Nurul Izzah Anwar, daughter of Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and a political figure in her own right, warned in an interview not long ago that Malaysia had wandered down a “scary” path of racial and cultural division.
In an interview with the South China Morning Post, the former Member of Parliament admitted to the challenge posed to the reformist Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) — founded by her father — by conservatives who were mastering social media to whip up identity politics and divide the country.
There are important takeaways from her interview. One is the challenge that the Green Wave — represented primarily by the Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) — is mounting to the kind of multi-religious Malaysia envisioned by PKR. That religious factor is amplified by the ethno-nationalist dimension of politics embodied by the Malay-centric Bersatu. This phenomenon is not new but has become an almost independent variable of Malaysian politics.
Scholar Azmil Tayeb records the direction of the ethnic trend in a paper. He notes that in the 2022 Malaysian General Election, the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition, which comprised PAS, Bersatu and Gerakan, won 74 seats nationwide, “placing it in a prime position to form the government”. The “uneasy partnership” formed between other coalitions, mainly Pakatan Harapan (PH) and Barisan Nasional (BN), “eventually denied PN the opportunity”.
However, PN grew from strength to strength, which is evident in its showing in six state elections in 2023. “New and young Malay voters also flocked to PN in droves, mainly inspired by PN’s effective messaging on TikTok,” he writes. “Simply put, the majority of Malay voters are present with PN”, and the balance of power within PN tilts strongly towards PAS.
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Social media
There is no way of knowing how events might unfold in the corridors of power in Putrajaya as the difficulties of electoral politics take their toll on ideals and ideologies.
However, the balance of national power rests firmly with the coalitional forces represented by the national unity government headed by Anwar.
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Although Nurul Izzah is not a part of the government, she has to keep articulating the aspirations of young and vocal Malaysians, including the important demographic of females. This is so that the political Right — which is patriarchal by definition — does not carry the day, leaving centre-Left coalitions such as PH and BN to regret the moment when they lost Malaysia to the conservatives.
Another takeaway from Nurul Izzah’s interview relates to how social media qualifies political choices and influences electoral outcomes. She is right in calling attention to the power of such media, but people need to reflect on the reason for that power.
The reason is simple: Social media do not work as well with the politically comfortable as they do with those dissatisfied with the status quo. The politically comfortable are content with news delivered by government or pro-government organisations, particularly state-sponsored media. Although those media might claim to be mainstream, they are but a part of a ruling ecosystem. Alternative media promise an alternative future.
Ironically, social media — which has drawn Nurul’s ire — played no mean part in keeping alive Malaysians’ hope for change when an incarcerated Anwar Ibrahim himself was battling the raw power of the BN state to pursue his radical vision of reform. Now that he is in power, it is natural that the Opposition should use social media to propagate its cause. This logic attests to the fundamentally alternative function of social media operating at its radical best.
It is no secret that as chunky segments of Malaysian social media become an extension of Opposition territory, concerns over freedom of speech are being fanned by the Anwar Administration’s decision to step up online censorship.
According to a report, this is so to the point of asking TikTok — a platform where Perikatan Nasional is strongest — to restrict more content than any other country in the second half of 2023.
That report adds that Malaysia’s 2024 World Press Freedom rankings dived to 107th from 73rd previously.
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Malaysia must move carefully towards a licensing regime for social media and messaging platforms. Certainly, the Anwar government should and can protect citizens from abusive material against minors, hate speech, cyber-bullying and scams.
But online safety laws should not be so broad as to be applicable against political voices simply because they are dissenting — unless they also commit offences against the public good, such as exploitation of minors and cyber-bullying.
The reason for this caution is two-fold. First, it is a moral attitude, morality being an intrinsic part of the body politic that Anwar’s reformism envisages. Second, it is a pragmatic attitude.
Pragmatically, every ruling dispensation should enact laws considering how the laws can be used against it should it lose power. Should the Pakatan Harapan-led government find itself in the Opposition one day, how would an emaciated social media be able to come to its defence in the light of new laws?
Anwar’s challenge is not to fight social media but to build up a cadre of media warriors who can fight and win for him and his cause on social media. That should not be difficult.
Malaysia has many young and talented individuals who believe sincerely that their country is broadly on the right path under its present government. They need to speak out more loudly on social media (as on traditional media), not by ignoring or shouting down dissenting voices but by engaging them in a national conversation whose goal is the Malaysian good.
Identity politics
That goal is certainly perverted by identity politics, which is another point that Nurul made in her interview. Even here, though, progressive Malaysians need to ask what makes identity political. After all, everyone has a palpable sense of something called identity. People identify themselves by gender, language, culture, religion, class, nation, ideology and so on. They do so instinctively.
Not just that: All these markers of identity coexist effortlessly in a human being most of the time. Thus, no one gives up being female to become French. No one discards Gujarati to become German.
Then, how is it that politicians privilege one partial aspect of a total identity over other equally important aspects to produce the vile phenomenon called identity politics?
They do so by totalising identity-making’s situational and selective aspects into a collective project that serves their need to exercise power. The rise of the populist Right (and its incendiary counterpart, the Far Right) in the West, the commensurate ambit of ethnocentric nationalism in Asia, and the general retreat from democratic centralism in vast swathes of the globe — these phenomena reveal how politicians capture the mental agenda of citizens to incorporate them into straitjackets of political behaviour subservient to the needs of identity-generating politicians.
Admirably, the Anwar government and everything it stands for is a bulwark against identity politics. The government draws its strength from Malaysians, whether they are Malays, Chinese, Indian, Eurasian or anything else because they have more in common than they differ from one another.
It is this inherent strength that the government should draw from instead of leaning tactically toward conservatives in any community whose goal is not a united Malaysia but a country visualised on their exclusive terms.
Malaysia’s political stability rests ultimately on the historical maturity of the Malaysian people. Although Nurul is young, she inherits the legacy of a Malaysian polity that has withstood the divisive identity-making created by ethnically-situated politicians since its independence.
Statesmen, including Tunku Abdul Rahman, brought into being a nation strong enough to withstand the centrifugal pulls of ethnicity that were damaging to the need to build an inclusive nation-state.
Malaysia did so because its people had developed habits of the heart — those of association, affinity and affiliation that cut across divides produced by the sudden jerks of history, such as the communist insurgency and the race riots.
Today, the modernised electorate of Malaysia seeks progress but on its terms, terms that affirm the realities of their faith and the traditions of their culture. Racial and cultural divisions are easy to produce but difficult to sustain when other divisions produced by the economy become more important. The Anwar government must focus on the economy as Malaysians’ everyday destination, regardless of ethnicity.
Young Malaysians such as his daughter should look to the marketplace — of goods and ideas — to sustain the popular momentum of the new Malaysia.
The writer is the Founder and CEO of Pereira International, a Singapore-based political and strategic advisory consulting firm. An award-winning journalist and graduate alumnus of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, he is also a member of the Board of International Councillors at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. This article reflects the writer’s personal views
