Malaysia facing a crisis, but what else is new?
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- Category: UMNO
A common refrain in Malaysia is that politics enters a critical period every ten years or so. But in truth, crises come to Kuala Lumpur (and now to Putrajaya) more regularly than that. A speedy assessment may suggest the riots of 1969 to be the first crisis after independence in 1957, followed by conflicts within UMNO in the late 1970s, and then the inter-ethnic tensions that led to the detention of 106 Malaysians under the infamous Operasi Lalang in 1987 alongside the demise of the old UMNO and the sacking of top judges. Then came the 1997 financial crisis of course, developing a year later into the sacking of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and the formation of the Reformasi movement. For the ruling coalition, this train of events led to shockingly bad electoral results in 1999. [First published in www.opinionasia.com on 16 January 2008 as "Political change in Malaysia: Contextualising reality"]
