Malaysian “game changer” isn’t enough
After a period of political turmoil that has produced “three premiers in 18 months”, Malaysia’s government and main opposition alliance signed an unprecedented agreement on Monday, say Anisah Shukry and Y-Sing Liau on Bloomberg. The bipartisan “confidence and supply agreement” involves the opposition pledging to support the government on key votes, including the upcoming budget. In turn, the government has pledged to work with the opposition on “plans to fight Covid-19, parliamentary reform [and] transformation in governance”.
The deal should be a “game changer”, says Liew Chin Tong in the South China Morning Post. For over a decade, the government has “tried everything” to “eliminate opposition”. The previous prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, had “no qualms” about using “state apparatuses” to “persecute political opponents both from within his coalition and from the opposition”. By enacting key political reforms, his replacement Ismail Sabri Yaakob is accepting that the government and the opposition “need to coexist via the parliamentary structure”.
The deal has paused “more than 17 months of political dysfunction”, but several problems remain beyond the coronavirus crisis, says Imran Shamsunahar in Nikkei Asia. Malaysia is suffering from the fact that “heavy state intervention” in order to favour ethnic Malays has created a “crony capitalist system”, as well as poisoning race relations with non-Malays. Unless the new government can tackle this problem, Malaysia will remain “caught in the so-called middle-income trap”.