One year later, lessons for Pakatan

Part 1 of this article explained why I think that Barisan Nasional is structurally incapable of reforming itself or of introducing reforms that may win it back some of the electoral support it lost in March 2008.

In this part, I will try to explain why I think that opposition needs to reform itself too, lest it finds itself in the same situation that the BN is currently in.

Before I begin to analyse the record of the Pakatan Rakyat governments in the states which they currently control, it is useful to step back and to examine the role of patronage and intra-party competition within the opposition and its effects on the electoral responsiveness of the opposition parties.

The two oldest opposition parties in Peninsular Malaysia, the DAP and PAS, have not been free from problems associated with intra-party factions and battles and perhaps from the dominating presence of one or two of the top leaders within its ranks. This is a normal occurrence in any social organisation, much less a political party.

But these problems have not translated into electoral irresponsiveness on the part of these parties. And I see two main reasons for this – self-sacrificing leaders and the lack of patronage opportunities. Let me explain what I mean.

DAP and PAS has been and still are dominated by two larger than life personalities – Lim Kit Siang and Nik Aziz Nik Mat (with apologies to Karpal Singh, Lim Guan Eng and Abdul Hadi Awang).

As far as I know, both these leaders lead materially humble lives that are not befitting of their status – one as a long-standing opposition leader and the other as the long-standing spiritual leader of his party as well as menteri besar of a state that has remained in the opposition’s hands for the past 19 years.

Kit Siang’s tireless work ethic has enabled him to hold on to the support of the majority of the DAP members. This partly explains why the DAP has not lost the support of many of their constituents in the Chinese-majority areas despite the occasional criticism that has been leveled against Kit Siang for being ‘dictatorial’ and of favouring his son, Lim Guan Eng.

And it partly explains why Wee Choo Keong’s attempt at starting another Chinese-based opposition party, the Malaysian Democratic Party (MDP), failed to gain any traction from within the Chinese community.

This is not a perfect parallel but think of Kit Siang in this manner – as long as the economy was growing at a fast clip, the voters could tolerate a certain amount of corruption within the BN and as long as Kit Siang holds fast to his role as a voice of the non-Malays, this group of voters could easily tolerate some of Kit Siang’s shortcomings.

Nik Aziz’s simple living

Nik Aziz’s honesty is unparalleled. One may even say that it has taken on ‘mythic’ proportions. His reluctance to move from the humble house which he has been living for all these years as well as the reluctance to use the official MB’s car are some of the examples of his genuine lack of desire for the trappings of wealth and power.

Nik Aziz’s reputation and personality are even more important for PAS given that they have had control of the state of Kelantan for 19 years and counting. And this is significant because PAS in Kelantan could easily have succumbed to serious infighting over the ‘spoils’ in the state.

And this brings me to the second reason why the linkage between these two parties and their constituents has remained relatively strong despite the overwhelming strength of the BN – the lack of significant patronage opportunities.

Within the DAP, there are no monetary spoils to distribute. The only patronage DAP leaders can distribute is to allocate certain seats for favoured members to contest during a general election. One can make the argument that PAS may have slightly more patronage to distribute at least in the state of Kelantan but this pales in comparison to the massive patronage machine that is at the disposal of the BN.

As long as the patronage opportunities within the opposition was limited, the basis of competition within the opposition parties would be about leadership abilities or the willingness of aspiring leaders to risk life and limb over the values which the party stands for. And given that this is the way in which one ‘rises’ within these parties, especially for the DAP, these parties are not likely to attract the kinds of leaders or members who are in it for short-term material gains.

The electoral appeal of these two parties was maintained by a combination of the lack of patronage opportunities within these parties as well as self-sacrificing leaders who perhaps rose to the top of the leadership ranks in both parties on the basis that they embodied the core values and principles of both parties.

This perhaps explains why PAS members and leaders close ranks so quickly after a candidate for a by-election has been decided. They have less to fight over and they have fought against each other much less. In contrast, stories about Umno candidates who have been dropped and then coming back to sabotage the new candidate are a dime a dozen. The stakes and the spoils are much higher within Umno and so is the level of infighting.

It should not be a surprise then that PAS faced one of its worst internal crisis in its political history when Mohammed Asri Muda, a former PAS president, became overly power hungry AND was associated with scandals involving logging contracts.

As a result PAS lost control of the state government to Umno in the 1978 state elections in Kelantan, called after an emergency was declared at the end of 1977. (This should serve as a stark warning to PAS in regard to Hadi Awang’s call for a government of national unity)

PKR is a slightly different kettle of fish because its party history is much shorter compared to the DAP and PAS. Its growth into a political party was very sudden and is reflected in its membership and leadership composition, even as of now, after the merger with PRM.

PKR’s membership and leadership is made up NGO activists, former Umno leaders who left together with Anwar Ibrahim, socialists from the PRM wing of the party, former disgruntled leaders from MCA and Gerakan, and so on and so forth. Without a coherent identity of its own and a longer history of candidate selection, it is by not a coincidence that the BN is targeting PKR state assemblymen and MPs to defect from Pakatan, with some success, most notably in Perak.

And if there is any party that would be most susceptible to reform fatigue if Pakatan takes over power at the national level, it would be PKR, partly because of the baggage which Anwar carries with him and partly because of the short history of the party.

The opposition parties could play the role of being ‘outsiders’ as long as they did not have real political control. They would not run the risk of being compromised by the politics of monetary patronage and their top leaders would continue to represent the core message of the respective parties without alienating their core group of supporters.

But this equilibrium was changed after March 2008. The opposition, with control of five states, including Selangor, which is the biggest prize of them all, actually has access to some level of power and hence patronage.

As such, there is no longer a guarantee that the basis of competition within these parties would be on purely ideological or capability grounds. If the opposition parties are not careful, the politics of patronage that has weakened the BN over the years might afflict it, sooner rather than later.

Murmurings of abuse of power

Less than a year after the March 2008 general elections, there are already stories of certain business groups cozying up to the Pakatan MBs as well as different state exco members. And there have been murmurings about the possible abuse of power by certain Pakatan exco members in the state of Selangor.

The abuse of power will most certainly happen regardless of which party is in control of the government either at the state or federal level. But such occurrences can surely be minimised if certain institutional structures are put in place by the Pakatan governments in each of the states under their control.

For example, the Pakatan governments in the five states which they control could have set a precedent by asking the respective MBs as well as excos to declare their assets at the beginning of their term as MBs and excos and then make yearly declarations until the next general election. This is not to say that such a process is easily undertaken. PAS has been in control of the state government in Kelantan for 19 years and the MB and exco members have never declared their assets.

But the Pakatan state governments in Kedah, Penang, Perak and Selangor could have taken the opportunity to set a precedent for their respective state governments. I think what is most disturbing is that not ONE Pakatan state governments even tried to have their MBs and state excos declare their assets publicly.

I have heard many arguments as to why this is a difficult thing to do. For one, many opposition politicians have most of their assets registered in their spouses’ names for fear of being arrested under the ISA or worse.

In addition, some of the opposition politicians may be independently wealthy and are thus afraid of making this information public for fear that voters or supporters may be less willing to donate to their campaigns. One of the weaker excuses which have been used is that they are waiting for the federal government to make a decision before following suit.

While these issues may pose some challenges to the respective Pakatan governments, it is out of the lack of political will than these challenges which have prevented someone like Guan Eng, the chief minister of Penang, for example, to implement this.

The public declaration of one’s assets is a strategic exercise in that each politician has to make a strategic decision in terms of what they are willing to reveal to the public about their financial standing. This includes how much assets someone is willing to put in their spouses’ names.

The voter, especially those who are more well informed, would be able to make a judgment call as to whether the numbers make sense or not. For example, it would be ludicrous if a self-made millionaire like Tony Pua (left) were to declare that he owned only one car and had RM10,000 in the bank.

A sensible policy could be to encourage MBs and exco members to declare their assets jointly i.e. to include the amount of assets held by their spouses.

By doing this, these politicians can still register their assets under the names of their respective spouses but would not have to feel as if they have to ‘hide’ the true net worth from the eyes of the public.

Of course, a politician who really wants to hide something can stash money overseas and buy property in the name of their children or other family members but this means that there is another hurdle which they must cross in order to hide their true net worth. In other words, the more troublesome it is to hide one’s true value, the less one is willing to expend resources to hide it.

The Pakatan governments are fortunate in the following respects. Most of their top leaders are still guided by the strong principles of honesty and integrity that was part and parcel of their political training while in the opposition.

In addition, the practice of vote-buying within these parties is still frowned upon and as such the basis of political competition has less to do with money than it has to do with leadership abilities and other non-monetary factors, at least for now. Furthermore, because of the long history of the abuse of power and corruption that was and still is part and parcel of the BN administration, voters are more willing to cut the Pakatan governments at the state level some slack.

But Guan Eng’s financial discipline i.e. taking economy-class flights and staying at budget hotels while overseas can only take one so far. A CAT-based government in Penang is all fine and good but the chief minister cannot monitor the activities of all his state exco members. This is why institutionalising certain practices such as the declaration of assets is important in terms of keeping the Pakatan politicians ‘in check’.

An important test for Pakatan in the next general election is whether the respective parties are willing to drop candidates who have a record of non-performance and possibly abusing their powers as excos, ADUNs or MPs.

Still no shadow cabinet

Another glaring lack of institutionalisation on the part of Pakatan is Anwar’s lack of a desire to form a shadow cabinet.

Again, this is not an easy task since it involves a lot of tough political calculations and decisions that he would prefer not to make. Instead, he focused his energies on toppling the BN at the federal government.

This would have been disastrous for Pakatan given that they would have been seen as taking over the government using ‘illegitimate’ means. In any case, Anwar’s September 16 takeover was a longshot at best.

It would have been much better for him to have a shadow cabinet so that if Pakatan does eventually come to power at the federal level, he would be able to form a cabinet relatively quickly instead of being forced to balance expectations from the various parties then and there.

In addition, the formation of a shadow cabinet will show how different Pakatan is and will be from the BN not just in terms of the composition of the shadow cabinet but also by the quality of the shadow cabinet members.

These problems associated with the lack of institutional reform within Pakatan at the national as well as the state levels has not been politically costly mostly because of BN’s inability to introduce a reform agenda on its own and partly because of the lack of credibility among BN leaders to criticise supposed corrupt practices of individual Pakatan leaders.

But Pakatan leaders cannot afford to rely on the BN’s inability to reform to maintain its electoral advantage. It must also show that it is substantively different from the BN coalition in the manner in which politics is ‘done’ within Pakatan.

This exercise has been instructive in terms of envisioning what sort of institutional reforms a Pakatan government will choose to undertake if they take over power at the federal level. Some kinds of institutional reforms will be easier to undertake such as abolishing the ISA and significantly reviewing the UUCA, the PPPA and Sedition Act and other repressive laws.

The more difficult task of implementing institutional reform that will decrease corruption and potential abuses of power will probably not be undertaken. The danger here is that Pakatan may end up adopting many of the bad practices of the BN once it has power at the federal level.

If this indeed plays out and if the BN can get its act together if it falls out of power, then Pakatan may find that its tenure as a governing coalition will be very short lived.

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ONG KIAN MING is a PhD candidate in political science at Duke University. He can be reached at im.ok.man@gmail.com.

Part 1: Why BN cannot reform itself