稱為“種族暴動”的悲劇，不過是馬哈迪幕後操控的一場政變陰謀。（用“一場”是因為馬哈迪還主導其他政治陰謀）

只因馬哈迪想要推翻國父東姑15年的政治生涯，一場原本能夠被控制的騷亂竟然演變成長達好幾個月的戒嚴...在動盪期間，馬哈迪敦拉薩做了多少改變馬來西亞的事情?其中包括20年的新經濟政策，提議聯合參選鞏固政治勢力，組成了國民陣線，也埋下了貪污腐敗的禍根...事到如今，回顧過去發生的事情，還有馬哈迪之後的“鐵人政權”，惟有在心裡暗嘆馬哈迪的“狠”...

政治是實現或一個人理念的最佳途徑——他們為了鞏固自己的地位而激烈地競爭，他們用盡智慧和能力，通過各種手段，為的就是坐上那個位置，達到最終的目的。即使一開始擁有很好的理念，在實踐的過程中卻難免會墜入政治大環境的處事框架。只談偉大理念的政治、不為個人私利的政治，恕我直言，這太美好也太不可能了...

政治的黑暗是必然的，然而越是發現政治的黑暗面，就讓越多人對政治怯步。但是，若民眾選擇將自己從這些事情中完全抽離，無疑地卻是最糟糕的決定。政治系統的缺陷在於太多手段太多陰謀——政治人物有可能為了達到目的而不擇手段，手段玩一玩就忘了一開始的理念還有初衷；而善良單純的政治人物，很容易在這個競爭中被刷掉——這就說明了政治永遠都不可能單純。

雖然如此，我認為我們也無需過度灰心，因為有一個（且唯一）的途徑，一定能夠制衡這個缺陷——那就是民間力量、公民意識的抬頭!從最近的428集會及反Lynas集會，我們可以看到不少中產階級漸漸的產生了公民意識；即使沒有勇氣走上街頭，至少也知道要關心國家時事。

然而美中不足的是，民間運動目前還無法與反對黨完全脫離合作關係。除了讓不少人懷疑集會背後是否有什麼政治勢力在操控外，也讓集會的訴求被模糊了焦點。無可否認地，社會中還是存在典型的搞不清楚狀況的人——他們對現況感到不滿意，只有一股“反”勁，但是卻不知道自己反的是什麼。於是，他們很輕易的與同樣是“反”的反對黨為伍，幾乎所有與反對相關的活動都可以看到他們的身影，慢慢的就演變成一種普遍的“反”情緒；當然他們自己肯定不清楚，支持某個政黨和反對政府根本就是不相干的事。現在想想，428集會會被有說成是“革命”的集會，其實也不是沒有原因可循的。

回顧513事件，絕不是為了激起大家的情緒，而是希望大家看清事態發展的順序。今天的政府貪污腐敗，制度及權利失衡，甚至人民發聲還遭受到政府的介入，這些問題並不是偶然發生的，而是過去的小缺點沒法及時搶救所累積下來的大坑...

目前，我們清楚的是，馬來西亞公民普遍對政治及國家議題都缺乏深入理解。國內也缺乏完全沒有政治立場的中立人士來分析這些課題。以至於很容易被有心人士（比如土權組織）的極端言論煽動，破壞種族間的和諧。而對於這些煽動性及目的性的言論，政府一貫保持縱容的心態，甚至炒作這些議題挑起事端，企圖製造仇恨，實在可恥！

因此，惟有建立一個有效且脫離任何政治立場的公民力量，才能夠讓政府以正面的態度去面對人民的訴求，解決人民的需求。惟有建立這一個有效的公民力量，人民才能夠免於被政治陰謀耍的團團轉，成為他們手下的棋子。

一直到今天，每次大選以前，國陣從不忘以513事件恐嚇人民，要大家阻止歷史重演...而我只想問一個問題，聰明的人民，我們還要繼續被政治人物愚弄嗎?