Asia Times: Citizens raise a stink over Malaysian 'sewer politics'



	February 23, 2000	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Citizens raise a stink over Malaysian 'sewer politics'
By Anil Netto

PENANG, Malaysia - Huge bins overflowing with rubbish, flash floods, landslides, a shortage of low-cost housing and clogged drains have plagued urban Malaysia for years, but no one seemed to care.

Now a group of concerned individuals say it has had enough and is asking if Malaysians should continue to accept this state of affairs, which they say is largely due to the absence of local democracy. The group has now set up the Malaysian Local Democracy Initiative (Malodi) to lobby for the revival of council elections for cities, towns and villages.

Malaysia abolished local government elections in the 1970s and since then, the ruling coalition in the various states has rewarded its party faithful by appointing them to town and city councils across the nation. That, activists say, virtually killed democracy at the local level and has since created a culture of little public accountability.

So when the councils fail to clear clogged drains or empty bins filled with rubbish, the public has no choice but to complain to their elected state assembly member or member of parliament, who is then forced to peer into drains, with press photographers in tow, and ask the town council to buck up. Critics derisively label these elected state assembly members or parliamentarians ''longkang (drain) politicians'' .

The absence of town and village council elections has also denied popular participation at a vital rung of the decision-making process, analysts say. ''The mechanisms are not there,'' says Anwar Fazal, senior regional advisor of The Urban Governance Initiative of the United Nations Development Program. ''You get appointed people in the town councils who are very often faceless.''

Organic farmer Ong Boon Keong, who is spearheading Malodi, complains: ''As political appointees, the councillors are performing for the benefit of their respective parties. That is the root of the malaise.'' Many councillors, he points out, often neglect opposition areas or even areas belonging to a different component party of the ruling coalition. Women and the disabled are poorly represented.

It wasn't always like that. Malaysia has had a history of elected local government. Penang in the north, for instance, held local elections with a limited franchise in 1857. They were, however, discontinued due to a lack of public interest. In the early 1950s, local government elections were revived. So successful was the experience, says Anwar, that a 1952 report for George Town, the capital of Penang, stated: ''The streets of George Town are swept everyday . . . Our city is practically free of mosquitoes and flies and this is proof of the efficiency of our health department.''

As Malaysia developed rapidly, even new villages had their own elections. At their height, 200-odd elected local councils flourished across the country. But then, people started voting opposition representatives into local councils and political competition mounted. Major city councils such as George Town's and Ipoh's fell under opposition control. The towns at that time were dominated by the Malaysian Chinese while the majority Malays were mainly in rural areas, cut off from the mainstream of development.

In 1966, a royal commission was appointed to comprehensively study the local government system. It came up with sweeping impartial recommendations that supported local democracy: all local authorities should be elected, district councils had to have 30 percent of their members nominated from special interest groups, and party politics should be allowed even though it could create problems.

But in 1969, inter-ethnic unrest rocked Kuala Lumpur and left scores dead after the mainly non-Malay opposition parties made sharp inroads, especially in urban areas, in the general election that year.

A separate government study said that the royal commission's recommendations would have adverse effects on development and create inter-ethnic and ''politico-economic disequilibrium'', and would be subject to exploitation by ''subversive'' elements and ''infiltrators''. It said the recommended system was ''structurally complicated and costly'', ''over-democratized'', and would not be a solution to ''problems'' of misadministration and malpractices.

The study even said that elected local governments could jeopardise the goals of the 20-year New Economic Policy, which aimed to bring the Malays into the mainstream of development and to abolish poverty by 1990.

As a result, local government elections were abolished in the mid-1970s. ''It was a very deliberate action on the part of the government to kill it,'' says political scientist Johan Saravanamuttu, who spoke at Malodi's launch on January 23. ''It was a slow death but it was deliberate.''

Under the Local Government Act, since 1976 town and city council members have been appointed by the ruling coalition. These councils and their non-elected councillors have come under fire for what critics say is their lack of responsiveness to public concerns.

Malodi's Ong figures it is time to act, starting with Penang: ''We are trying to get funding and members to form a shadow local government for Penang as an example.'' He expects the shadow council to include non-government organizations and citizens' groups. ''We will have to look for an eminent [shadow] local mayor, somebody who commands respect and has a strong sense of social justice,'' he adds. ''We want something that will have a real punch to it.''

That's not all. ''We have a whole list of criteria for good governance,'' says Ong. ''We hope to come up with a report card soon.'' Eventually, Ong hopes that a national people's commission will be formed which would prompt the government to revive local elections.

The UNDP's Anwar, who was himself in the Penang City Council in the 1960s, says that elections at town and village level are bound to make a sharp difference: ''The politicians will have to go back to the people then. It will change the whole flavor of communities.''

(Inter Press Service)

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