By Clive Kessler, Professor of Sociology at the University of New South Wales

A second major post-independence regime crisis.

The first post-independence political dispensation lasted from 1957 to 1969, when it collapsed in the wake of national elections that demonstrated rapidly diminishing support for the inter-ethnic governing coalition among both the nation’s Malay and non-Malay citizens.

A second dispensation was accordingly created, designed to last for twenty years until 1990.   Grounded in the view that the 1969 crisis had stemmed from a profound sense of Malay exclusion from the benefits of independence and national development, its core political imperative  was a far-reaching national project of pro-Malay affirmative action. Implementation of these bold programmes required the development of an ever-stronger state that came increasingly to dominate Malaysian society.

But even after 1990 the same policies continued to be pursued, in fact even from strongly than before. These expanded measures were now justified not as necessary for the overcoming of Malay relative social deprivation and exclusion but in the name of assuring “ketuanan melayu” or comprehensive Malay political dominance, ascendancy, or “hegemony”.
Read the rest of this entry »