Tsunami: the political one and climate change

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Political change: worldwide trend

Malaysia's political sea change
March 9, 2008

Malaysians awoke today to the biggest sea change in politics in almost 40 years, with opposition Islamists and reformists winning control of five states and giving the Government a humiliating wake-up call.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's multi-racial Barisan Nasional coalition (BN) won just a simple majority in Parliament, and his future as leader is in doubt after he watched a record majority collapse to the weakest level ever.

His predecessor, Mahathir Mohamad, urged him to quit.

"He should accept responsibility," said Mahathir who now says he made a mistake in picking Abdullah as his successor and that the current deputy premier, Najib Razak, should have taken over.

Mahathir, who led the ruling United National Malays Organisation (UMNO), which leads the BN, for 22 years before stepping down in 2003, lashed out after the coalition's worst performance in history.

"My view is he has destroyed UMNO, destroyed the BN and he has been responsible for this," Mahathir told reporters.

The streets were unusually quiet today, with many older Malaysians fearful of trouble.

The last time the coalition suffered a heavy setback, in 1969, race riots erupted.

Barisan has effectively ruled since independence from Britain in 1957.

"I am shocked. It feels Malaysia is a whole new country. It feels like it has been reborn," Daniel Sia, a 27-year-old civil engineer, said as he did some shopping in the capital.

Lai Yee Fei, 28, who works at a coffee bar beneath Kuala Lumpur's soaring twin towers, said she was glad that Malaysia now had a strong opposition to press the Government.

"It's good to give some pressure for Barisan Nasional," she said.

"If the opposition parties can stand up for us, on behalf of us, I think it's good."

Abdullah, who only four years ago led the coalition to a record election victory on a wave of hope for change, faced a bleak political future today, his aides stunned but not willing to concede that he must step down.

"Frankly, this is not really the time because a lot of component parties [of Barisan] have been decimated," one close aide said, declining to be identified.

"We have lost a few people and I think it's time to consolidate."

Abdullah's humbling performance nationally - the coalition ended up with 62 per cent of federal seats, down from 90 per cent previously - was compounded by the fact that his own home state, the industrial heartland of Penang, fell to the opposition.

The leftist Chinese-backed Democratic Action Party (DAP) won Penang, the hub for Malaysia's electronics industry, which accounts for about half of exports.

The opposition Islamist party PAS scored shock victories in the northern heartland states of Kedah and Perak and easily retained power in its stronghold in north-eastern Kelantan state.
DAP and PAS also joined the People's Justice Party, or Parti Keadilan, to take control of the industrial state of Selangor and almost all the seats in capital Kuala Lumpur.

Political experts and economists wondered aloud whether the Barisan government could now pursue its agenda, including plans for $US325 billion ($351.5 billion) in development zones across the country.

Without a two-thirds parliamentary majority, Barisan can no longer change the constitution or make some key appointments and could struggle to alter electoral boundaries, powers that the opposition have long maintained were abused by Barisan.

"This is probably not good news for the equity market or the ringgit," said Tim Condon, Singapore-based head of Asia research for investment bank ING.

The pro-government media, Abdullah's cheer-leader during the campaign, changed tack today, urging Barisan to ensure better job and education opportunities in the multi-racial nation.
Malaysia is largely a mix of ethnic Malays, which make up about 55 per cent of the population, and ethnic Chinese and Indians, who account for about a third.

A protest vote from Chinese and Indians, upset over what they saw as racial inequality in terms of business, job and education opportunities, had been expected.

The Indians were merciless, voting out the leader of the coalition's Indian component party and handing a seat to an Indian activist now in detention.

But Malays, who are all Muslims and traditionally support Barisan in good times and bad, completed a perfect storm for the Government, handing the opposition Islamists a record vote in what was perceived as a protest against rising prices.

"Tomorrow we will start building a brighter future," said opposition icon Anwar Ibrahim, de facto leader of Parti Keadilan, which emerged as the biggest opposition party in federal parliament with 31 seats.

"This is a new dawn for Malaysia."

Anwar, a Malay and former deputy premier, is widely seen as the only politician who could unify the ideologically divided opposition into a coherent and credible political force, though many political experts see this an almost possible task.

Anwar was banned from standing in the elections because of a criminal record - he spent six years in jail until 2004 on what he called trumped-up charges - but is expected to take over his old seat from his wife, who has held it since his 1998 jailing.

Results from the elections commission late today showed the National Front with 137 seats in the 222-seat Parliament versus 82 for the opposition, with three seats still being tallied.

Reuters, AFP

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/03/09/1204998272533.html

Kenya

The Kenya public needs to see progress
Story by KEN OUKO
Publication Date: 3/30/2008
Kenneth Boulding authored these famous words back in 1970 in reference to a Europe stuck at the crossroads. He cautioned that what Europe required most was progress but that the feeling of progress had to seep through to the public, be felt by the public and, by subsequence, endorsed by the public. This is the point our two crest-wave leaders are missing.

The Kenyan public needs to be imbued with a sense of progress. The Kenyan public needs to feel a part of this progress. We need to indulge in the renewal of hope clad in the attire of progress.
Oxford Concise offers a variety of definitions of the word public, the most relevant of which is “of or engaged in the affairs or service of the people.” The immediate implication here is that whatever leaders do, it ought to be for the good of the people they serve. In Kenya it seems to be the opposite. What the leaders do seems to be for their own good and for the good of their advisers.

Sociologists, on the other hand, define the public as “a large collectivity of persons with effective inter-member communication regarding an ongoing issue, event or person.” The public plays a critical role in determining who governs them and the pursuant quality of such governance.
Recent Kenyan history has revealed that it doesn’t matter what the declared outcome of an election is until there is public consensus about the mandate to govern. It has also revealed that public sentiment can easily rubbish procedurally endorsed legitimacy given to a leader by existing institutionalised methods.

Global history also teaches that leaders who undermine the need for public goodwill do so at their fatalistic peril. Sadly, this appears to be the precipice President Kibaki and PM-Designate Odinga seem to be dangling their fortunes on.

For, as long as our country has a leadership that seems insensitive to public sentiment, we will never experience change in the true form of the concept.

A sociologist’s take on change is that it must entail two prime components -- progress and an evolved mindset.

The benefits of such progress must be appreciated by the governed public while the transformation of mindset must be exhibited by the leadership. This is the current mouse-trap fix we, as a country, find ourselves in.

The Kenyan public is increasingly becoming disenchanted with its leadership while the leadership is unflinchingly exhibiting a rigidity of mindset that is almost pathological.
Our leaders cannot pretend to have inhaled fresh breath and exhaled steamy hope from the Kofi Annan-led mediation process when their mindsets remain collectively sandwiched between political rigmarole and rhetorical gerrymandering.

What our leaders are putting us through is not very different from inviting the whole world to witness the spectacle of a serial rapist graduate with an exemplary PhD in Gynaecology.
The PNU outfit in particular does not seem to care much for public perception or sentiment.
To even suggest a bloated cabinet at this point in our history is to deliberately stir negative public perception.

Of particular wonder is how a president who has recently been on the mend with the Kenyan public as a man with the interests of the nation at heart can succumb to the avaricious interests of those surrounding him by suggesting the creation of absurdly christened ministries for their comfort.

From the onset of the coalition agreement, observers immediately became aware of the president’s dilemma especially in regard to the incorporation of ODM-K into the PNU side of the bread.

The President needs to realise that ODM is not necessarily composed of angels but his PNU side is suddenly making the ODM brigade look heavenly, which is bad for business. For as long as our leaders remain caught in the spinney-web of combative mindsets and the tiring rhetoric of reductionism, this country will simply never experience meaningful change.

It is hard to name any Kenyan leader in all 44 years of independence with the ideological originality of Napoleon Bonaparte, the pragmatism of Muammar Gaddafi, the fieriness of Fidel Castro or the charisma of Nelson Mandela.

Such is the dearth of leadership quality in Kenya that one has to scratch his head trying to locate a leader who could have or who will lead us into the new Kenya we all thirst for.
A revolution need not be a bloody and violent affair. Modern revolutions simply imply a complete overhaul of the political and economic structures of a nation complete with the transformative social existence that follows such overhaul by natural subsequence.

Only last week, I was cheering the constructive symbolism hidden in Minister Amos Kimunya’s proclamation of goodwill from Mr Odinga. Days later, Mr Odinga contemptuously dismissed Mr Kimunya as unqualified to speak on his behalf.

Meanwhile, as Mr Kimunya is dismissing Prof Anyang’ Nyong’o’s concerns as the whimpering of a misguided individual, ODM MPs are giving ultimatums to Education Minister Sam Ongeri to nullify the KCSE examination results. When did the new-found spirit of joint leadership evaporate?

Ken Ouko is a sociology lecturer at the University of Nairobi