SINGAPORE (May 14): Late on the night of May 8, Chloe Choo began looking at flight tickets. The 35-year-old distribution manager living in Singapore had not planned to return to Malaysia to vote. “I did not have much leave left. There was an emergency at home that required me to be home two weeks ago, which changed my plans to vote,” she tells The Edge Singapore.
But as Choo’s social media feed flooded with stories of people overcoming the odds to make the journey home, she decided she just could not stay in Singapore. “What motivated me the most was Dr Mahathir [Mohamad]’s speech. He is a 92-year-old doing his best to convince people to do their part — to vote.” Choo ended up paying $380 for a Jetstar flight — three times more than usual — to vote at Sunway Damansara on May 9.
Her story is typical for many in Singapore who travelled to Malaysia this past week so that they could vote in what will now be recorded in the annals of history as a landmark election. Louis Kok, a 35-year-old bio-informatics researcher, had just started working here recently and was still on probation at his company when the election date was announced. “I requested leave from my boss and he approved it,” Kok says.
Gan Sue Ling, the 31-year-old founder of the website Pulang Mengundi, says RM74,113 ($25,126) in funds was donated by Malaysians to help overseas voters get a say. “These are peer-to-peer transfer funds; we don’t hold any money,” Gan clarifies. Since the election date was announced, her website has attracted more than 100,000 visitors and helped over 1,000 Malaysians living in Singapore go back to vote — mainly through carpooling services. Malaysians such as Choo, Kok and Gan — and their stories — have probably made a difference.
Just before 2.30am on May 10, live reporting online from Malaysiakini showed that Pakatan Harapan (PH), the unofficial opposition coalition fronted by Mahathir, had won the 112 seats in Parliament needed to form a government. The news has left them and their fellow Malaysians shocked but overjoyed. “I feel extremely happy and so proud to be a Malaysian,” Choo says.
A vote for change
Chandran Nair, the Malaysian founder of think tank Global Institute for Tomorrow (Gift), says he was “over the moon” when the results came out. “The Malaysian people have rejected massive incompetence, poor governance and corruption, and rejected the politics of race. This election was a rejection of the massive decline in moral standards,” he says. “We don’t want to be the laughing stock of the world.”
For many Malaysians like Nair, a great deal has gone wrong in their country. The affirmative action policy, which advantages ethnic Malays, for instance. It has bred racial tensions and, by preventing the pursuit of meritocracy, hampered economic growth. “In my view, it’s disenfranchised the rural Malays the most. It’s discriminating against your own people by saying ‘you can’t make it, so we’ll give you handouts’. They become dependent,” says Nair. “We can’t have growth in Malaysia if we are all collectively racist.”
The high cost of living, coupled with very low wages, has also been an important issue. “We find that the cost of living is in particular blamed on the goods and services tax,” says Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman, assistant professor and coordinator of the Malaysia programme at Nanyang Technological University’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS). “A lot of people are not happy about the notion that, as far as they are concerned, the cost of living has gone up because of GST.”
At the same time, the median salary in Malaysia from 2015 to 2016 was a very low RM2,000 in urban areas and RM1,256 in rural areas. The median salary for those with tertiary education was a mere RM3,274, according to the Department of Statistics Malaysia. Against this backdrop, there has been some sense that the incumbent politicians have been enriching themselves at the expense of citizens. Nawab says the alleged money laundering through 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), the government-run development fund, has been an issue with the educated and social media-savvy urban population.
Meanwhile, in certain states, large China-funded infrastructure investments have drawn objections. Examples include Forest City, a massive property development by Country Garden in Johor; the Melaka Gateway harbour project; and the East Coast Railway Link. “The problem with Chinese money is that there’s very little trickle-down effect towards the local economy. The point that has been made is that even if there is a lot of Chinese investment coming in, the impact may be negative.
The cost of living in that particular area may go up. You don’t have more jobs created because the Chinese bring everything from China. There is no trickle-down, and this has been emphasised again and again,” says Nawab.
Uncertainty over bilateral relations
Malaysians — even those living in relative prosperity and ease in Singapore — have a good idea of the difficulties that poor social and economic policies have inflicted on their friends and family. The sea change in the election reflects that.
In Singapore, however, the response to PH’s win has been mixed. “Mahathir has never been the most friendly to us. The Singaporeans ‘celebrating’ now, please do take heed,” Calvin Cheng, a former Nominated Member of Parliament, said in a Facebook post on May 10.
“I wish Singaporeans when thinking of elections in other places would think more about how it would impact Singapore instead of unthinkingly supporting or opposing as if they were citizens of that country.” Cheng says he is worried because Najib Razak, the previous prime minister, was far friendlier to Singapore than Mahathir ever was.
While Cheng’s comments drew quite a few brickbats, there were a few Facebook users who agreed with him. Among the issues those in Singapore are now worried about are the proposed Singapore-Kuala Lumpur High Speed Rail (HSR) project and the ever-present water security matter. Under the 1962 Water Agreement, Singapore may draw up to 250 million gallons of water a day from the Johor River until 2061. That is roughly half the country’s total daily consumption.
Nair of Gift thinks these fears are unnecessary. “I like to think this is good for Singapore. I got the sense that Singapore has been very wary of dealing with a government in Malaysia that was seen to be reckless, but yet had to deal with it. I don’t know if the prime minister in Singapore was happy to deal with someone who was accused [of corruption],” he says. “I don’t think the previous era of competition with Singapore [under Mahathir] is going to resurrect itself. The HSR line is good for Malaysia, and hopefully there will be good contracts for both sides.”
Mustafa Izzuddin, a fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, says all contracts that have been signed will be relooked. But that does not mean the contracts will be cancelled. “The HSR has already cost a lot of effort. If they do away with it, there is going to be quite a bit of penalty,” he says.
But RSIS’ Nawab sees some potential tensions. “I think there would be some impact in bilateral relations. We know that Mahathir has been very critical of Singapore and also very critical of prime ministers becoming too friendly with Singapore,” he says, pointing to Mahathir’s criticisms of Najib and Najib’s predecessor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
Among other things, Mahathir had disagreed with the 2011 handing over by Malaysia of railway land in Johor in exchange for prime land in the city centre. He was also unhappy that both Najib and Abdullah had failed to carry out his threat to build a crooked bridge if Singapore did not agree to a demolition and rebuilding of the Causeway linking Singapore and Johor Bahru.
In fact, Mustafa thinks Mahathir may revisit the crooked bridge project. “I would be incredibly surprised if he doesn’t bring it up.
The rationale is for the ships to pass through. It benefits the ports in Johor and bypass the Singapore ports,” he says. But he also thinks Mahathir’s antagonistic tendencies towards Singapore may be tempered by the more moderate views of his coalition. “The dynamic is different this time. The opposition has very vocal politicians and strong views. So, the new government will take a more collective decision with their ties with other countries, rather than just Mahathir’s views. Mahathir is quite caustic to the west and may be seen to have had a frosty relationship with Singapore in the past. But he would likely be more measured and constrained, [taking] a more collective approach under the coalition,” Mustafa adds.
An Asean spring?
Bridget Welsh, associate professor of political science at John Cabot University in Rome, says what happens next will depend somewhat on the maturity of the Singapore public as well as on the decision of its leaders. “Singapore is the country most shocked about the event. Ultimately, [Malaysia and Singapore] need each other and many in PH understand that,” she says. “Singapore has to be careful not to poke the Mahathir bear. Nationalism was the driving force to PH’s victory. He uses that, and he will use it in his relationship with [other] countries.
That’s what keeps things at home together. It is a political tool.” Welsh thinks PH’s win may also have an impact beyond Malaysia’s and Singapore’s shores. “The embrace of democratic space is reverberating across the region, and sends a signal that when [citizens] do vote, it can make a difference,” she says. “But the level of anger in Malaysia is [a lot more] and not even close to that of countries like Cambodia. The handover will be looked upon closely by neighbouring countries.”
Despite the gerrymander ing by the Election Commission (EC), prominent human rights lawyer and former Bersih 2.0 chairman Ambiga Sreenevasan says she is heartened by the election outcome. She says she was initially concerned as some voters were prevented from exercising their rights. Yet the voting outcome was more than enough to effect change in the political status quo. “It is an incredible thing [to witness] when you have a rigged system. You couldn’t have imagined that we have overcome so much. But we did,” she tells The Edge Singapore by phone.
Going forward, Ambiga says electoral reform is still crucial. She would like to see the current crop of senior EC officials removed, and a redelineation exercise carried out to rebalance the composition of each constituency.
This may not come immediately as it can only be legally carried out after at least eight years from the previous implementation, she says. For now, voters can take heart in the knowledge that when enough people thought it mattered, democracy was able to deliver.
The 1MDB question
Will the Pakatan Harapan government prosecute Najib Razak? This is a question that the coalition’s de facto leader Dr Mahathir Mohamad has been asked several times since it became clear that he would likely succeed Najib as prime minister.
Najib has been unambiguously linked to a scandal involving money laundering through 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), a government-run development fund, via a US Department of Justice document with a reference to “Malaysian Official 1” and a BBC interview in which Malaysian minister Abdul Rahman Dahlan confirmed MO1 to be Najib. But he has never been investigated.
Several countries — including Singapore, the US and Switzerland — have been actively probing the 1MDB case. And The Edge Singapore understands that France and Spain have recently joined in the cross-border investigation too.
In Singapore, action has been taken on companies and individuals based here. Two banks, BSI Asia and Falcon Bank, were fined and then shut down by the Monetary Authority of Singapore for their roles in the affair while six other banks were fined.
Five individuals were convicted by Singapore courts. Former BSI wealth planner Yeo Jiawei is serving a 30-month sentence for offences such as witness tampering in 1MDB-related probes. Yak Yew Chee, a personal relationship manager at BSI Bank, was given 18 weeks’ jail and fined $24,000. His colleague Yvonne Seah served two weeks and was fined $10,000. Both pleaded guilty to forging reference letters for Low Taek Jho, the alleged mastermind of the 1MDB scandal, thereby misrepresenting his good standing. Jens Fred Sturzenegger, former branch manager of Falcon Private Bank’s Singapore branch, was given 28 weeks’ jail and fined $128,000 for not filing suspicious transactions made by Low. Kelvin Ang Wee Keng, a former remisier with Maybank Kim Eng Securities, was fined $6,000 for bribing Lee Chee Waiy, former analyst at NRA Capital, to speed up the production of a valuation report that was used to justify an acquisition of questionable assets at an inflated price.
Lee and Kevin Scully of NRA Capital were both slapped with prohibition orders barring them from working in Singapore’s financial industry for six and three years, respectively. Tim Leissner, a former director of Goldman Sachs (Singapore), helped to arrange a series of bond issues by 1MDB. He was not charged, but has been slapped with a 10-year prohibition order.
All these regulatory actions and convictions were secured by Singapore prosecutors over 2016 and 2017. Since then, no other 1MDB cases have been heard, even though there are several other individuals said to be involved. Low, for instance, remains at large.
James Chin, inaugural director of the Asia Institute Tasmania at the University of Tasmania, Australia, says that while Najib was prime minister, he was never in any danger of being prosecuted over the 1MDB issue.
Will that change now? Wong Chin Huat, political scientist at the Penang Institute, thinks an investigation is likely to take place, but “may be undermined by… political pressure to close ranks in Malay politics.”
At separate press conferences on May 10, Mahathir had said he is not “seeking revenge” but wants to “restore the rule of law”. He believes Malaysia will get most of the 1MDB money back. “We know the money is in America, Switzerland, Singapore and, most probably, inside Jho Low. We have to attend to that,” he says..
This article appeared in Issue 830 (May 14) of The Edge Singapore.
