What ails Malaysian democracy
PETALING JAYA: Several commentators have raised concerns about democratic practice in Malaysia, saying they fear that politicians are increasingly seeing the end as justification for the means.
Sociologist Syed Farid Alatas of the National University of Singapore told FMT it appeared that politicians no longer felt any guilt when switching to the party in power from the ones they belonged to when they were elected.
He said party hopping “must be frowned upon” as a violation of voters’ trust.
Last week, two MPs quit PKR and declared their support for Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin. They are Julau MP Larry Sng and Tebrau MP Steven Choong.
Farid said voters would expect an MP to carry on his work as a representative of the party he contested under in an election.
He said politicians should be allowed to switch parties only at the end of a parliamentary term.
Tawfik Ismail, who occupied the Sungai Benut parliament seat for Umno for one term, said the existence of political parties without principles represented a major flaw in Malaysian democracy and people should question this.
“The current emergency to avoid or evade a parliamentary vote is one of the best examples,” he told FMT.
He also spoke of what he called “Malay politics” and condemned its practitioners’ alleged failure to respect people’s freedom to express creativity and live a secular life.
“The Malays are pressured to conform to some religious standard diametrically opposed to their rich historical and cultural heritage,” he said.
Parti Sosialis Malaysia chairman Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj said politicians were increasingly using race and religion to survive.
He called this a “major flaw” of Malaysian democracy because it would tend to divide people.
The former Sungai Siput MP also said the legislative arm seemed to be the most flawed democratic institution.
This could be seen in the way the government had been bulldozing bills through the Dewan Rakyat, he said.
He said the government had rarely accepted criticism of the laws it drafted and would “go all-out to pass a government bill to avoid bruising its ego”.
In his years as an MP from 2008 to 2018, he said, only one private bill was allowed and that was because “it fitted the political game plan at that time”. He was referring to proposed amendments to the Shariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act.
Lawyer Rafique Rashid Ali said corruption could thrive in a flawed democracy.
He spoke of the appointment of MPs to plum posts in government-linked companies and alleged this was to maintain support for the Perikatan Nasional government.
“If that is not corruption, what is?” he asked.
Rafique also alleged that there was “a never-ending threat of the ruling government being derailed” because it was not known whether the prime minister had the majority support of MPs.
Without political stability, he said, the government might not be able to function effectively as it might be “busy politicking rather than serving the rakyat”. - FMT
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