Recipes for the political order in Malaysia

Abstract

For many countries with a diverse population of different ethnic groups, the problem of political unity and stability perpetually hangs over the horizon. Malaysia is no exception. Long before independence, politicians and social leaders have wrestled with the issue of the political order that would provide the basis inter-ethnic harmony, if not inter-ethnic integration. In Malaysia, the ethnic divide is reinforced by differences in religion, culture, language, economic and occupational differences as well as geographical location. These factors have interacted with one another to make the problem more complicated. At different points of history, these different factors have surfaced to the top, as points of contestations among the population, creating tensions, and on a few occasions, conflicts. Though the conflicts had never taken on the magnitudes as serious as the ones one hears about in Bosnia or Uganda, tensions of different degrees are never absent in Malaysia. The search for a political order where ethnicity should no longer be the leitmotif of political life is not new. This paper seeks to summarize some of the key recipes that have been proposed or implemented through history to provrde for inter ethnic accommodation and political stability in the elusive search for national unity.