Power Broking in the Shade: Party Finances and Money Politics in Southeast Asia by Wolfgang Sachsenröder

Author:Wolfgang Sachsenröder [Sachsenröder, Wolfgang]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Campaigns & Elections, Political Parties, Political Science, Political Process, World, Asian
ISBN: 9789813230736
Google: h6c7tAEACAAJ
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company Pte. Limited
Published: 2018-01-15T12:42:49+00:00

Who Funds The Opposition?

Due to the abundant resources of the country and decades of economic growth, the opposition is not completely cut off from the money supply. The cooptation of a Chinese party into the Barisan Nasional, the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) is not at all covering the entire Chinese community. On the contrary, with 36 seats in the national parliament, the very Chinese Democratic Action Party (DAP) is the biggest opposition party. In 2013, the DAP contested in 51 predominantly urban constituencies only, and won close to 16% of the national vote in this election system so heavily biased in favor of the rural Malay voters. The racial divide among Malaysian parties has historical roots. Upon independence in 1957, the racial breakdown had been precarious for the Malays with a Chinese minority of nearly 40%, which has declined over the years to 24% by now. The other political problem was and is the higher economic success of large parts of the Chinese Malaysians, eight out the 10 richest Malaysians on the Forbes List being Chinese, which is constantly nurturing animosities among the masses and the racially uploaded political narratives with religious undertones.

The Democratic Action Party (DAP) is probably getting donations from Chinese businessmen unhappy with the Malaysian Chinese Association and UMNO, and has also managed to win support from a growing number of citizens who share the urge for change. The party has joined all attempts so far to unite the opposition. In the first opposition coalition, Pakatan Rakyat (2008–2015), Anwar Ibrahim managed to unite the pact of strange bedfellows. The DAP and the Muslim PAS had especially only one thing in common, namely their desire to end the BN domination. For UMNO, it was easy to demonize the DAP as anti-Malay and anti-Islam, which was probably felt in the same way among PAS members as well. Add to that the slowly climaxing PAS attempt to introduce hudud, the Islamic criminal law, by getting support from UMNO, has finally made it impossible for the DAP to coalesce with PAS, and vice versa. Though Islamic punishments are supposed to be restricted to Muslims, the DAP is strictly against the development. Being increasingly cornered as the internal enemy with all the negative connotations for the Chinese minority in Malaysia, this may increase the willingness of members and non-members to donate to the DAP. The party is widely seen as defender of the multi-ethnic and multireligious society that Malaysia was supposed to become upon independence.

Given the electoral success in 2008 and 2013, and the anti-BN and anti-Malay image of the party, information on the financial situation of the DAP is hard to find. Kartini Khalid’s assessment11 gives a rather clean slate in terms of money politics, that the party has no business dealings or corporate networks supporting its finances, but strong voluntary participation. In contrast, there is an onslaught of wild allegations from the competitors that the DAP is funded with billions by George Soros, or directly by Israel, or by dark

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