On Malaysian PM's Visit and the GPH-MILF Framework Agreement

Reference to Rappler news report: "Why Malaysian PM's visit matters" 

"Why Malaysian PM's visit matters".... I think that Najib's visit in the Philippines matters more for his and UMNO's political survival in the upcoming general elections in Malaysia than for the prospects for success of the GPH-MILF Framework Agreement. 

There's really the need to shatter the dominant myth among Muslim Filipinos and many other Filipinos, including the media and analysts, about Malaysia's purported success story as a predominantly Muslim, developmental, and harmonious multicultural society. With due respect to the esteemed peace advocate and scholar Atty Sol Santos, with whom I'm in touch in 2003-2004 when I was working for peace and development concerns in Muslim Mindanao, I would like to put his statement in a proper context: 

“There are lessons from the Malaysian experience relevant to a solution of the Bangsamoro problem: federalism, Islamic institutions, multiculturalism, the bumiputra (indigenous Malays) policy of affirmative action, and the sultanate as an institution,” he said.

We must realize that these so-called "Malaysian-style solutions" — federalism, Islamic institutions, multiculturalism, New Economic Policy (NEP) or the affirmative action of bumiputeraism, and the sultanate system —  have been pursued for more than half a century now in Malaysia through conflict-ridden, socially unjust, repressive, and hierarchical ways and means within the system, norms, institutions, and practices of heavy-handed authoritarianism, scandalous elitism, excessive crony capitalism, gross racism, and hypocritical religionism. So what can the Philippine government and the Bangsamoro learn from the Malaysian experience? Well, nothing substantive on what-to-dos, but much more on what-not-to-dos! 

Some of my modest reflections on "what not to do" so as to contribute to the success of the GPH-MILF Framework Agreement are:

• not to regard Malaysia under the UMNO regime as an exemplar of peace and development with modern Islamic ethos and institutions for the planned Bangsamoro region;
• not to imperiously deny the cultural capacity of our very own Muslim Filipino brethren and the peoples of Mindanao, including the lumads, to create humane, just, and sustainable (alternative) communities and economies toward what they perceive to be as a good life;
• not to come up with policies or actions that are devoid of context, history, culture, and integrity; and
• not to forget the lessons of the earlier Final Peace Agreement of the Philippine Government with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), in which many salient provisions have not been met by the government and in which many of the former rebels have become elites themselves in the mainstream society and unfortunately abandoned their old yet legitimate 'revolutionary' or 'reform' causes and ideals for the peoples of Muslim Mindanao and the entire Philippine archipelago.

Peace and hope!

Postscripts:

(1) See Sol Santos' "Dynamics and Directions of the Peace Negotiations Between the Philippine Government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front" (24 September 2004) where he acknowledged some documents I provided for his research (footnote 111). 

(2) Here are excerpts from a sub-section of my thesis on "Najib's 1Malaysia: Political Doublespeak and the Economic Strategy for Global Competitiveness": 

Najib took over the premiership from Abdullah with, notably, [a] the party mandate to regain UMNO’s dominance; [b] the ethnic Islam and Malay agenda for continued political and socio-economic privileges; [c] the capitalist development objective to immediately overcome the challenges of the global economic crisis and to realize the long-term Vision 2020; and [d] a personal interest in crafting his own legacy in Malaysia’s history. As a strategic step towards addressing these demands and objectives, especially the attainment of the latter, Najib (2009b) launched the concept 1Malaysia or ‘1Malaysia: People First, Performance Now’ as a key pillar to his government’s agenda for ‘national transformation’. The methods by which the 1Malaysia concept is being articulated and executed as a socio-political, economic, and electoral project evoke of the usual modus operandi of authoritarian liberalism attuned to the regime’s interests in maintaining the status quo vis-à-vis the current circumstances of the amplified social conflicts and the exigencies of the global and domestic economy. 

What is happening in the present conjuncture in the post-Mahathir and post-Abdullah Malaysian political economy under Najib is complex and can be epoch-making whether at: the level of electoral politics; the attempts to revise or perhaps end the NEP; the further entrenchment of reactionary, racist forces in UMNO; the increasing irrelevance (except at an instrumental level) of the ‘Chinese’ and ‘Indian’ parties in the BN coalition; an opposition with the huge advantage of the public’s perception of the government’s hopelessness and yet fraught with its own internal problems, and the impact of the global crisis for domestic restructuring. Nevertheless, 1Malaysia is intended and being presented as a continuation of UMNO-BN hegemony since independence—which includes the past development agendas of Najib’s father Abdul Razak, his benefactor Mahathir, and his predecessor Abdullah. As Najib (2009c) has asserted: ‘1Malaysia does not reject our past in order to secure our future. Rather it is a clear reaffirmation of the “documents of destiny” that have shaped this great nation and bound it together since our Independence – the Federal Constitution, the Rukun Negara, the guiding principles of the NEP, Wawasan 2020 and the National Mission’ (cf. Chapter II). During the launching of 1Malaysia’s Government Transformation Program (GTP) where both Mahathir and Abdullah were present, Najib (2010b) proclaimed ‘that [his] government is not a new government, but a continuity … because the ultimate objective is … to achieve Vision 2020’.... 

.... A close examination of Najib’s ‘Special Malaysia Day Message’ where he announced the repeal of the ISA, the lifting of emergency proclamations, and the amendment of other undemocratic measures would reveal his political doublespeak as regards democratization whereby he attempted to make a differentiation between the aspirations of the people for democracy and the imperative of the state for social order. Speaking with a Lincolnian rhetoric, Najib (2011) claimed: [a] to have realized ‘that the reality in Malaysia has changed’, [b] to have been ‘feeling the pulse, agitation and aspiration of the rakyat [people] who clamour for a more open and dynamic democracy, where the opinions, ideas and concerns of the masses are given due attention’; and [c] to have the aim ‘to be at par with other democratic systems in the world which are underscored by the universal principle from the people, by the people and for the people’. However, to Najib’s mind and from the perspective of the state he governs, the peoples’ aspiration for democracy has to be sidelined by post-9/11 security concerns and subsumed under the doctrine of the protection of authority as the raison d’état. Najib (2011) justifies the legitimacy of this authoritarian disposition by: 

[a] arguing it as a ‘global truth’ (i.e., the objective of national security ‘unavoidably … demands special measures which sometimes are outside the democratic norms’ such as ‘preventive detention’); 

 [b] basing it on ‘Islamic law’ (i.e., the principle of Usul Fiqah on ‘the need to prevent a wrongdoing from occurring’ and the principle ‘that the decision of the ruler is a trust which must be implemented for the people being governed for their general benefit’); and 

 [c] presenting it as a normally empirical reality (i.e., ‘not something strange, unusual or alien’ because in the 9/11 aftermath ‘[i]t has been proven that developed democratic countries such as the United States of America and the United Kingdom had also enacted special legislative framework to deal with terrorist threats’).... 

.... The outcomes of the unfolding domestic political contestations against UMNO-BN hegemony and the ramifications of the global economic crisis for the domestic economy can be regarded as crucial determinants as to whether or not Najib’s 1Malaysia will succeed as an electoral-political, socio-economic, and crisis management project. What is clear at this moment based on the policies, actions, and pronouncements of the government of Najib for the period 2009-2011 within the 1Malaysia framework is that the regime of authoritarian liberalism is being maintained, managed, and deepened through state’s coercive politics to protect UMNO’s political dominance amid the strengthening of opposition forces and through the state’s commitment to a peculiar neoliberal economics for the perpetuation of capitalist accumulation strategies in the context of contemporary globalization’s crisis.