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Supporters of Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia ousted deputy prime minister, hold “Reformasi” posters during a rally in August 1999 in Kuala Lumpur. File photo: AP
Opinion
Asian Angle
by Liew Chin Tong
Asian Angle
by Liew Chin Tong

How spirit of Indonesia and Malaysia’s Reformasi lives on in Southeast Asia’s democratisation story

  • Reformasi is testimony to the mutual influences stemming from Malaysia and Indonesia’s heritage of a common language and cultural affinities
  • The movement formed part of the ‘Third Wave Democratisation’ that swept Asia in the 1980s and 1990s, heralding changes in civil society
Reformasi lives on, a quarter of a century later. Whether consciously or subconsciously, the spirit of the reformist movement that began in Indonesia in the 1990s forms part of Southeast Asia’s democratisation story.
While Southeast Asian societies differ in many ways, Reformasi – a Malay and Indonesian word meaning reform or reformation – is testimony to the mutual influences stemming from Malaysia and Indonesia’s heritage of a common language and cultural affinities.

After World War II, Southeast Asian states went through a difficult process of decolonisation from the 1940s to 1960s.

25 years since Indonesia’s Reformasi, is democracy unravelling under Jokowi?

At the height of the Cold War, including the Vietnam war era in the 1960s and 1970s, human rights abuses were rampant in several authoritarian Southeast Asian countries, including Indonesia under military strongman Suharto, the Philippines under dictator Ferdinand Marcos, and the various iterations of military rule in Thailand. In East Asia, South Korea and Taiwan were both governed by military rulers.

Malaysia had been ruled by the United Malays National Organisation (Umno) since its independence in 1957. The party became more authoritarian during and after the emergency-era National Security Council rule led by then deputy prime minister Tun Abdul Razak Hussein in the aftermath of the May 13, 1969 riots.

From the mid-1960s, some of these states were plugged into the US-led global manufacturing production and gradually became richer, earning their authoritarian rulers what some scholars called “[economic] performance legitimacy”.

US President Jimmy Carter’s short reign between 1977 and 1981 introduced human rights into the superpower’s foreign policy with far-reaching consequences. By the early 1980s, human rights abuses among US allies no longer sat well with the domestic audience in the US and Europe.

The People Power Revolution in February 1986, which forced Marcos to flee to Hawaii, was an epochal moment in Philippine history. It was the beginning of what noted American political scientist Samuel Huntington would call the “Third Wave Democratisation” in Asia.

Protesters hold banners and signs as they mark the 36th anniversary of the People Power Revolution at the People Power Monument in Quezon City, the Philippines, on February 25, 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE

The dramatic scenes of the revolution were beamed to millions of television audiences in the region. It was no coincidence when South Korea’s military rulers agreed to democratisation after a massive protest in June 1987, a year ahead of the planned 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. Also in 1987, Taiwan’s President Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law that had been imposed on the island since 1947.

The 1990s saw another round of manufacturing outsourcing from the US and East Asian economies to Southeast Asia, bringing unprecedented prosperity to the region.

Suharto and Malaysia’s Dr Mahathir Mohamad remained autocratic but politically formidable as voters perceived them as successful economic managers.
People watch the Hang Seng Index in Central, Hong Kong, in October 1997. File photo: SCMP

The music, however, stopped on July 2, 1997 when the Thai baht was attacked, and triggered the Asian Financial Crisis which saw the contagious collapses of currencies, real estate markets, and the stock markets across Asia. Indonesia and Malaysia were among the hardest hit.

Indonesia’s Reformasi movement, which led to changes in the country’s various institutions, traced its roots back to as early as 1996. Growing dissatisfaction with Suharto’s authoritarian New Order regime and economic instability as a result of the financial crisis triggered waves of protests, including riots targeting ethnic Chinese Indonesians.

Suharto finally stepped down on May 21, 1998, after student activists stormed the parliament building protesting against his decision to stand for parliament re-election.

Indonesia’s President Suharto (right) welcomes Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in Jakarta in January 1997. File photo: Reuters

A week before Suharto resigned, he met Mahathir in Cairo, Egypt, for the G15 Summit. Mahathir was sympathetic to Suharto’s predicament, to the extent that crisis-hit Malaysia even provided a US$250 million bridging loan to Indonesia.

As an army general, Suharto ruled with the barrel of a gun while former physician Mahathir had to struggle to subjugate dominant personalities through various political means. The fall of Suharto had a huge psychological impact on Mahathir.

Malaysia’s own Reformasi movement in 1998 adopted the battle cry of Indonesia’s protesters.

Tensions between Mahathir and his deputy Anwar Ibrahim were said to have dated back to at least 1995, but when Mahathir went on leave in May 1997, he appointed Anwar as acting prime minister. To many, it was a signal of his readiness to hand over to his deputy but the financial crisis changed everything.
Supporters of the reformasi movement gather in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to call for government reforms and for Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad to step down in November 1998. File photo: AP

By the time Malaysia celebrated National Day on August 31, 1998, the strains were visible. Two days earlier, the governor of Bank Negara, Malaysia’s central bank, and his deputy were forced to resign. On September 1, 1998, Mahathir fixed the exchange rate at RM3.80 to US$1 on the pretext of stemming the outflow of the ringgit.

The air was still in Kuala Lumpur. Many people expected Anwar to resign but he refused to bow down. Mahathir sacked him and Anwar later went on to spearhead the Reformasi movement, which called for social justice and equality. The rest, as they say, is history.

Recently, on May 14, the inaugural convention of the political parties that constitute the Anwar-led Unity Government, which now includes arch-rival Umno, was held at Umno’s headquarters. It was highly symbolic as Anwar last spoke here at the June 1998 Umno general assembly.

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and his wife Wan Azizah arrive for the movie premiere of “Anwar: The Untold Story” in Kuala Lumpur on May 8, 2023. Photo: AFP

A new film, Anwar: The Untold Story, made before Anwar became prime minister, is being shown in Malaysia now. In a small way, Reformasi is indeed a testimony of mutual influences between Malaysia and Indonesia as this film is a collaborative effort of Nusantara people.

Reformasi was an important turning point in Asia’s long history of democratisation. Not flawless and certainly imperfect, but at the least there is no return to the authoritarian past.

For Anwar, it took him 25 years to rewrite history and finally become prime minister. Now, as leader of the Unity Government, he will hopefully take the nation on a different, brighter path.

Liew Chin Tong is Malaysia’s current Deputy Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry. He previously served as Deputy Minister of Defence from 2018 to 2020, and is the current deputy secretary-general of the Democratic Action Party.

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