INTRODUCTION

For many Chinese Malaysians, a major concern in Chinese politics is the problem of “political division” in the community. Since 1959, Chinese electoral politics in West Malaysia has been characterized by fragmentation, with Chinese voters splitting their support between the ruling coalition, the Alliance, and later the National Front (Barisan Nasional, BN), and the opposition parties. To further complicate matters, even the two camps were severely fragmented; before 1969 the anti-establishment Chinese votes were divided by several leftist parties, and after 1969 the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and the Chinese-dominant Parti Gerakan Malaysia (Gerakan) competed to represent the Chinese voters in the BN government. This political division has commonly been blamed for the erosion of the so-called “community interests” as the Chinese-based parties could not get their act together amidst the implementation of pro-Malay or pro-Bumiputra policies in economic, sociocultural, and political fields.

In sharp contrast, with the exception of the 1969 general election, the majority of ethnic Malay voters had always backed a single party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), as the driving force of national politics, not withstanding the significant presence of its long-term rival the Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party (PAS). In return for the community's support, UMNO has implemented many pro-Malay policies since winning the 1955 Home Rule election. From a communal perspective, the ethnic Malays’ political unity in multi-ethnic Malaysia is extremely effective and rewarding, and many would attribute that to the group's political unity. In the paradigm of the ethnic zero-sum game, where monopartism is inevitably superior to multipartism for an ethnic group, the Chinese Malaysians have failed miserably, given their political division.

The March 8 election in 2008 have reversed the configuration of ethnic politics in Malaysia. It was “the day Malaysia woke up” (Kee 2008) because it was in a profound sense “eclipsing May 13” (Ooi, Saravanamuttu and Lee 2008). This chapter will focus on how the post-1969 Chinese politics in West Malaysia has been transformed. From the previous pattern of “United Malays v Divided Chinese”, Malaysian ethnic politics has shifted towards a new “Divided Malays v United Chinese” format.

On 31 August 2007, Malaysia celebrated her fifty years of Independence from British rule. While Malaysians and non-Malaysians may hold differing views of Malaysia, both would, however, agree that there has been considerable economic achievement and visible modernity as symbolized by the famous Petronas Twin Towers and modern highways. But in recent years, there is a mounting general dissatisfaction among Malaysians over a number of developments, such as the increase in crime mainly in urban areas and scandals involving the police whose professionalism is questioned, as well as the perception of more corruption, and doubts about judicial independence. Above all, there is also agreement among researchers and observers, and even the general public, that Malaysia has become more racially divided. What has gone wrong?

This chapter will discuss ethnicity, nationalism, and nation building in Malaysia and see what we can learn from the Malaysian case. It will show that nation building in Malaysia has been shaped by the politics of ethnicity, which has fostered a communal world view and created a nation that is communally divided. In other words, not only Malaysians of different ethnic groups would imagine the Malaysian nation differently; but the nation itself has also become highly polarized. Because politicians of different ethnic groups have articulated along ethnic lines, the revival of Malay nationalism after 1969 and non-Malay reaction pushed the country to become a highly polarized nation. Malay nationalism here refers to the nationalistic ideology of the Malay elite who pursue a Malaysian nation that is Malay in cultural characteristics and Islamic in identity. It is communal nationalism or ethnic nationalism, that is, nationalism that is articulated by an ethnic group within a multi-ethnic state for the group's interest and to project the cultural nationalism aspired to by the group, or the cultural view of the nation as imagined by the group. This kind of nationalism is common in new states such as Malaysia and Indonesia, where the indigenous elite, faced with the presence of an influential minority such as the Chinese, seeks to have a greater share of the economy and to dominate the cultural conception of nationhood. But in practice, this nationalistic articulation serves to promote the economic and political interests of the indigenous elite. The communal nationalism we are concerned with here is, of course, not separatist nationalism, which seeks to form a separate state.

On 10 July 2008, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) and Chinese Heritage Centre (CHC) jointly organized an international seminar on the Chinese in Malaysia. It was the second one in the series on “Ethnic Chinese Communities in Southeast Asia”.

The first joint seminar was held in 2007 on “The Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia in the Era of Globalization”. In this second seminar, we chose the topic, Malaysian Chinese, as there had been new developments in Malaysia, especially after the momentous outcome of the March 2008 general election, when the ruling coalition lost its two thirds parliamentary majority for the first time since Malaysia attained Independence. This seminar, therefore, was topical and timely. We invited leading scholars on Malaysia to discuss “Malaysian Chinese: Recent Developments and Prospects”. We selected most of the papers from the seminar and put them together as a book so that they can reach a wider audience. We would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere thanks to the writers for their kind cooperation in revising their papers for publication.

The 8 March 2008 Malaysian general election stunned the incumbent Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition for it was bereft of the two-third parliamentary majority the coalition traditionally has held since the country obtained political independence in 1957. The electoral outcome was considered a tremendous shock to the BN and Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi. Not only did the BN see its share of the popular vote fall to 50.6 per cent, it now also lacked the necessary two-third majority to amend the Malaysian Constitution in Parliament. Indeed, compared with the 2004 general election when the newly appointed Prime Minister Badawi led the BN to its biggest electoral win, the results of the 2008 were shocking.

Do the results of the 2008 general election signify the transformation, albeit transitional, of Malaysia into a two-coalition party system — hence a more “democratic” — wherein the power of the people is truly exercised? Or do the election results simply indicate that things are out of balance? In the Malay dominated politics of Malaysia, what could have caused the sudden shift away from the BN to the opposition, which is composed of the ethnically Chinese-dominated DAP, the multi-ethnic Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), and the religiously inspired PAS? What are the implications for the Malaysian Chinese, who voted overwhelmingly for the opposition? Can the Chinese-based parties, the MCA and the Gerakan, survive into the future?

ELECTION OUTCOME:

2004 VS. 2008

The 2008 election results were all the more startling when compared with the overwhelming and decisively strong BN electoral victory in 2004. A comparison of the breakdown of parliamentary and state seats in 2008 and 2004 (see Table 4.1) will clearly show that all the parties in the BN coalition, even UMNO, lost a sizeable number of parliamentary and state seats in the 2008 vis-à-vis their overwhelming electoral victory in 2004. Although analysts and the Internet political pundits have postulated that the BN would return to power, they were also unanimous in their predictions that the BN votes for the 2008 election would be severely reduced owing to its alienation of the Chinese and Indian voters. This prediction is largely correct as demonstrated by comparing the 2004 and 2008 election results.

This chapter will look at the subject of the education of Malaysian Chinese rather than on Chinese education which focuses mainly on mother-tongue education. Two aspects of education which have preoccupied the Chinese community are mother-tongue education and education opportunities. The Chinese are concerned with these two aspects because of the centrality of education to them as a stepping stone to socio-economic success and a means to transmit and preserve their language and culture. During the colonial period, as an immigrant community, the Chinese saw their educational needs largely ignored by the British so they had to mobilize their own resources to establish mother-tongue schools to educate their young. Later, in the post-colonial period their education was subjected to the UMNO-Malay dominated state ambition to create a centralized education system to facilitate the construction of a Malay-centric nation and, after 1970, expand Malay enrolment at the higher education level. As a result, language and education became fiercely contested issues in independent Malaysia where the Chinese community struggled against the UMNO-Malay dominated state to protect and advance their community's education opportunities and mother-tongue education.

In colonial Malaya, there were limited education opportunities in the colony as the British were reluctant to finance an extensive public school system. For the Malays, the colonial state built a small number of Malaymedium schools mainly to teach them their language, culture, and religion, and to be “better” farmers and fishermen (Stevenson 1975). In a number of urban centres, English schools were founded, in part, to supply Englisheducated Malays, Chinese, and Indians to man the colonial service and British businesses. Malay and English schools in effect constituted the colonial “public” school system. While the indigenous Malays were provided with Malay schools, the British regarded the Chinese as foreigners and did not feel morally obliged to provide schools for them. Chinese individuals, groups, and associations thus mobilized to build mother-tongue schools to educate their children and, up to the first two decades of the twentieth century, these schools were largely funded and administered by the community. But, beginning in the 1920s, the colonial state, feeling threatened by the rising nationalism among the Malayan Chinese, tried to offer financial assistance to Chinese schools in exchange for political control; however, few Chinese schools accepted this bargain.

The emergence of ASEAN 2.0 can best be appreciated through the lenses of international institutions. This study looks at the institutional design of ASEAN 2.0 as part of the broader effort to understand the linkage between the design features of regional institutions and regional integration and community building. It also gives special attention to the constitutive role of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the institutional design of a network organization.

Institutions

International institutions are “explicit arrangements, negotiated among international actors that prescribe, proscribe, and/or authorise behaviour”. The term “institutional design” is understood as “those formal and informal rules and organisational features that constitute the institution and that functions as either the constraints on actor choice or the bare bones of the social environment within which agents interact or both”.

For Klijn and Koppenjan, “Institutional design is aimed at deliberate changes in institutional characteristics of networks.” They are wilful activities that are not tied to “(re)interpretations of actors (creating gradually different understandings of the rules) or more or less conscious ignoring or changing the application of rules”. Institutional design “refers both to the activity of trying to change the institutional features of policy networks, as [well as] to the content of the institutional change that is aimed for”. (italics in the original)

Although actors consciously (and rationally) change the design of institutions (as ASEAN did in signing and implementing the Charter), institutional designs are not “rational designs”. Rather they are:

The actual “shape” of the design of ASEAN 2.0 will be determined by a series of actions and activities by designated actors, as well as the interplay of these actions and activities.

ASEAN faces the challenge of how to evolve into an organization that is capable of effectively and efficiently realizing its goal of regional integration. This study argues that it can be done if ASEAN exploits its character as a network organization. In particular, this study points to the important role ICT plays in responding to the challenge of regional integration and community building. So far, this has been substantiated through a discussion of the role of ICT in three areas:

1. 1) horizontal and vertical coordination;

2. 2) the inclusion of non-government organizations in policy making; and

3. 3) the creation of an ASEAN identity and community.

This section will be devoted to a discussion of ICT and network management.

Scholars have recognized the importance of network management for intergovernmental organizations. Some argue that “inter-organisational networks centralised around a primary coordinating agency — a network administrative organisation — produce better outcomes”. Jordan and Schout, who prefer the term, “network manager”, recognize the importance of this agency “to the stability of the network and to the handling of issues with high transaction costs”.

Jordan and Schout posit that the “network administrative organisation” can act as a “secretary” whose role is to achieve “greater efficiency in decision making” by “gathering and distributing information as part of the benchmarking and peer review exercises”. Or, the organization can serve as network manager — one who “seeks actively to manage coordination in the network”. The network manager arranges and facilitates the “interaction process within networks in such a way that problems of under or non-representation are properly addressed and interests are articulated and dealt with in an open, transparent and balanced manner”. Network management involves three activities:

1. 1) intervening in existing patterns/restructuring of network relations;

2. 2) furthering conditions for cooperation; consensus building; and

3. 3) joint problem solving.

Joaquin Herranz identifies four archetypes of the network manager: reactive facilitator; contingent coordinator; active coordinator; and hierarchical-based network administrator.

From its inception, ASEAN can be viewed as a governance network which, according to Sørensen and Torfing, can be characterized as:

1. • A relatively stable horizontal articulation of interdependent, but operationally autonomous actors;

2. • An organization with actors who interact through negotiations;

3. • An organization whose negotiations take place within a regulative, normative, cognitive, and imaginary framework;

4. • An organization that, to a certain extent, is self-regulating; and

5. • An organization which contributes to the production of public purpose within or across particular policy areas.

Moreover, Hadi Soesastro's description of ASEAN “as a loose form of inter-governmental cooperation that accords highest priority to the preservation of national sovereignty” allows us to view ASEAN from a network perspective.

One reason networks are formed is to “enhance horizontal coordination”, and they are partly held together “by the anticipated gains from resource pooling and joint action and partly by the development of mutual trust that helps to overcome collective action problems”. Take for instance the reasons given by Thanat Khoman for the founding of ASEAN:

States have agreed to coordinate policy for a variety of reasons. In the case of international macro-economic policy from 1945 to 1988, policy-makers had a “preference for coordination based around targeting of exchange rates”. Exchange rates were targeted because: 1) exchange rates stability is important in itself; 2) it helps “dampen fads and speculative bubbles in foreign exchange markets”; and 3) it serves as a discipline on the monetary and fiscal policies of the participating countries.

According to Pelkonen, Teräväinen, and Waltari, vertical policy coordination “refers to managing relationships between various levels of government and proceeding from priority-setting to policy implementation”. On the other hand, horizontal policy coordination refers to the “management of interdependent policies across the state administration”. In this study, vertical policy coordination in ASEAN is synonymous with sectoral policy-making (i.e., the policy-making activities of the various sectoral bodies and processes such as the ASEAN Telecommunications and IT Ministers Meeting (TELMIN) and the ASEAN Meeting of Energy Ministers (AMEM)). Horizontal policy coordination refers to the procedures and offices that are established to ensure that the overall goal of community building is served and that there are minimal overlaps or inconsistencies in the output of the various sectoral bodies and processes.

ASEAN has created new institutions to ensure the implementation of horizontal policy coordination as reflected in its new charter.

One such institution is the ASEAN Coordinating Council, composed of ASEAN foreign ministers, which is specifically tasked to “coordinate the implementation of agreements and decisions of the ASEAN Summit” and “coordinate with the ASEAN Community Councils to enhance policy coherence, efficiency and cooperation among them” (Article 8, Section 2). Like other ASEAN bodies, the ASEAN Coordinating Council is supported by the “relevant senior officials”.

Three ASEAN Community Councils (Political-Security, Economic Community, and Socio-Cultural) were also created. These Community Councils are mandated to “coordinate the work of the different sectors under their purview, and on issues which cut across the other Community Councils”, (Article 9) among other responsibilities.

There are two other ASEAN bodies relevant to horizontal policy coordination: the ASEAN Secretariat and the Committee of Permanent Representatives to ASEAN.

INTRODUCTION

On 20 November 2007, the leaders of the ten states comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed the ASEAN Charter. After forty years of existence, the Southeast Asian intergovernmental organization codified the key principles and purposes of the association through the Charter. Then ASEAN Secretary General Ong Keng Yong declared that the Charter serves the organization in three interrelated ways: it formally accords ASEAN its legal personality; it establishes greater institutional accountability and compliance system; and it reinforces the perception of ASEAN as a serious regional player in the Asia-Pacific region.

Signed with the ASEAN Charter are three blueprints that serve as the pillars of the Association towards building and creating an ASEAN community. The first pillar is the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) blueprint, with the goal of forging economic integration within the region by 2015. The AEC is part of the Association's efforts to “modernise the group's commerce and economic systems to facilitate a better flow of people and goods between countries”. The AEC anticipates the following: a single market and production base; a highly competitive economic region; a region of equitable economic development, and; a region fully integrated into the global economy.

The second pillar of the ASEAN community is the ASEAN Political Security Community (APSC) blueprint. The APSC Blueprint envisages ASEAN as a rules-based community of shared values and norms; a cohesive, peaceful, stable, and resilient region with shared responsibility for comprehensive security; as well as a dynamic and outward-looking region in an increasingly integrated and interdependent world. With the APSC, the members of the community pledge to rely exclusively on peaceful processes in the settlement of intraregional differences. The APSC recognizes that each member country's political security is fundamentally linked to those of the other member countries, as the community is bound by geographic location, common vision, and objectives.

ASEAN 2.0 is an effort to address my two interests: ICT and global governance. ICT — with its ability to overcome distance and time — should be the ideal tool for enhancing collaboration in creating global rules. Yet, ICT is still largely absent in the current literature on increasing stakeholder participation in global governance.

This study is one of eight projects being undertaken by the Pan Asia Network for eGovernance (PANeGOV). PANeGOV is a network of scholars from South and Southeast Asia and is funded by Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The ASEAN Studies Centre, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ASC-ISEAS), Singapore, also supported the conduct of this study. With the ASC-ISEAS behind this project, I had the pleasure of getting another opportunity to work with former ASEAN secretary general and current ASC-ISEAS head, Ambassador Rodolfo C. Severino. In the mid-1990s, I attended ASEAN Senior Official Meetings (SOMs) as a member of the Philippine delegation led by Ambassador Severino.

While my name appears as the author of the study, any text is hardly the product of one person alone. As noted by cultural critic Roland Barthes in Death of the Author, “the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture”. The brief description of the research and writing process that follows will illustrate the collaborations involved in producing this study.

With the help of Mina Peralta, who served as research associate for this study, a first draft was completed at the end of January 2010. Ambassador Severino and Dr Pavin Chachavalpongpun, lead researcher, Political and Strategic Affairs, ASC-ISEAS, read and commented on this draft of the study.

A revised first draft was then made and was reviewed by the following:

1. • Dr Aileen Baviera, Professor, Asian Studies Centre, University of the Philippines — Diliman, the Philippines;

2. • Hans Bayaborda, Business Development Director (ASEAN and India), Oracle Corporation, the Philippines;

3. • Seow Hiong Goh, Executive Director, Global Policy and Government Affairs for Asia Pacific, Cisco, Singapore;

4. • Ramon L. Jocson, Vice-President, IBM Global Technology Services, Asia Pacific, Singapore;

5. • Dr Maria Consuelo Ortuoste, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, California State University East Bay, California, the United States; […]

This study looks at four areas that will be important to the future success of ASEAN:

1. How to use Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to achieve better policy coordination, particularly horizontal and vertical policy coordination;

2. How to use ICT to incorporate non-state actors in regional policy-making, thereby creating a more inclusive regional organization;

3. How to use ICT to develop a regional identity and community; and

4. How to use ICT for ASEAN “network management”, which involves determining the purpose of the network, as well as establishing all the activities and operations to achieve that purpose.

At present, ICT use in the ASEAN organization is largely limited to a web browser and office productivity tools, including email, word processing, and spreadsheets. This study presents several recommendations for ASEAN to take full advantage of the benefits that ICT use offers.

It is argued in this study that ASEAN should examine new software-based conferencing solutions to complement existing face-to-face ASEAN meetings. Moreover, ASEAN can use collaborative software to respond to the challenges of horizontal and vertical policy coordination within the organization.

ICT can also help ASEAN achieve its goal of becoming an inclusive institution of regional governance. eParticipation — the use of ICT for enabling appropriate stakeholder participation in decision making — can enhance stakeholder participation in creating and strengthening ASEAN processes and policies. For instance, the Senior Official Meeting (SOM)'s engagement with ASEAN Institutes of Strategic International Studies network (ASEAN-ISIS) can be bolstered using ICT.

ASEAN should also consider online engagement with “Entities Associated with ASEAN” — approximately seventy-two organizations that support the purposes and principles of the ASEAN Charter.

In terms of promoting inclusive regional governance, it is suggested that ASEAN consider the use of wikis — web pages that anyone with permission can create or edit — as well as blogs — shared online journals also called web logs. Wikis and blogs may be used to widen participation in ASEAN policy development and strengthen people-to-people exchange.