Dr Lim and the unchanging face of Malaysian politics — Ooi Kee Beng
By the time he retired in 1990, he had been in electoral politics for close to 40 years.
Aside from his legacy of modernising Penang in the 1970s and 1980s, his struggles manifested in no uncertain terms several dimensions of Malaysian politics which are as relevant today as ever before.
Firstly, there is the tricky relationship between local and national politics. His initial arena for politics was local. In 1951, his Penang Radical Party won the first municipal council election held in Malaya. In joining the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) in 1955 after his party had been defeated by the newly-formed Alliance, he seemed convinced that his future was in national politics.
Just before Merdeka in August 1957, he was asked to become the first chief minister of Penang. He refused, citing the Confucian reason that his father had just died and so he could not accept high office. Some people suspected he was waiting for better offers at the national level.
The following year, he was chosen to head the “moderates” in a bid for the party presidency. He succeeded, apparently with strong support from the MCA divisions in Singapore.
Although pro-Alliance, he publicly demanded in 1959 of Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman that the MCA be given a third of the seats to contest in the coming first general election after independence. The Tunku stood his ground, which in effect left Dr Lim with no option but to resign from the party.
Dr Lim went on to form his own national party in 1962, the United Democratic Party. Significantly, the UDP had successes at the local level, but not nationally.
His decision to join Singapore’s People’s Action Party and others to form the non-communal Malaysian Solidarity Council in 1965 led nowhere. With Singapore’s separation from the federation soon after that, the forces seeking an alternative to race-based politics were in tatters, and had to regroup.
Dr Lim helped form another new national party in 1968, Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia.
This one had immediate electoral success in 1969 — but ironically, due to the sea change in politics following the race riots of May 13, the end result saw Dr Lim becoming Penang state’s chief minister 12 years after he had first refused it.
Communal politics
The second dimension is the struggle between communal and non-communal party politics. The Alliance model of putting communal-based parties under a coalitional umbrella was an electoral triumph, and this put great pressure on parties and politicians whose convictions were more non-communal in nature to come up with something more attractive and politically viable.
Given the strong communal consciousness of the population, it was always difficult for nominally non-communal parties in Malaysia to win votes, especially outside urban and semi-urban areas.
Dr Lim experienced that first hand, and when he finally succeeded in gaining substantial and sustained power, it was by joining the Alliance to form the Barisan Nasional in 1972. But in doing that, his political arena shrank from the national stage to the local.
More importantly, the non-communal principles of the Gerakan, over time, became effectively subsumed under the communal politics of the BN.
Throughout the last 40 years, we also see how the national stage, through various measures undertaken by the federal government, expanded greatly to limit effectively the power of the states.
The central overpowers the local, the communal the non-communal.
Thirdly, divisions within communal groups tend to be as deep and as hostile as those between these groups.
One could argue that it was this inability to unite on the part of small non-communal parties that convinced Dr Lim that, in the end, if he wanted anything done, he had to compromise with the communal parties, and then hope for the best.
This is tied to the fourth dimension worth noting. Malaysian politics tend to be personality-driven. This may be a common phenomenon in new nations, where the population started off without experience of politics or sufficient literacy.
But after 50 years, this style of politics in Malaysia reveals an unfortunate immaturity that can only be blamed on the authoritarianism of post-independence politics, and the centralist strategies of communal politics. — Today
* The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. His latest book on Malaysia is “Between UMNO and a Hard Place: The Najib Razak Era Begins” (Refsa & ISEAS).
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