“Whenever Malaysia makes the news in Australia, it’s almost always for something bad,” a Malaysian friend of mine once glumly said to me. It’s hard to disagree. Aside from disappearing planes and shameless political corruption, Malaysia does not figure too heavily in Western media. Yet the country has enormous potential to become both a political and economic leader in Southeast Asia. While Malaysia has been hailed as a nation that “has all the right ingredients to become a developed nation”, the head chefs (read: government) are not doing enough to harness Malaysia’s full potential.
Southeast Asia is filled with countries of varying fortunes, from Singapore, one of the wealthiest nations in the world, to the impoverished and repressive Myanmar. Like many of its neighbours, Malaysia sits somewhere in the middle, with an enviable average annual GDP growth of 6.5 per cent over the last fifty years. On the one hand, countries like Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are developing rapidly and are home to the increasingly large ‘middle-class of Asia’ that the Australian agricultural and tourism industries are so hungry to exploit. On the other, these countries continue to be governed by corrupt, unstable regimes, and there’s no guarantee that they will be able to replicate the democratic success of Japan and South Korea.
Malaysia is a ‘democracy’ where the ruling party has held power since Malaysian independence from the British in 1957 (the longest party that has ruled continuously in the democratic world) and the opposition leader is jailed on flimsy charges of sodomy. It is a ‘multiracial’ society where people are classified according to their ethnicity, and alongside South Africa is one of the only nations to have a ‘reverse affirmative action’ policy in place, where the government gives preferential treatment to the majority Malay Muslim ethnic group, of which a large proportion are significantly less wealthy than other ethnic minorities. The Chinese constitute 25 per cent of the population but control 70 per cent of the economy, yet alongside other non-Malays (such as the Indians) find it difficult to gain entry into universities and civil service. Thus there is an increasing drain of education and wealth from Malaysia as more people come to the West to seek opportunities that they are otherwise excluded from in Malaysia for political reasons.
Photo credit: esharkj.
Increasingly, change is in the wind and more and more Malaysians are expressing their dissatisfaction with the status quo. In the last general election in 2013, the opposition actually received more than 50 per cent of the vote, but due to gerrymandering gained only 88 of 222 seats in parliament. Although government corruption has become a given in Malaysia, Malaysians were in uproar after The Wall Street Journal reported that Prime Minister Najib had taken around US$700 million from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad, a government-owned fund aimed towards economic development. In response, tens of thousands took to the streets of Kuala Lumpar to protest government corruption on August 29.
Despite all of these problems, Malaysia has a dynamic and competitive economy and maintains friendly relations with most nations. Its status as one of the most stable, progressive and religiously-tolerant nations in the Muslim world means it is in a very good position to be a leader in the ever-troubled Middle East region. To join the likes of Japan, Singapore and South Korea as a First World country in Asia, Malaysia must work harder to harness the benefits of its rich and diverse society, rather than dividing the country for political purposes.
Adrian is the managing editor of Centrethought. Find out more about him here, and follow him on Twitter at @theadrianyeung.