Malaysias GE13: What happened, what now?

(part 1)
By Clive Kessler, Guest Contributor 12 June 2013Posted in: GE13 Malaysia, Malaysia

In a brief commentary elsewhere (Malaysias election result no surprise to the knowledgeable, Asian Currents, June 2013), I have noted one paradoxical but hugely important consequence of Malaysias recent national elections held on 5 May. A paradox: anomalous domination The remarkable, perhaps counter-intuitive, fact is that, while the election result itself namely, a fairly close but nonetheless comfortable victory of the UMNO-centred Barisan Nasional side over the Pakatan Rakyat opposition came as no great surprise, that unremarkable result nonetheless had one quite surprising, even paradoxical, consequence. From PRU13 an electorally weakened UMNO emerged politically even more dominant than it had been before. While still embattled in the broader political arena, UMNO was delivered a dominant position within the parliament, ruling coalition and government. By bestowing it with that now dominant parliamentary position, PRU13 had delivered into UMNOs hands an ascendancy over the governing BN coalition, government policy, parliaments agenda and parliamentary process, and thereby over national political life over the nations affairs and direction of a quite unprecedented and perhaps irresistible kind. What are the relevant facts here?

The immediate challenge facing Najib, it had been said in the run-up to PRU13, was at best to win back the two-thirds majority (or 148 of the 222 seats in the Dewan Rakyat), or at least to improve on the 2008 yield of 140. More modest and realistic than demanding recovery of the two-thirds majority, some suggested that even 145 would have been a good result, good enough to ensure his immediate political survival against critics, adversaries and doubters in his own camp. In the event, worse even than at PRU12 in 2008, UMNO/BN won only 133 seats. For those who might be satisfied with nothing less than assured domination a constitutionally unassailable and impregnable position a shortfall of 8 seats had now almost doubled to 15. Yet as I noted in my summary review behind all its archaising ceremonialism and cultural nostalgia, politics and political thinking within UMNO is nothing other than Realpolitik of the most ruthlessly pragmatic kind. And realistically, UMNO (if its interests, and nothing else, are to be the focus of analysis, as the party hard men insist) did not do at all badly. Why? Because, paradoxically, its political domination was enhanced, not diminished, by the election result despite the further decline in the governments parliamentary numbers and the oppositions advances. Drawing a contrast between the post-election situation of UMNO/BN and its Pakatan Rakyat adversary is instructive here. The Pakatan Rakyat coalition won a total of 89 seats. The opposition coalitions parliamentary numbers are reasonably balanced. All three of its constituent parties have a sizeable and, if not an equal then a comparable, presence in the Dewan Rakyat (DAP holds 38 seats, PKR 30, PAS 21). The smallest of the three, PAS, contributes about a quarter of the oppositions parliamentary numbers, while the largest, DAP, more than two-fifths but less than a half. Contrast that with the situation on the government side. Of BNs 133 seats, UMNO now holds 88 (up from 79 in 2008). Its MPs amount to two-thirds of the total BN parliamentary representation. UMNO alone has a parliamentary presence that is virtually the same as that of the combined opposition. Its shortfall of a single seat, if that troubles anybody who matters, is one that might be readily reversed through a by-election victory, the timely defection of an unhappy opposition MP, or even a successful appeal against the result in, say, Bachok or some other constituency where the UMNO candidate had fallen narrowly short of victory in the election night count. Now compare UMNOs situation among its governing BN partners with the more balanced situation in the opposition coalitions parliamentary numbers.

After UMNO, the next largest party on that side of the households only 14 seats. The UMNOs customary primary partners going back to Alliance Party times even preceding independence, the Chinese MCA and the Indian MIC, now together hold only 11 (7 and 4 respectively) and its newer ally Gerakan, 1 the decline in their public plausibility and electoral viability coming as the result of, and signifying, the increasing UMNO dominance over its old BN partners in deciding national policy over the last decade. After GE13, more even than before, the UMNOs ability to head a government, and rule over the nations core in peninsular Malaysia, now rests disproportionately upon the seats that its fractious East Malaysian partners hold in Sarawak and Sabah (34 seats, together held by 8 different parties, many of them loose, unstable personal alliances of mercurial, opportunistic and gymnastic leaders.) UMNOs task will be to satisfy, appease and manage its increasingly assertive, and at times even restive, East Malaysian partners who now so heavily underwrite BNs, and hence UMNOs, ability to rule. But provided it can do that, in numerical and political terms UMNO now dominates perhaps as never before the national government. Provided it can decide without internal strife what it wants to do, provided it knows its own mind, it will be in a powerful position in the years ahead to have its way on all significant political and policy issues, so long as its Sabah and Sarawak allies can be kept in line. In national government, an era of unprecedented UMNO domination may now be in the offing. UMNOs oddly empowering victory Some indication of the nature and sources of the UMNOs success of how it stands to grow greatly in effective power from its diminished parliamentary base is suggested by the relative size of the three components within the oppositions parliamentary delegation. The Pakatan delegation is reasonably balanced, but not entirely so. It displays one anomalous feature. What is in many ways the most substantial member of the opposition coalition, the Islamic Party PAS, has the smallest parliamentary representation. This is because, in Malaysias imbalanced and malapportioned electoral system, PAS unlike its coalition partners competes directly against UMNO for bulk Malay votes: that is, for support from the core, more traditionally-minded and less cosmopolitan Malay voters in the rural Malay heartlands. They are direct rivals for the support of the core part of the nations Malay political core component, the core of the core. Those rural Malay areas are hugely favoured in the drawing of electoral boundaries which is to say in their size, meaning the smaller number of votes that is necessary for them to elect an MP. It is in those parts of the country, in those electorates, that Malay domination of national political life is grounded. And, of the opposition parties, only PAS competes directly against UMNO for those votes.

Their struggle is a zero-sum game. It is an up and down thing, a constant long-term oscillation. When UMNO does badly, PAS numbers increase and PAS political influence grows (and vice versa). That has always been the basis of PASs political strength and long-term strategy. By its ability to win popular Malay support, and so to deprive UMNO of the credibility and legitimacy that substantial Malay support ensures, PAS can at times exercise enormous influence over UMNO, over its policies and direction, from outside. But when UMNO does well, PAS numbers and its immediate influence upon UMNO thinking are diminished. When UMNO does well electorally, it denies PAS this important leverage. PASs ability to force itself upon its rivals thinking in the setting of national priorities and direction even to set terms that UMNO cannot resist declines. When it succeeds in this way in freeing itself to some degree from the constraints imposed by PAS from the strategic stranglehold that in its good years results from PASs political success and ensuing Malay moral credibility UMNO wins for itself some significantly increased political room for manoeuvre. That is what happened at the recent PRU13. The question to ask is why? How was it done? The winning campaign The key to the election result, and to UMNOs improbable feat of drawing increased political strength from reduced parliamentary numbers and a weakened parliamentary position, was UMNOs success in its head-on clash with PAS for Malay votes in the Malay heartlands for the core Malay vote. Much has been made of the fact that the two members of the Malay ethno-supremacist pressure group Perkasa whom UMNO directly or indirectly endorsed Zulkifli Noordin in the Klang Valley beltway seat of Sham Alam and Ibrahim Ali in PAS crown jewels seat of Pasir Mas lost to their adversaries. There was no comfort for UMNO in those two results. This has prompted some commentators to suggest that the PRU13 results signal a clear repudiation by the national electorate as a whole, Malay as well as non-Malay, of Perkasa, its approach and what it stands for. But the matter is not so simple or clear. The nature of the winning campaign has to be more closely considered. (i) The international level The governments PRU13 campaign operated at several levels. For international consumption, notably the foreign investment and diplomatic communities, one story was developed. This was the beguiling story of Prime Minister Najib as the heroic but still shackled economic reformer, the eager and available driver of administrative transformation and

also of taxation reform, in the form of reduced corporate and personal taxation, all to be made good by the reasonably prompt post-election introduction of a goods and services tax (GST). Glued onto this portrait was another. This was the picture of Najib as the self-proclaimed and internationally acclaimed, global moderate, the champion of interfaith conciliation and the determined enemy of all forms of political extremism, but especially that driven by religious militants and fanatics. This international campaign projecting Najib as a soon to be unbound economic Prometheus and also a fastidious moderate who would have no truck with any crude, populist extremism was offered with a clear objective. Its purpose was to win for the prime minister and his party a sympathetic hearing overseas and, with it, the indulgence of a free hand at home to wage the other parts of their multilevel campaign. Overseas, that portrait of Najib was reassuring, and people there would be satisfied with it. Nothing more to be asked for. Its plausibility had simply to be upheld. For example, against the free-lance meddling of a rogue Australian senator. (ii) The domestic pantomime While this image campaign was offered internationally, the Najib who was seen for months on the campaign trail at home was something different. At home the prime minister cut a benign and ever-avuncular figure as he campaigned up and down the country by recourse to a kind of Santa Claus politics (as some called it). Its simplicity was that of a holiday pantomime. Or perhaps a traveling circus: every few minutes something new, something different, something dramatic! something for everybody! There was something, something new, for somebody every day, a new inducement or softener for yet another interest group or finely drawn demographic category. This was a campaign to the nations socially disaggregated parts, to its separate disarticulated elements, not to the nation as a whole. It was not a campaign that projected any distinctive concept that the prime minister may have had, and wished to promote, of the Malaysian nation and its evolving destiny. It was instead a campaign directed to every individual voter and every special interest-group or social element. It was one that encouraged them all to ask What is in this for me? For us? and which then provided an answer. Concretely and immediately, tangibly. An answer not in words or ideas but in palpable material benefits and just for you and people like you, in your same situation or predicament specified provisions. Prime Minister Najib offered a vast menu of hand-outs and rewards at prospectively huge cost to public expenditure, to the national accounts and the governments coffers in the hope of attaching ever more securely to himself his own sides loyal political followers, and of attracting the undecided to join them in supporting him and his cause.

This was hardly the kind of campaign that international investors, eager to see clear evidence of some sort of advance pre-election commitment to fiscal austerity and economic responsibility, can have been hoping to see UMNO run. Not what they had in mind! But, though it involved huge public expenditures and costly promises, those promises had been accompanied by assurances of reduced corporate tax levels. So, overall, it may have pleased those foreign bystanders anyway: as a strategy that would make prompt Malaysian adoption of a GST to pay for it all inevitable. It may have appealed to them as a neat way to make the fickle, imprudent and gullible people pay for all the offered benefits and promises that they had so unwisely and unaffordably chosen to accept. (Significantly, mention of the impending introduction of a GST was no part of the election campaign, neither UMNO/BNs nor the oppositions.) So allied to Najib the great transformer in waiting and Najib the global moderate was Najib the great dispenser of treats and inducements who was also, or so it was hoped by some, the canny, crafty promoter of a GST, the masterful maker of traps and ambushes who was making the GSTs introduction necessary and laying the grounds for its general acceptance. Of course we may all have these benefits. We Malaysians are entitled to nothing less. But we Malaysians too who else? must pay for them. In doing so we will not only reward ourselves and ensure our governments fiscal viability from which every citizen benefits. We can make Malaysia, more even than before, the up-to-date model of a developing nation and the envy of the entire postcolonial world. It is not hard to script the arguments that will need to be made and invoked. (iii) The real campaign UMNO/BNs was a multi-level campaign. The first level projected Najibs image internationally as an economic reformer and religious moderate. Here he was portrayed as an intelligent and polished progressive in a land where progressives were not conspicuously plentiful in official circles. The second was a campaign that kept Najib not so much Najib himself as his simulacrum, his carefully constructed image prominent in the public eye. But only through very controlled and tightly managed situations. It projected him as a man less with a mission than with a wonderful magic pudding that might continually, without ever becoming exhausted, be parcelled out and distributed to the people for their enjoyable and cost-free consumption. This second campaign, in many ways a media construct or artefact, was largely a diversion and a distraction. It was devised to create a plausible appearance of dynamism and momentum to what had become, among the worlds notable political parties, an ungainly, lumbering and sclerotic dinosaur. It was staged to divert unwelcome attention from the real campaign. It was, of course, those two show campaigns that occupied and entirely seized the attention of the international media. Meanwhile, the real campaign was conducted with unremitting

determination, even ruthlessness, beneath the foreign radar, out of view of most overseas reporters and commentators. What was the real campaign? The nature of UMNO/BN election strategy was clear. Like all intelligent political analysts, those in the partys brains trust and campaign engine room could see that the vast bulk of Chinese voters were lost to BN and were unlikely to be won back, no matter what the old ruling party bloc did or promised. Much of the Indian vote too was lost, but not all of it was entirely beyond recall. Part of it might be won back with some dramatic gestures (most remarkable of which was the HINDRAF rapprochement). But while winning back that partial Indian support might do UMNO/BNs political image some much needed good by providing some symbolic rehabilitation for its claims of intercultural accommodation, those Indian votes that might be won over would never be enough to secure an UMNO/BN victory. So the strategy of the real campaign was focused elsewhere. It was a battle for Malay votes. UMNO/BN saw, as some who were not part of its campaign also understood, that the key to the election was the Malay votes. In comparison, nothing else really mattered much at all. The key question was whether UMNO/BN, and especially UMNO itself, could win enough peninsular Malay votes, and enough of them in the right places meaning in the right local constituencies for UMNO, in association with its Sarawak and Sabah allies, to secure a clear parliamentary majority. So the campaign was focused and conducted where it mattered. It was conducted in Malay terms and directed to a Malay audience. Meaning, the campaign was projected above all in the daily Malay-language press, notably the UMNOs own Utusan Malaysia, and via the Malay-language programming of the television channels with the greatest Malay reach, principally TV3 and RTM. It was a campaign conducted for the votes of Malays, mainly for those of the great bulk of the more traditionally-minded Malays, in the Malay rural heartland areas. The UMNO campaign was simple: all is at risk! There is no protection, it kept hammering away, for you and your family, for all Malays, for the Malay stake in the country, for Islam or for the Malay rulers who are the ultimate bastion of our Malay-Islamic identity and national primacy other than us here in UMNO. It was a campaign that appealed to their sense of themselves to their sense of Malay identity and of Malay centrality to national life. It was a campaign that sought to suggest how tenuous the basis of Malay identity had now become in national life, how insecure the Malay grip upon the Malay stake in the nation had become. Everything that was distinctively Malay about Malaysia, it was suggested, was now under threat.

It was a campaign that both cultivated and then also appealed to a Malay sense of political and cultural peril, even crisis. It was a campaign that consisted of a managed panic: that the Malays were now beleaguered in their own land, the Tanah Melayu. Their historic stake in the nation was being whittled away and was now in jeopardy. It was a campaign that sought to suggest that, as political currents were now running, it was not fanciful but realistic to imagine that Malays might one day soon hilang di dunia (in the words of the classical formulation), that they might disappear from the face of the earth. It was a campaign of controlled communal panic. Malays and their way of life are beleaguered, and, central to their way of life, Islam was in jeopardy. Malay historical primacy and political leadership, the religious ascendancy of Islam, and the constitutional position of the Malay state rulers as their untrumpable guarantors had become the sacred trinity of the UMNO campaign. Everything that mattered to the Malay majority and its conventional loyalties was now at risk, it was suggested. It was threatened by the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition of which of course, the Islamic Party PAS was a key component. In the division of political labour between the Pakatan partners, it fell to PAS to wage the direct contest against UMNO for votes in the nations Malay heartlands core. So, above all else, the national election an election that would decide the prime ministers and his partys future turned upon a contest for the national Malay soul between UMNO and PAS. That was the real campaign. It was the campaign that won the election for UMNO/BN. And it was a campaign that the many overseas reporters and commentators who flocked to Kuala Lumpur for a week or two simply did not see or read or understand. It went beneath their radar, it was beyond their social, professional and imaginative reach. It was outside their range of cultural accessibility and also that, to be fair to them, of the vast majority of like-minded and sympathetic young urban Malaysians whom they were delighted to meet: who captured their attention, won their sympathy, and shaped their view of Malaysian society and politics. For many of those intelligent, persuasive and globally-networked young Kuala Lumpur cosmopolitans, the Malay heartlands and those who live there are just as foreign and remote a world as they certainly were to the visiting journalists. The young sophisticates with their congenial discourse and narratives were nice people, but a very poor guide to what the election was really about how it was being conducted where it really mattered. But, to those who were running the real campaign that inattention was no problem. On the contrary. Let the foreign press write the stories that might please them, that seemed to centre upon the overseas journalists own effete concerns, not those of the rural Malay voters. Let them chase after stories that led them away from the real story, the main action.

After all, the real campaign for Malay votes in the heartlands for a firm place within and a hold upon the Malay soul would prosper best if it went unrecognised and unreported by the meddling and opinionated visitors of the international press. Let them meddle instead where their own interests and sympathies were engaged, not where their intruding curiosity might prove inconvenient, even embarrassing.
http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2013/06/12/malaysias-ge13-whathappened-what-now-part-1/

The need to quantify racially-weighted vote manipulation an informal response to Clive Kessler
By Charis Quay Huei Li, Guest Contributor 13 August 2013Posted in: Authoritarian, Electoral reforms, GE13 Malaysia, Malaysia

Clive Kesslers recent article, Malaysias GE13: What happened, what now?, is a plausible and insightful account of what was going through UMNOs collective mind with respect to their GE13 strategy. In particular, his observation that rather different and even contradictory messages were delivered to international and domestic audiences is crucial to understanding UMNOs general mindset and the campaign as a whole, and it is indeed a pity that these audiences do not seem to have compared notes. Nevertheless, while understanding how UMNO thinks may be important and interesting, in the long run it is much more important to understand what was and is going through the minds of the voters themselves.

Kesslers main argument in this direction is that, having first malapportioned the rural Malay vote in West Malaysia into disproportionate importance, UMNO won this vote and the election by creating a Malay siege mentality, to the detriment of PAS. This claim is based mainly on the increase of UMNO and the decrease of PAS seats in Parliament; one could also argue that it is supported by Thomas Pepinskys quantitative analysis, showing positive correlation between the percentage of Malay voters and the percentage of votes for Barisan Nasional for West Malaysian parliamentary constituencies. These analyses are necessarily incomplete, as they do not study in any detail the kingmaker in GE13: East Malaysia, with its 57 parliamentary seats (out of 222 in total). Moreover, important data exist which contradict Kesslers story. The most telling of these is the finding by the Merdeka Centre, as reported by Malaysiakini, that only 11 percent of Malays polled just before the 13th general election said the protection of Malay community interests and the communitys political clout was a concern; the economy was their dominant preoccupation. In addition, Wong Chin Huat argues in a data-based analysis that GE13 malapportionment was partisan rather than rural/urban or based on race. (See also related articles on fz.com from June/July of this year). For example, he points out that the urban constituency of Alor Star has many fewer voters than Baling, which is rural, but is inclined to vote for the opposition and has a history of social activism. Wong points out further that the three Pakatan Rakyat parties PKR, DAP and PAS received similar numbers of votes; however, for reasons which remain unclear, PAS paid the most votes per seat, followed by PKR then DAP. This led to the imbalance in the number of seats won by each party. So PAS did not lose votes in GE13, but they lost seats. In fact PASs share of the total vote increased from 14.05% to 14.77% while UMNOs remained roughly constant (29.45% vs. 29.33% in 2008). I would like to suggest that a hitherto neglected factor in GE13 analyses the fact that the manipulability of the vote is far from race-blind will go some way towards reconciling several superficially contradictory analyses, such as those cited above, and yield additional insight into the thought processes of Malaysian voters. It is easy to see that racially-weighted vote manipulation was a potentially significant factor in GE13. After decades of institutional racism, most public institutions, including the civil service and armed forces are now almost entirely made up of Malaysians officially classified as Malay. Other government-linked, centrally-controlled institutions engineered to be Malay-dominated include Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) settlements and public universities, particularly bumiputera-only UiTM (which has 120,000 students). These institutions provide both means and opportunities for UMNO/BN to introduce pressure mechanisms operating on large blocs of voters who just happen to be disproportionately Malay. Depending on the efficiency and extent of these mechanisms, they could significantly affect quantitative psephologic analyses such as Pepinskys: statistical inclinations of voters labelled as Malay to vote for UMNO/BN may exist for reasons quite unrelated to any function of their free will or even their ethnicity or ethnic (siege) mentality as such but simply because, by design, they formed the overwhelming majority of voters who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, e.g. in a naval base on (early) polling day. In other words, analyses such as Kesslers may be naive in assuming that the only racial levers UMNO/BN have are diffuse ethnic psychological ones. In general, analyses of GE13 have neglected the effects of vote manipulation, whether racially-weighted or not, taking the official results at face value.

To be more specific, when one speaks of vote manipulation, there is most obviously outright fraud. Almost 400 000 civil servants and armed forces personnel and their spouses participated in advance or postal voting, which is seen as being easier to manipulate than regular voting. For instance, ex-armed forces personnel have alleged that votes were cast on their behalf. It was also recently reported that some Election Commission officers (almost always drawn from the civil service even though this does not in principle have to be the case) were offered RM100 for their ballots. Thus, given the large number of voters involved, efficient and discreet manipulation of early and postal voting by itself may already account for a large part of any difference in voting patterns between different races, and may have even won the elections for UMNO/BN. In addition to fraud, civil servants and armed forces personnel (~1.5 million voters out of a total of 13.3 million) face pressures of various kinds to vote a certain way or not to vote and never to oppose the government, which in certain contexts is code for the BN coalition. The Akujanji that all civil servants have to sign is an explicit example of such pressure. In the Bersih 2.0 preliminary report on the elections, it was noted that a military personnel, Major Zaidi was demoted for making a report about the ineffectiveness of the indelible ink. The fear-mongering has been so successful that well-educated, middle- and high-ranking civil servants have been known not to vote, fearing repercussions for their careers if they find out that I voted for the opposition. Even long-standing loyalties can be weakened by hierarchical pressures: Recently, after the school magazine had been printed, the principal of a school in my area went through every copy and tore out a page sponsored by the local Member of Parliament, dengan ingatan tulus ikhlas. The principal and the MP are (or perhaps were) childhood friends. (The MP is, obviously, from the federal opposition). Just before GE 13, while visiting friends in a neighbouring village, I was asked by a university graduate in complete seriousness whether they, as a civil servant, were allowed to vote for the opposition. Such stories are legion. One also needs to bear in mind the existence of spillover effects on retirees and family members who are not included ~1.5 million figure above, especially spouses participating in early or advance voting. As another example, for a certain period of time my grandparents on one side (who were peasants) felt that they should vote for the government (i.e. the BN in their minds) as many of their children were working for the government. This partly the result of continuous, long-term efforts by UMNO/BN to create a one-to-one identification in the minds of Malaysian between themselves and the government, e.g. by putting up signs saying Satu Lagi Projek Kerajaan Barisan Nasional next to road works. Pressure mechanisms in place in other Malay-dominated public institutions (including FELDA and public universities) as well as the possibility that other vote manipulation strategies (such as vote-buying and closing polling stations early) were racially-weighted will also need to be addressed in a full analysis of the situation. What would have happened, and what might happen in future elections if these various vote manipulation techniques had been removed or at least rendered much less effective? On a global level, considering only postal and advance votes, a recent Merdeka Centre study strongly suggests that the BN would have lost GE13. As a case study, the parliamentary constituency of Lumut, where Malaysias main naval base is located, could be of interest to inquiring journalistic or academic minds. During the last elections, rumours on the ground had it that the PKR candidate, retired admiral Mohamad Imran, as an ex-Navy insider was

able to effectively counter vote-manipulation strategies usually employed for the Navy vote. He won his seat with 55.6% of the vote against BN/MCAs Kong Cho Ha, the incumbent since 2004. In 2008, Kong Cho Ha had won in Lumut with 50.3% of the vote. Dare one suggest that the main reason for this upset might be fraud- and intimidation-minimisation rather than racial concerns? Dare one further suggest that other non-racial, non-religious factors may have also played important roles? One notes for instance well-organised local opposition to development projects in the Lumut area, based on environmental concerns. In addition, Mohamad Imran is seen by many locals as cleaner, more sincere, truly religious (this from a non-Muslim local) and as having less baggage compared to Kong Cho Ha. A Malaysian at Sciences Po recently wrote a fine article on public suicides in France, in which the reluctance of the SNCF (Frances national state-owned railway company) to profile railway suicides was noted. One official was quoted as saying, Its a taboo subject. We dont have any study on the profile so to speak of people who kill themselves.It is delicate to interpret this. We should avoid hasty interpretations. One sometimes wonders if a small dose of this caution would not be salutary in analyses of Malaysian elections, especially race-based ones hastily done the day after the polls. If one must nevertheless conduct race-based analyses of Malaysian elections, given the large number of voters potentially involved, it would only be intellectually honest to try to take into account the effect of racially-weighted vote manipulation both in the form of fraud as well as undue influences through the institutions mentioned above (and likely others that have escaped my attention). Most commentators, if not all, have neglected to do this. Apart from numerically estimating what the election results might have been in the absence of various forms of racially-weighted vote manipulation, among the questions one might attempt to answer is whether, as suggested by Wong Chin Huat, the electoral map was drawn with purely partisan interests in mind (in which case one might have expected all three PR parties to have had similar vote/seat ratios), or whether more sinisterly mechanisms were put in place to create a perception of racial polarisation for casual observers and day after the polls analysts, reinforced by well-timed talk of ethnic tsunamis and reconciliation. Or perhaps both. Before leaving this topic, I note another possibly statistically important factor for racebased analyses: allegations that some voters, especially indigenous peoples, were prevented from voting [Read the following linkes: Link 1. Link 2. Link 3. Link 4]. This could also lead one to ask to what extent the perception that East Malaysia is a BN fixed deposit is wellfounded, and whether there was similar orientally-weighted vote manipulation and to what extent this was effective. The upcoming Bersih 2.0 Peoples Tribunal on GE13, and any evidence this might yield, will be of great interest for developing these lines of thought. It is, I admit, rather bad form to throw out ideas in this fashion without having done some of the number-crunching and on-the-ground investigation suggested. In my defence, my appointment is in physics and I have very limited time to work on Malaysian issues. These ideas are thus up for adoption and I hope they will find good homes. Coming back to Kesslers article, he further suggests that his insights were missed by foreign journalists as well as the Malaysian pundits they had access to, the latter tending to be city slickers disconnected from the rural reality and fond of using words such as discourse and

narrative. Speaking only for myself, as someone who may have let slip even hermeneutic on occasion, I am for the record from Malaysias rural agricultural heartland, where my family has lived and tilled the land for generations. One school I attended had a dropout rate of 50% and was classified as sekolah perintis a euphemism if there ever was one. When I was a child, food was rationed in our home and I am not talking about meat, which we almost never saw. So, some of us rural folk are out there, saying things, even if we do not always mention our roots. Speaking therefore as your friendly neighbourhood country bumpkin, while it may be the case that many city-dwellers are disconnected from life in the country, the reverse is not necessarily true. Many rural families have children or other relatives who live and work in the city and through them news, goods and ideas make their way out into the country; this is increasingly the case as Malaysia continues to follow a trend of rapid urbanisation. (72% of the population lived in urban areas in 2010, with an annual rate of increase of 2.4%. In addition, ~1 million Malaysians live abroad, about half of these in Singapore). It was precisely to make use of these ties to the city and the outside world that Haris Ibrahim has been running a balik kampung, bawa berita campaign. Proportionally fewer rural folk may be able to wax lyrical on notions such as separation of powers and independence of the judiciary; however, ideas such as justice, honesty, kindness, generosity, openness and solidarity are universal values which can be understood by all. Some even say that these values are more present in the countryside, with its strong social networks, than in urban contexts. Let us not forget that, after all, the Baling Incident of 1975 happened in rural Baling and not urban Alor Star. As for Kesslers suggestion that most foreign journalists covering GE13 picked up only on a narrative carefully crafted for them by UMNO, I can only record my hearty and heartfelt agreement, having argued much the same elsewhere. Lack of fluency in Malay and not travelling to rural West Malaysia or to East Malaysia are obstacles not only to understanding the rural UMNO campaign and official government communications and circulars (not always translated into English, and not always available on the internet), but more importantly to picking up on the recent proliferation of rural- and East Malaysia-based social and civil initiatives, which communicate mainly or only in Malay and are not plugged into the international media circuit in the same way that UMNO is. Examples include Persatuan Anak Peneroka FELDA Kebangsaan (ANAK, recently interviewed on Radio Free Malaysia), Solidariti Anak Muda Malaysia (SAMM), the effort to Save Segaris turtles previously mentioned, the Indigenous Peoples Network of Malaysia (JOAS, a coalition of ~60 organisations), Partners of Community Organisations in Sabah (PACOS) and East Malaysian movements for a stronger regional identity or even possibly secession from the Malaysian federation. Indeed, the rapid development and maturation of civil society across the whole of Malaysian society is perhaps the salient Malaysian political fact of the past 10-15 years, yet most GE13 analyses neglected to note or comment on this, even in an electoral context. Finally, and as a Malaysian very sadly, I cannot help but agree with Kessler on the lack of vision in both major coalitions for the future of Malaysia. Economic management, public administration and other technical details aside, the philosophical and imaginative challenge before the Malaysian nation and whoever would lead her is this: How to think difference as beauty and peace instead of violence violence whether in the form of the Apollonian totalitarianism of UMNOs MICO or the Dionysian chaos and anarchy with which UMNO threatens Malaysians whenever they themselves feel threatened?

The need to transcend this dialectic in thinking difference, and the urgency of the task, is making itself felt not only in Malaysia, but in almost every country in the world today, and in relations between nations. On both philosophical and sociological levels, Malaysians, perhaps especially Malaysian leaders, are in a unique position to propose inventive solutions to the problem, and thus to make a giant leap forward for mankind. Or instead to fail spectacularly. Yet neither BN nor PR seems to be keeping up with the aspirations of the Malaysian people or to even be cognizant of the moral challenge that is before them, and its global implications. After GE13, in which the majority of Malaysians voted against the MICO-based status quo, the BN had two available courses of action to remain relevant: either to begin imagining something new by doing away with its race-based structure (e.g. merging into a single party), or else to attempt squeeze the Malaysian people back into their tried and tested (but now rapidly disintegrating) MICO mould by redoubling their racialising efforts. For the moment, it looks very much like UMNO/BN have chosen the second option, which puts them on a head-on collision course with the desires and the will of the Malaysian people. Pakatan Rakyat, while decrying the overt racism of UMNO, its ideology of racial supremacy and its espousal of racial hatred, have for the most part contented themselves with grandstanding around topical issues (often created ex nihilo then blown out of proportion by BN/UMNO-controlled media and institutions). They have, as Kessler noted, avoided addressing fundamental issues and have failed to present the Malaysian people with a coherent and convincing vision for a different and better Malaysia. Many of their statements and actions, including their Banglasia rhetoric at the Black 505 rallies in the immediate aftermath of the elections show that they dont get it yet it being among other things the equal worth and dignity of each and every human person. Malaysians deserve better from both coalitions. Ultimately, it may be the people themselves drawing on their naturally abundant creativity, initiative and goodwill towards one another, and going around or the electoral gridlock through civil society who will have to find the way forward for Malaysia, leaving their leaders to follow and catch up as best as they can. Charis Quay Huei Li is a Malaysian academic working abroad.
http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2013/08/13/the-need-to-quantifyracially-weighted-vote-manipulation-an-informal-response-to-clive-kessler/