‘Open houses’ to welcome political season in Malaysia again

KUALA LUMPUR: It is Chinese New Year season in Malaysia, and as Malaysia is a multiracial country with ethnic Chinese making up around one-fifth to one-fourth of the population, the annual festival is also a public holiday here. For Chinese Malaysians, the “substantive” festivities would last for around a week or two, starting with the family reunion dinner when on new year’s eve family members scattered around the country, if not the region or even the world, would come back home to sit around the family dining table to enjoy a sumptuous meal, through visits to or gatherings of friends over the first days of the new year, culminating in either the celebration of the so-called humankind’s birthday after a week, or the lantern festival after two. Thus far this year I have attended at least two rounds of gatherings with my high school classmates in my hometown of Kota Kinabalu.

But for the wider Malaysian population, the Chinese New Year celebration could actually last up to a month, similar in length to the Eid al-Fitr festival for the Muslims, as well as the harvest festivals of the natives of Sabah and Sarawak in East Malaysia. The main reason for the “prolongation” of the celebration has to do with a multiracial or transracial custom, perhaps unique to Malaysia (and perhaps Singapore and Brunei too), of hosting “open houses.” Traditionally, during these cultural festivals, Malaysians of the relevant ethnicities would literally throw open their home gates to welcome not just their friends and extended families, but also all and sundry from across racial lines and religious beliefs, and treat them to ethnic food items. It is perhaps a voluntary, bottoms-up approach in promoting cultural harmony and national integration in Malaysia, as people from vastly different backgrounds partake of each other’s cultural celebrations, and are thus more sensitive to and appreciative of the cultural nuances of each other.

In modern times, however, these open houses, including the ones during Chinese New Year, have evolved into somewhat more formalized occasions, with politicians, business tycoons, community leaders and the like hosting such open houses on much grander scales, usually no longer at their homes, but in posh hotel ballrooms or grand public halls. During Chinese New Year, most guests in these “open hotels” or “open halls” would wear Chinese or Malaysian traditional costumes draped in shades of red, ranging from pink to scarlet, supposedly to symbolize prosperity. These are happy occasions, with senior politicians from across racial lines often invited as main guests, greeting the many festive participants.

And in some parts of West Malaysia, these public open houses during the current Chinese New Year have been made even grander for at least two reasons. One being more intuitive, as most people have been cocooned over the past three years due to the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic, and now that public gatherings are allowed, they try to “compensate” for the “lost” festivities by holding grander ones. This is only understandable. But the other reason is perhaps a more subtle but equally real one, namely, six West Malaysian states will hold their state elections within the next six months or so. So in essence these public open houses are utilized by the various political camps in West Malaysia as formalized campaigning occasions, in anticipation of the upcoming state elections that could have implications for the national political scene as well.

For one, the new Malaysian prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, has been quite avid in attending these open houses. On the first day of Chinese New Year, he was invited to grace the open house hosted by the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA). Traditionally MCA claimed to represent the political and other interests of the ethnic Chinese community in Malaysia. But in recent decades it has fallen into disfavor with Malaysian Chinese voters who no longer see MCA as championing their rights, and as such the party won only two parliamentary seats in the recent Malaysian general election. It was actually running against Anwar Ibrahim’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition. But now that PH has formed a unity government with Barisan Nasional (BN) of which MCA is a component party, overnight erstwhile political rivals became strange political bedfellows. Anwar also attended several other Chinese New Year open houses hosted by the Chinese chambers of commerce and other major community organizations. During all these festive events with primarily ethnic Chinese but also other participants, Anwar emphasized the importance of racial harmony as a foundation for national prosperity.

Indeed, the political stakes couldn’t be higher for Anwar. His so-called unity government is at best a very delicate one, with PH, BN and sundry smaller parties cobbled together into a parliamentary majority that confers him with the legitimacy to rule. On the other side of the political divide, there is the opposition Perikatan Nasional (PN) with its two major component parties, the overtly racialist Bersatu and the avowedly religious PAS, which won a sizable number of parliamentary seats as well in what has come to be called the “green wave” in the most recent Malaysian general election. Of the six states up for electoral grabs soon, at least three are most likely to be safely in PN’s pocket, as they are located within the conservative Malay heartland. Of the remaining three, Penang would perhaps remain in PH’s hands as a large number of state assembly seats there are of Chinese voter majority. But Selangor and Negeri Sembilan are Muslim Malay-majority states where PN and especially PAS have made significant electoral inroads in recent years. Selangor, which surrounds Kuala Lumpur, alone makes up about one-quarter of the Malaysian economy. If Selangor, now with a PH supermajority, were to fall under PN rule, it would have a major fall-out not only in the economic sector, but in the political one as well at the federal level. Some of Anwar’s coalition partners, for example, may thus sense the political “winds” as blowing more towards the PN side in general, and to ensure their own long-term and short-term political survival, they might switch allegiance to PN and away from PH, thus potentially depriving Anwar of his parliamentary majority and bringing about the downfall of his government. Even the racially and religiously supremacist PN held their own Chinese New Year open houses, in open competition with those more aligned to the PH or BN side. Yet another round of political shows have just started in Malaysia, and this time the houses are both open and full.