Four vs Forty

The discrepancy between the numbers of participants at the latest KL (arranged by the NGO Bersih to highlight electoral fraud) protests were ten-fold. Ask Malaysian news agencies and there were 4,000 protesters. The Financial Times, and other international agencies say it was about 40,000. Who is correct? OTBM for one, having not been there with a counter, cannot tell you the answer.

All we can do is suggest what the implications of this disparity are. First, the general elections are coming up. This means, the incumbent party, and current Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, who won the last election in one of the biggest landslides ever, face an amount of resistance. How much?

Relatively, a lot. In practice, nothing at all.

Why do we say a lot? It does not matter what the size of the protest were, the decisive fact is that they were the biggest since the 1998 protests when Anwar Ibrahim was imprisoned, and that these protests came hot on the heels of the Bar Association’s protests about an allegedly fixed judicial appointment.

Both were protests that technically could have been put down by the Malaysian government. Five people or more, and down you go. So whether it was four or forty thousand, the government’s lack of action was encouraging.

In the way that not punishing a child, but trying to let him learn from his mistakes is encouraging. The government did fire some tear gas, and arrested 245 people, but they did not crush the protests. They let it simmer, and in doing that, showed the world that they were a merciful government that allowed some healthy democratic expression.

But it did show many cracks as well. Even though Badawi personally came on TV to encourage people to stay at home, the protesters turned up, causing Badawi to lose face. Sentiment against him is higher than once believed.

The protest was also more general – not only did it involve a number of NGOs, social groups and political parties – it also was made up mainly of working class Malays. In 1998 it was mainly English educated Malays. This is a different demographic than the 1998 protests, and suggests a wider dissatisfaction that crosses racial and religious divides.

The European Commission’s envoy to Malaysia, Mr. Thierry Rommel, told AFP that “It is not a secret that elections are not fair. There’s a significant part of the population that feels their voice is not really heard because of the way elections are managed.” He made the comments not long after ending his tenure in Malaysia.

So this is the thing – even noted foreign diplomats seem to think that there is a lack of transparency in Malaysia. But government influenced media made light of the protest, focusing instead on traffic jams and the fact that trader’s shut down their stores.

Even though there is a groundswell of opposition against the government, it is likely that when the general elections are called, little of that vociferous support will translate into votes.

The situation is similar to the last general elections in Singapore, when tens of thousands of people gathered for opposition rallies, but the PAP still won by a landslide. This is not to suggest that there was any political chicanery whatsoever.

What it probably suggests is that activism, foreign media portrayal of protests or internet/technology fueled protests are overstated in some sense. Or it just could be that your activist might feel strongly about transparency, but not enough to influence their voting strategy.

Then again, maybe there is some truth in Bersih’s claim that postal voting was abused, there was unequal access to the media and that there were phantom voters on the electoral rolls.

How else would you explain four vs forty?