Comments on: Krugman on Mahathir

By: dsquared

dsquared — Mon, 27 Oct 2003 10:29:21 +0000

Conrad, Doug; My criterion for “Islamic state” is whether it has sharia courts.

By: Doug Muir

Doug Muir — Thu, 23 Oct 2003 07:18:27 +0000

“Straw man, Doug. I did’t say the worst case scenario is civil war or chaos in Malaysia” No, you didn’t. Dan did: “such a Malaysian government would last about three months before the political system fell apart and several hundred thousand ethnic Chinese were massacred.” As to the power shifts under way in Malaysia, I certainly agree that they could cause political strife. However, it seems unlikely that the Malays are going to end up with a non-Malay-majority government. As you correctly point out, the system is gerrymandered to support rural Malays. UMNO may lose Malay votes to other parties, but there will still be far more Malay representatives than Indian or Chinese, and the PM will most certainly be a Malay. You might end up with UMNO either imploding or being forced out of office, and an opposition coalition taking power… but, you know, that’s what democracy is about. Thailand has had several peaceful changes of government, and even Indonesia has had at least one. I really don’t see why Malaysia should be unable to handle it. I note that neither Quebec nor Israel saw any internal violence after their elections, while the violence in Fiji long predated the election in question. Point being, I find the blood-in-the-streets scenario farfetched, and a pretty weak reed for either Krugman or Dan to lean upon. Doug M.

By: Jason McCullough

Jason McCullough — Thu, 23 Oct 2003 03:54:42 +0000

Man, the right is seriously blowing a gasket over this one; Luskin’s completely insane today.

By: Ikram Saeed

Ikram Saeed — Thu, 23 Oct 2003 00:16:03 +0000

Straw man, Doug. I did’t say the worst case scenario is civil war or chaos in Malaysia. I said that a Chinese and Indian dominated government would have its legitimacy questioned (by Malays). The result would likely be a BN loss of power (which is a disaster scenario for Mahathir. I’m agnostic). Until recently, UMNO had no serious competition for Malay votes. And the opposition party, DAP, was Chinese dominated. But in 1999, the PAS almost tripled its share of seats, entirely at UMNO’s expense (which went from 91 to 71 seats). At the same time, the chinese component of BN, the MCA, held its own and the chinese opposition DAP lost seats. The net effect was to increase the influence of Chinese and Indians in BN, and decrease the influence of UMNO. Should this trend continue. the MCA and MIC may demand the government reasses the Bumiputra affirmative action policy. If that happens, I expect that Malays will defect en masse to a party that will defend their interests (PAS, or maybe keadilean). Given the way Malaysia is Gerrymandered to favour rural Malays, a party that gets two-third of the bumiputra vote (40% of overall vote) and none of the Chinese of Indian vote could form the government. It’s a real possibility, and though I don’t expect civil war, it would cause political strife. Even the first stage, a MCA/MIC controlled government will cause trouble. In Israel, Rabin came under criticism because he did not have a Jewish majority. And in Quebec, the defeat of the 1995 referendum was criticized because it had received a Francophone majority . And of coure, Fiji saw a coup when an Indo-Fijian was elected. Majority communities do not cede power without complaints. I don’t know of Jew-hating will win votes in Terengannu or Kelantan or Perlis. I could see Mahathir thinking that it, along with anti-white and anti-western rhetoric could bolster UMNO’s prospects among rural Malays.

By: Doug Muir

Doug Muir — Wed, 22 Oct 2003 20:50:50 +0000

I took the trouble of checking out the Malaysian Statistics Office website (www.statistics.gov/my). Turns out the proportion of Malaysians self-identifying as Muslim is actually even lower than I thought—just 60.4%. (The next largest groups are Buddhist, about 20%, and Christian, a bit over 9%.) In terms of ethnicity, about 65% are ‘bumiputra’, while 26% are Chinese and 7.7% are Indian. ‘Bumiputra’ means Malay in the broad sense, but it also includes several indigenous peoples who speak non-Malay languages and may not consider themselves ‘Malay’. The figure for Malay Malays seems to be around 60%. Point here is, I wonder if the apocalyptic vision of a Malay-Chinese race war is really all that plausible. Yeah, the Chinese have traditionally been the victims of pogroms all across the region, most recently in Indonesia in 1997-8. But the Chinese are about 2-3% of the population of Indonesia. When you start talking about 26% of your population, that’s not a pogrom; it’s a civil war. And one whose outcome is by no means a foregone conclusion. Nor is it IMO a foregone conclusion, or even particularly obvious, that there /would/ be a war. Thailand has a large Chinese minority, too, and they’ve gotten along just fine for many years now. So, the argument that ‘Mahathir has to appease the extreme Islamists as part of his complex balancing act, without which Malaysia would likely collapse into rahowa chaos’ seems a bit weak to me. Doug M.

By: Ikram Saeed

Ikram Saeed — Wed, 22 Oct 2003 19:47:59 +0000

Dr.M is on his way out, but he still has an interest in maintaining the hegemony of his party—the Barisan National, and it’s most important constituent, the United Malay National Organization. I’m suprised nobody has mentioned the rising strength of the Islamic party among Malays. UMNO’s share of the Malay vote has been steadily declining,a nd the BN is increasingly reliant on its Chinese and Indian components. Should BN no longer be Malay dominated, it’s legitimacy would be questioned. Mahathir can’t out-compete the religious paty on piety. He can, however, attract votes from that party by using anti-semitism. Maybe Jew-hatred is the only way a secularist can win votes away from the Godly parties. (I’m not excusing, just explaining.) Ikram Saeed (k312)

By: Conrad Barwa

Conrad Barwa — Wed, 22 Oct 2003 18:36:17 +0000

Hmm, interesting, I was going by Daniel’s (very meticoulous) phrasing which made is very clear that we were talking about the lack of non-failed states in the “Islamic world”. In anycase, English is not my mother tongue so maybe I am missing something here but the phrase “modern and Islamic” seems to by logicial definition exclude Turkey since it might be modern but it is not Islamic.

By: Doug Muir

Doug Muir — Wed, 22 Oct 2003 16:16:48 +0000

Dan’s phrase was “a society which is both modern and Islamic”. Only about 65% of Malaysians are Muslims, BTW. In Turkey, it’s more like 95%. Doug M.

By: Conrad Barwa

Conrad Barwa — Wed, 22 Oct 2003 16:07:10 +0000

Turkey is not an Islamic state; Malaysia and Morocco are Islamic states. There is a significant difference. Secularism was imposed from above in Turkey through Attaturk’s modernisation programme and has been kept in place by the military elite since (in a manner not too dissimilar from Algeria, with some differences) and as such I would argue that there is a democratic deficit to Turkish secularism that is as yet unresolved.

By: novakant

novakant — Wed, 22 Oct 2003 13:57:23 +0000

Chris, I’m not sure what the level of discourse at Bristol Unversity is, but I’m pretty sure you would never tell one of your students he was behaving “like a tosser” in front of the whole class, even if that student had made some snide (but not insulting ad hominem) remarks, as Dan Hardie has sure done. If you did say something like this the whole class would jump at you and you would probably have to face disciplinary consequences. So why don’t you just admit that your choice of words was over the top and insulting and be done with it? I simply don’t agree that ad hominem insults are “perhaps” allowed, just because the medium is the internet.

By: Doug Muir

Doug Muir — Wed, 22 Oct 2003 13:57:17 +0000

Given the amount of “M-analysis” in this thread, I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned what’s probably the most important and relevant fact about Mahathir: namely, that he’s outta here. After more than twenty years of running the country, Mahathir will retire in another ten days. His hand-picked successor will take office on November 1. This renders rather questionable IMO Dan’s assumption that he’s playing to the Malaysian peanut gallery. The man is on his victory lap; there’s no need for him to appease his country’s hardline Islamists, or, indeed, anyone else. I think he’s positioning himself as an Elder Statesman, myself—and not (or not just) for Malaysia. Yeah, he turned down the Presidency of the Conference of Islamic States, but that’s just plain good sense… it’s a useless talking shop, and always has been. But he’ll find plenty of other venues in which to make his views known. IOW we have not, I assure you, heard the last of Dr. Mahathir; if anything he’ll be louder and more visible than ever. And I think this, not ‘red meat thrown to Islamists’, is what he’s really on about. Doug M.

By: drapetomaniac

drapetomaniac — Wed, 22 Oct 2003 12:33:27 +0000

I disagree with the commenters who think that Mahathir’s remarks on Jews are somehow ‘necessary’ to maintain the peace. If I were living in Malaysia and he were my political leader, or if Malaysia were a country with any kind of Jewish population who are at risk, it would be important to be vocally and emphatically critical about his conspiratorial thinking. However, for those of us in the Western world to focus on that aspect of his speech is to miss its importance, and to reveal oneself to the Muslim world as much less interested in Malaysia or the Muslim world than in correct attitudes towards Jews. It’s a matter of emphasis, really, and to react to a speech that inter alia implies that Jews manipulate by the world into focusing only on what’s good for the Jews by then focusing solely on this stray comment being not good for the Jews is not very good strategy, imo. In sum, I think Krugman got the emphasis just right. The best solution is for right-thinking Malaysians to correct Mahathir’s demagoguery, rather than for it to be imposed from abroad.

By: Doug Muir

Doug Muir — Wed, 22 Oct 2003 12:27:12 +0000

“I’m not trying to morally exonerate Mahathir. But he’s the only example we’ve got of a leader of a non-failed Islamic state… Malaysia is one of the countries which has done best in creating a society which is both modern and Islamic.” So much of Malaysia’s economic dynamism comes from its very large (and non-Islamic) Chinese minority that I would really hesitate to use it as a shining example of ‘a society that is both modern and Islamic’. The part that’s most modern is not Islamic, and the most Islamic part is… less modern, and quite noticeably so. Turkey is really a much more relevant model. They’re three times as big as Malaysia, and have no large non-Islamic minorities (any more). Turkey’s pcGDP is about 75% of Malaysia’s… but if you index out Malaysia’s Chinese, most or all of that difference disappears. Turkey is also notable as a Muslim country that’s not particularly anti-Semitic. Yes, there is anti-Semitism in Turkey, but it’s at least an order of magnitude less virulent than in any Arab country. I note in passing that more than 300,000 Israelis take vacations in Turkey every year. It’s literally impossible to imagine any Turkish leader making a speech like Mahathir’s. Just to give one fairly well known example, Tayyip Erdogan made some relatively mild anti-Semitic remarks back when he was Mayor of Istanbul (“the image of the Jews is now no better than that of the Nazis”). These were introduced as evidence against him in his subsequent trial for ‘attempting to undermine the Constitution’—Turkey’s constitution not only makes it a secular state, but explicitly protects religious minorities, of which Jews are one. Erdogan spent several months in jail and has repeatedly recanted the statements. Putting aside the well known strategic partnership between Turkey and Israel, mainstream Turkish politicians simply don’t consider it appropriate to indulge in anti-semitism. Nor does the Turkish electorate seem inclined to punish them for this. Doug M.

By: Dan Hardie

Dan Hardie — Wed, 22 Oct 2003 12:23:27 +0000

The fact that you don’t remember your own posts is evidence that I don’t pay attention to other people? Eh? No, I’d say I was complaining about a couple of other things: one is your reaching for bathetic wannabe-street language when someone disagrees with you (‘ere, look, tosser- I’m a rock ‘ard geezer from ver Bristol Uni posse’) and the other would be your subsequent accusation that the person you were doing your Rude Kid impression on was the one who was lowering the tone.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Wed, 22 Oct 2003 12:05:27 +0000

Ah, I see, it was in my Tarzan post the other day. More evidence that you don’t attend to what other people say, Dan. That was in a quotation (hence the displayed text) from someone else. Are your just complaining I wasn’t nitpicking enough to point that out?