Impunity, Southeast Asia, & Malaysia’s Election
A throughline for Southeast Asian politics
Back in early 2016, Thomas Fuller, the NYT’s then-Southeast Asia correspondent, put out a farewell essay trying to make sense of his time covering the region. As he wrote:
It is hard to speak collectively about a region of so many different languages, ethnicities, religions and political traditions. But as I start a new assignment in a part of the world that may as well be a different cosmos — Northern California — I have been trying to make sense of what I have seen in Southeast Asia.
I come back to one theme again and again: impunity.
And concluded:
My decade here has been a time of intense ambivalence. I was enchanted by people’s warmth, congeniality and politeness. When I interviewed protesters on torrid summer days, they would often fan my face as we spoke. I learned from my Thai friends how to laugh away life’s disappointments and annoyances. I relished the food and marveled at the hospitality.
But I despaired at the venality of the elites and the corruption that engulfed the lives of so many people I interviewed. I came to see Southeast Asia as a land of great people and bad governments, of remarkable graciousness but distressing levels of impunity.
That last word—impunity—formed the overarching theme of his piece. Almost seven years later, Fuller’s words feel more prescient than ever as Southeast Asia’s political environment has only become more brittle, polarized, and authoritarian. Despite unprecedented levels of information access, widespread anger over corruption and abuse of power, and desire for broad-based reforms, impunity remains the watchword of the day.
As the NYT wrote recently:
From Cambodia and the Philippines to Malaysia and Thailand, democracy is languishing. Electoral politics and civil liberties have eroded. Obedient judiciaries have hobbled opposition forces. Entire political classes are in exile or in prison. Independent media outlets are being silenced by leaders who want only one voice heard: their own.
GE15: Malaysia votes
That context provides the frame around Malaysia, which is headed for a general election (GE15) scheduled for November 19.
Per Nikkei:
The 15th general election since the country's independence in 1957 will be a four-way race. The first contestant is the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO), to which Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob belongs, headed by former Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. There are also two coalitions, led by former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, respectively. A coalition formed by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad will also take part.
All of the major political players once belonged to UMNO but split off from the party. In the previous parliamentary election, in May 2018, Mahathir, Muhyiddin and Anwar jointly launched an anti-corruption campaign and toppled UMNO from power.
There are plenty of reasons to pay attention to what happens in Malaysia; not least the country’s geostrategic position in the heart of Southeast Asia. Since the 2018 general election (GE14), cutthroat coalitional politics, party infighting, shifting alignments, and social polarization have resulted in weak, unstable, and ineffectual governments. The country has gone through three prime ministers under three separate power-sharing arrangements, come under withering criticism for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and seen a surge of investment in its electronics and chipmaking industries against the backdrop of the US-China trade war.
Despite being removed from power via the ballot box in GE14 amid a firestorm of scandal, UMNO—through a series of factional maneuvers—succeeded in regaining control of the government last year. It remains very possible that incumbent PM Ismail Sabri, or another leading UMNO figure, will emerge as prime minister following GE15. However, that’s far from a certainty. As James Chin writes for CNA: “for the first time in Malaysia’s history, no party or coalition is going into the election as the frontrunner.”
Today, Malaysia is often categorized as being in an ongoing state of political crisis.
All of this recent turmoil stands in marked contrast to the period from independence in 1957 through 2018 when Malaysia effectively operated under one-party rule. Every prime minister over that time frame hailed from UMNO and each occupied the position for, at minimum, half a decade (often much longer). That the UMNO system has broken down and been replaced—at least for now—with a form of politics that is more competitive and unstable is in no small part attributable to one man: former Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Let’s recall some recent history. Najib, who served as PM for nine years between 2009-2018, left office in disgrace following his implication in the industrial-scale 1MDB graft scandal. The abbreviated version goes something like this:
1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MBD) is set up in 2009 (under the chairmanship of Najib) as an investment vehicle designed to forge international economic partnerships and cultivate FDI that will be plowed into long-term strategic development projects across Malaysia in areas like energy, tourism, and agribusiness.
In 2015, the leak of hundreds of thousands of documents, first covered by Sarawak Report and then WSJ, suggest widespread embezzlement from the fund; including $731mn which flowed directly into Najib’s personal bank account in the lead-up to the 2013 general election. The US Justice Department estimates $4.5bn (roughly half of the total raised by the fund) was ultimately looted from 1MBD—with vast sums being allocated via middleman Jho Low for luxury shopping, jewelry, high-end properties, film production, and opulent parties. Najib denies all allegations against him.
With the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) looking into 1MBD, Najib—facing an impending arrest warrant—responds by purging his own government; Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, Attorney General Abdul Gani, and four other ministers who’d publicly criticized 1MBD are sacked and the MACC’s offices raided. Najib’s handpicked replacement for attorney general publicly clears him of any wrongdoing. Given the sprawling, globalized nature of the fraud, Najib refuses cooperation with investigators from the US, Singapore, and Switzerland. Relations between DC and Putrajaya break down and Najib’s government explores closer ties with Beijing as a fiscal escape hatch.
With Malaysian (and global) attention fixated on 1MBD and Najib’s increasingly autocratic attempts to shirk accountability, the Pakatan Harapan coalition—fronted by former PM Mahathir Mohamad and a handful of other political luminaries—brings down the curtain on decades of UMNO rule, emphatically defeating the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional (BN) government. The result is widely seen as a positive watershed moment for Malaysian democracy and juxtaposed against democratic backsliding in countries around Southeast Asia.
Deemed a flight risk, immigration officials banned Najib and his wife from leaving Malaysia immediately following the election. Subsequent raids on the former PM’s properties resulted in the seizure of $273m worth of designer goods, which included, per The Guardian “1,400 necklaces, 567 handbags, 423 watches, 2,200 rings, 1,600 brooches and 14 tiaras.”
In 2020, Najib is convicted over his role in 1MBD. Following a lengthy appeals process, in August 2022 he is sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $47mn USD. He is currently serving in Kajang Prison.
This was all something of a watershed moment in Malaysian politics, where the political class has long faced down charges of corruption, insider dealing, and elite-level impunity. As the BBC wrote following the conviction:
It's hard to think of another example of such a prominent public figure in South East Asia being brought down by a rigorous and transparent series of trials. For all the impressive economic and social gains made in the region, its judiciaries remain weak, often corrupt, and susceptible to political pressure.
Even in Malaysia, which inherited a relatively strong and independent judiciary when it became free of British colonial rule in 1957, political interference has compromised the reputation of the courts. So the clarity of the verdict against Najib has been widely welcomed.
Like many other outside observers, I’ve found the 1MBD scandal endlessly compelling; the personalities, the parties, the scale and intricacies of the grift, and the brazenness with which the key players operated for years are all truly larger than life. For an illuminating (and utterly engrossing) accounting of Jho Low and his role in 1MDB, I highly recommend reading Billion Dollar Whale by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope (both formerly of the WSJ and now serving as cofounders of the excellent Project Brazen). 1MDB’s ripple effects—for UMNO, for Malaysia, for Goldman Sachs, for what it reveals about the intimate linkages between Western/global finance and mass-scale state corruption—have been staggering. To this day, Jho Low’s whereabouts remain a subject of ongoing debate and public fascination.
This all rounds back to Najib and UMNO heading into GE15. In a functional political environment, one would expect someone like Najib to be a near-total pariah. Instead, despite languishing behind bars, the former PM remains one of the most influential, albeit polarizing, figures in Malaysian politics and a beloved martyr to large swaths of the faithful. That status makes Najib something of a kingmaker—a power on full display earlier this year when his campaign presence played a crucial role in propelling UMNO/Barisan Nasional (BN) to crushing “wave” victories in the Johor and Melaka state-level elections.
Depending in no small part on the results of the upcoming election, there’s a world in which Najib—who is awaiting a decision on a royal pardon and still occupies the Pekan MP seat pending the results of that decision—finds himself released and on a pathway back to the prime ministership mere years after his seemingly irreversible public downfall.
To my mind, this is all quite fascinating and disconcerting. How does someone convicted and imprisoned over his central role in one of the largest corruption scandals in world history, whose properties were stuffed to the gills with luxury goods, whose personal bank accounts swelled with hundreds of millions of dollars redirected from state coffers, and who bears directly culpability for his party’s worst-ever electoral performance remain at the epicenter of national politics? How does UMNO continue exerting power and retain strong public backing despite its uppermost echelons remaining crammed with unrepentant Najib allies, many of whom are embroiled in corruption scandals of their own?
I think a handful of interrelated factors are at play here, almost all of which have resonance far beyond the Malaysian political scene.
For starters, this is a story of volatility and instability—hallmarks of deeply polarized societies and a defining feature of electoral politics from Israel and Italy, to the United States and the UK. In Malaysia’s case, interpersonal rivalry and profound factional differences brought down the Pakatan Harapan coalition, paving the way for its replacement by the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition government in February 2020. The PN’s subsequent faltering in the face of the COVID crisis, in turn, paved the way for UMNO to take back the prime minister’s office in early 2021 despite its lack of an electoral mandate.
All of this has fed a sense of disillusionment with the current political arrangement. With all three of Malaysia’s post-GE14 governments having struggled to govern effectively or command high levels of public support, UMNO/BN is trying to tap into a sense of nostalgia (and amnesia) for the stability and “order” of the recent past. Here, again, is James Chin:
Barisan Nasional’s narrative is one that taps into voter regret. It is painting a picture of the good old pre-2018 days of political stability, touting itself as the only coalition that can keep Malaysia politically stable and economically prosperous. BN’s manifesto, launched on Monday, is promising every Malaysian household a basic monthly income of RM2,208 (US$465.80) and free early childhood education.
It’s clear that UMNO is hoping its combination of built-in advantages—the party’s well-oiled patronage machine, access to state coffers, organizational and campaign heft, momentum from state elections earlier this year, deep-seated ties to the Malaysian business community, and ability to benefit from extremely gerrymandered constituencies favoring rural Malay voters—will grant it the edge versus coalitional rivals when it comes to tapping into a frustrated, nostalgic, and a relatively unmotivated overall electorate.
All of this builds up to what I believe is the most important factor at play here: polarization and partisanship. While Malaysia can be viewed through the prism of a vibrant, diverse, multi-ethnic society punctuated by the relatively open and cosmopolitan commercial hubs of KL, Penang, and Johor Bahru, it can also be seen through the prism of a country deeply cleaved along the familiar lines of race, religion, and, to a lesser extent, education, and geography.
Southeast Asia expert Bridget Welsh breaks down these dynamics and their history as such:
The country’s main dividing line is ethnic. Ever since independence, the dominant narrative of national identity has been that Malaysia is for the Malays—the country’s largest ethnic group, which comprises 50.8 percent of the population. Other communities—namely the Chinese and Indian Malaysians, whose families immigrated to the country before independence, and the plethora of smaller indigenous ethnic groups on the island of Borneo—have not enjoyed equal rights and status in various ways. The country’s prevailing racial hierarchy has faced repeated challenges, which have exposed ethnic cleavages and led to different levels of inclusion over time.
Malaysia’s ethnic divisions date back to the struggle for independence from British colonialism. A key moment came in 1946, when the British formed one administrative unit, the Malayan Union, for the ethnically diverse states that later would become part of Malaysia. In response, Malay elites mobilized, and that same year they formed the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), an ethnonationalist party that defended special privileges for Malays. Nonetheless, UMNO joined forces with political parties from the Chinese and Indian ethnic communities, and it became the leading force in a multiethnic national coalition known as the Alliance, which later expanded and renamed itself the National Front (Barisan Nasional, or BN). This UMNO-led coalition would govern from independence in 1957 through 2018. Although it stood as an example of interethnic political cooperation, it also institutionalized the fundamental role of ethnicity in Malaysian politics and granted Malays special rights.
In a country where a majority of the population identifies as ethnically Malay (bumiputra or “sons of the soil”) and Muslim, UMNO has always been comfortable swimming in the waters of ethno-sectarian chauvinism and a highly racialized form of identity politics. At its core, the UMNO message holds that Malaysia is—and must always remain—a country governed by and for the bumiputra. As James Chin recently noted: “In the rural Malay heartland, UMNO remains popular despite the cloud of corruption that led to its last defeat. The party's status as the guardian of Ketuanan Melayu, or Malay supremacy, ensures that older voters will keep voting for it.”
To my mind, Malaysia’s intense ethnic and religious polarization gets to the heart of Najib’s (and UMNO’s) enduring political appeal. Rather than pitching himself as an all-inclusive grand statesman, Najib is playing off Malaysia‘s racialized politics: appealing to a powerful sense of group identity and positioning himself as a staunch defender of “us” against a secular and racially othered “them” who will wield power over the bumiputra faithful should UMNO lose its grip on power.
Unsurprisingly, this dynamic is playing out sharply across Malaysian social media. Leveraging platforms like TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube, Najib (via his Bossku campaign) and UMNO are looking to emulate the Marcos family’s success in winning over young voters by recasting the public narrative and shifting focus away from their legacy of corruption. Here’s The Economist:
Online, he has rebranded himself as a humble man of the people about to lose everything except his faith. Recent Facebook posts show him sitting on a tree stump washing his feet before prayer, and taking the sumpah laknat, an Islamic oath of innocence. Many among Malaysia’s increasingly devout Muslim population care more about what is said before the Almighty than what is decided in court, notes a political operator. Mr Najib would like to make his martyrdom an article of faith among party members, says Bridget Welsh of the University of Nottingham Malaysia.
Of course, it may all still go sideways. UMNO is a viper’s nest of factional rivalries unto itself; not least of all between PM Ismail Sabri and an “old guard” allied around Najib and scandal-plagued party boss Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. More importantly, a combination of inflation, a darkening economic picture, and deep-seated frustration over UMNO’s corrupt, race-centric approach to politics may yet submarine the party’s ambitions.
If current polling data proves accurate then, it’s likely no single political bloc will garner enough support to form a government—forcing the various coalitions to horsetrade, negotiate, and form unwieldy alliances in order to grab power. Such an outcome would almost assuredly weaken the hand of the Najib bloc within UMNO.
Regardless of the final outcome, Najib and UMNO will likely remain a major force in Malaysian politics. That fact, in and of itself, feels like a story of impunity.
To be clear: this phenomenon is in no way limited to Malaysia, or Southeast Asia. Across culture and geography, we’re in a political moment dominated by the presence of hyper-polarizing, nationalist “strongman” leaders. Again and again, we see how these (mostly) men feed off the currents of cultural backlash, nostalgia, desire for order, and ethno-sectarian chauvinism to make powerful appeals to group identity. We see how charismatic leaders—and the reactionary movements undergirding them—can draw on strong animating emotions of grievance, pride, and insecurity. Finally, we see how leaders who have viscerally endeared themselves to a faction of the population through a divisive, conflictual form of group identity politics often retain their political potency in the face of scandal, corruption, and managerial incompetence.
In this regard, Najib (and UMNO)—much like Putin, Modi, Johnson, Trump, Berlusconi, and Netanyahu—is worthy of attention, even if what it says about power, impunity, and the current political moment is troubling.