Viewpoint
Democratic 'elbow room'
By Juan Mercado
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:23:00 03/27/2008
"THREE things are going for us in Malaysia," the brilliant economist mused, over coffee, at the United Nations offices in Bangkok. "We have a little oil, some rubber-- plus a few Chinese like me."
He made that sardonic crack, years back, to spotlight performance by talented Chinese-Malaysians. What about other factors today? That'd include the transparent elections Malaysia staged this month. That drill showed up, for example, the shabby 18,983 voters who sneaked in and registered twice, just like in our Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.
Led by ex-deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim and his People's Justice Party, Malaysian voters surprised the dominant United Malays National Organization. Chinese who make up a quarter of the population, plus Indians (8 percent) and Malays (55 percent) booted the sclerotic National Front coalition.
Malaysia's policy of positive discrimination for economically-lagging Malays helped tamp down confrontations, over the years, in a racially-diverse country. But the Front systematically gagged dissent. And it converted the policy "from a means for redistributing wealth to the disadvantaged (into) a vehicle for corruption and cronyism," the Economist noted.
Nonetheless, Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi "accepted the setback with grace," despite persistent racist baiting by UMNO leaders. Opposition leaders avoided gloating. "Such maturity and restraint may not last," the Economist added. "That the change happened at the ballot box, not in the streets, makes it all the more cheering."
Indeed, the polls reassured members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). An increasingly mature Malaysia would calm nerves in next-door Thailand. Radical Islamic groups stir trouble along the prickly southern Thailand-Malaysia border.
Expansion of the democratic "elbow room" in Malaysia contrasts with what's unraveling in Burma, the most run-down Asean member state. Like Filipinos, a Malaysian's life expectancy is 73 years. But it's only 60.8 years for a Burmese. Infant mortality rates, in Burma, are seven times higher than Malaysia's 10 out of every 1,000 births.
The paranoid Burmese junta even junked elections, in 1990. That came after Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy swept 82 percent of parliament's seats. Instead, Ms Suu Kyi has been detained for 12 of the past 18 years.
The world community trashed suppression of the "Saffron Revolution": the non-violent protest, led by Buddhist monks, calling for the return of freedoms. Its hand-picked delegates, who dawdled 14 years in drafting a constitution, will now complete the draft, the junta said.
This still-to-be-seen charter authorizes elections in 2010. But ethnic minorities and opposition candidates are excluded. And Ms Suu Kyi is barred from running because "she married a foreigner": the late Oxford University professor John Adris.
"The election promised by the military regime is a complete sham," said eight Nobel Laureates led by Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Its exclusion of significant groups from the regime's "roadmap" shows that the junta's "version of reconciliation is flawed."
"We stand firmly in support of our fellow Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and have repeatedly called for her release, as well as the release of Buddhist monks and all political prisoners," Tutu and colleagues wrote. Nations "should immediately impose arms embargoes and targeted banking sanctions on Burma."
Democracy isn't catching on in Burma. But is that the case in Malaysia? The once timid Kuala Lumpur press now publishes "wish lists," unthinkable prior to the elections. One list asks that the notorious Printing Press and Publications Act be scrapped. Under this law, government censored simply by withholding licenses for media.
There are calls to spike the Internal Security Act (ISA)--a hangover from Malaysia's bitter but successful fight against communist insurgents. ISA's indefinite detention provisions, however, were used to hound the opposition. But ethnic cleavages still run deep. "Don't kid yourself," my economist-friend e-mailed from Kuala Lumpur. "Those changes won't happen any time soon."
But advances are there. Asian Development Bank notes that the Philippines' per capita paved road length is a fourth of Malaysia's. Our per capita power consumption was a fifth of Malaysia. Electricity bills here are the stiffest in the region. And Filipinos make up a substantial group among Malaysia's 1.9 million migrant workers.
Studies like the UN's "Human Development Report 2007/2008" reveal wide gaps in daily life. About 15 percent of Malaysians lived below national poverty lines, compared to 37 percent for Filipinos. These percentages mean a larger number of Filipino poor, due to actual population sizes. Malaysia's total population is 25.7 million. We are more than triple that at 84.6 million. But when our delayed census tally is in, some scientists think, we'd number 89 million.
Some 3 percent of Malaysians are undernourished. Stack that against 18 percent here. Trained health personnel attend to 97 Malaysians who give birth compared to only 60 Filipina mothers. And infant mortality rates among the poorest Malaysians is 20 percent compared to 42 percent for Filipinos.
"It will be some time before our newspapers can poke fun at our stuffy leaders as you do," my economist-friend pined.
"Yes, yes," I replied. "But we'd be well advised to trim our maternal death rates, which is 230 for every 100,000 live births, to your level of 62--but soon. "
(E-mail:juanlmercado@gmail.com)
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