Malaysia is a dysfunctional democracy, in which the ruling UMNO enjoys disproportionate power relative to all other institutions.........

Kobkua Suwannathat-Pian, Palace, Political Party and Power: A Story of the Socio-Political Development of Malay Kingship.

by Greg Lopez, New Mandala

On 6 February 2009, approximately 3,000 Malays protested in the royal town of Kuala Kangsar, demanding that the Perak ruler, Sultan Azlan Shah, dismiss the state’s legislative assembly to pave the way for new state elections. Earlier, Malaysia’s then Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak had extra-constitutionally toppled the popularly elected Pakatan Rakyat state government with the complicity of Perak’s royals.

Never in Malaysian history had there been such a popular uprising against Malay royals as the ensuing protests. This video provides a hint of the likelihood that in a new Malaysia the most significant threat to the Malay rulers’ fetish for power will come not from the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) but from ordinary Malays.

Kobkua Suwannathat-Pian serves as professor of history and senior fellow in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris. She ranks among the most renowned and respected historians of modern Thailand. The latest of her many books, Palace, Political Party and Power: A story of the Socio-Political Development of Malay Kingship, sees her turn her attention to the history of modern Malaysia to provide a cogent analysis of the relationship between UMNO and the Malay rulers in their common quest for power. The book’s timing is opportune, as it comes at a moment at which each of these institutions, UMNO and Malay kingship, confronts a decline in its legitimacy within a seriously divided Malay community. Palace, Political Party and Power represents a valuable addition to the literature not only on the relationship between the Malay rulers and UMNO, but also on that between the Malay rulers and UMNO on the one hand and their “subjects” – the Malays of Peninsular Malaysia – on the other. Even more significantly, it treats an important and neglected dimension of Malaysian politics – the impact of the Malay rulers on the country’s affairs.

Palace, Political Party and Power traces the socio-political development of the institution of Malay rulership, from the beginning of colonial times, when the Malay rulers lost power but not prestige; through the Japanese Occupation, when they lost both; to the restoration of the rulers’ prestige – thanks to the new Malay elites – at independence; and in the ebbs and flows since. In narrating this story, the book achieves three principal ends. First, it reaffirms conventional analysis holding that the British residential system in colonial Malaya had great significance in modernising the institution of Malay rulership towards the constitutional monarchy of today’s Malaysia. Second, it argues persuasively that it was the Japanese Occupation of Malaya that provided the platform for new Malay elites – whose members would become the leading lights of UMNO – to take the leadership of the Malay masses away from the Malay rulers but in the process also to restore the prestige of those rulers. Third, and most important, almost seventy percent of Palace, Political Party and Power focuses on the complex relationship – one of competition for and cooperation in power – between the country’s two leading Malay institutions, UMNO and the rulers.

Kobkua Suwannathat-Pian’s central argument is that the Japanese Occupation of Malaya and Japanese policies towards the Malay rulers, the new Malay elites, and the Malay community had, more than any other factor, the effect of stripping the Malay royal institution of its “aura”, “mystique”, “grandeur” and “authority.” In consequence, Malay rulership no longer commanded the fear or undisputed reverence of members of the post-1945 Malay elite. Malaya’s Japanese occupiers, through their treatment of the Malay rulers, revealed those rulers’ impotence, their inability to defend themselves, and also their lack of the capacity to defend the interests of their subjects – the rakyat. This reality made clear to the burgeoning new Malay elite, which the Japanese also developed, that the existence of Malay royal institutions depended very much on the good will of those in power. It provided that new elite with a valuable lesson for dealing with difficult members of the royalty during the post-1945 period.

Furthermore, Palace, Political Party and Power argues, Japan’s policy of inculcating Malay society with a certain variant of Japanese values through education had the unintended effect of strengthening the Malays as one community, sharing one language and one religion. Many Malay youths were sent to schools – ordinary schools, teacher training schools, and leadership schools (kurenjo). In the leadership schools, Malay students were taught by means of an exhausting daily routine to appreciate and to live by Nippon seishin, or the Japanese spirit. This exposure to Japanese values had the profound effect of changing some Malays’ outlook on life, and above all of exorcising the narrow socio-political parochialism that had previously divided the Malays into subjects of different rulers owing allegiance to different sultanates. The Japanese Occupation of Malaya also toughened members of the new Malay elite, as both the British and the Malay rulers would learn so dramatically after Imperial Japan’s defeat.

Comments (4)..

written by Eskay345, September 10, 2011 14:55:12

Malaysians are a very lucky lot although the tax-payers in the country are in a continual depressed state in having to support three entities that can be written into the Book of World Records, despite being a very small country:

a. the government with the largest cabinet of ministers and some with multiple deputy ministers.

b. the highest percentage of civil (government) -servants among the working population.

c. the country that has about 25% of the world's ruling monach . ...

written by educationist, September 10, 2011 11:26:02

"In fact, Malaysia is a dysfunctional democracy, in which the ruling UMNO enjoys disproportionate power relative to all other institutions." - let's hope GE13 will correct this imbalance somewhat!!

Trust a foreign academician to call a spade, one:"Sultan Azlan Shah and the Perak regent Raja Nazrin, ...new breed of monarchs who are competent and... are now treated as outcasts by a significant number of people in their own state of Perak and by Malaysians in general."

I hope GE13 will show these 2 hypocrites what the rakyat of Perak thing of them conniving with the UMNOputras to deny them the right to the govt. of their choice!! ...

written by temenggong, September 10, 2011 10:31:28

Thank you for this, the esteemed Prof Kobkua Suwannathat-Pian's introduction of new dimensions of shifts of power in Malays is most innovative in ideas.

None of us saw it in that way. I guess sometimes it takes a detached outsider to see things in new perspectives.

...

written by Nunudada, September 10, 2011 08:26:06

At the end of the day,the whole instuition of Royalty is a Showpiece on a Mantle.Tax payers are having to maintain their glitter.Constituitional Monarchy does not render them Powerless as it is assumed.Queen Elizabeth is one of the biggest shareholders in BP Oil.

Large Corporations ,including several Banks control the politics of this world.They determine where a war needs to be commenced,where social volatility needs to be maintained and even where famine and death needs to be propagated.Hence,they are very much in the ruling process except that they are doing it invisibly from the boardroom.

In Malaysia too we can see how corporations are controlling the Government today.They are funding all aspects of activities to ensure a certain candidate or party helms the nation.In return they are assured free access to Malaysia's purse.

This is a sad reality that is going on world wide.The people a.k.a.Slaves,need to wake up and start instituiting their will to shatter this current global paradigm of administration and replace it with one where the ruling class will be under meaningful restraint,to prevent pilferage of a nation's wealth.