Democracy and stability

Simple message: The effectiveness of BN’s ‘stability’ concept became clear when we started seeing top leaders from other coalitions going through great lengths to ‘explain’ why this was not true. – Bernama

A KEY element of Barisan Nasional’s strategy in the Johor elections centred around the concept of stability.

In politics, the most effective narratives are often the simplest. And it can’t get much simpler than: “Vote BN, get stability; vote others, get chaos.”

The effectiveness of this strategy became clear when we started seeing top leaders from other coalitions going through great lengths to “explain” why this was not true, or why all of Malaysia’s instability was basically someone else’s fault.

One such leader argued that this was a “stability” that allowed leaders to rob the country blind; others I’m sure placed the blame for all this instability on BN itself, for its role during the Sheraton Move.

Such arguments are not entirely without merit; some may make sense, if you examine them closely enough.

The thing is though – most voters aren’t generally inclined to examine politics too closely.

Come to think of it, politics is a little like a sewage system - you want it to work, but every time you get too close to it, all you smell is stink.

Most of us are happy to maintain a distance, and only look at the big picture.

And if you step back far enough, it’s probably easy for a message like “BN stable, others chaos” to resonate and make sense.

The simplest and biggest reason for this is that since 2018, and since 2020 in particular, we have seen nothing but confusing, frustrating, and pointless political strife in Malaysia.

Political enthusiasts may have “complex” ideas about exactly who is to blame for this, but when it comes to political communication, complex ideas tend to be worth very little.

As the Johor elections will likely have shown, simple narratives win. Those challenging BN are unlikely to get far trying to pursue “counter narratives”. Not being on the defensive and dancing to the tune of your opponent is practically the first rule of spin doctoring.

Of course, it remains to be seen how long BN can play the “stability” card. Malaysian politics experiences fairly typical ebbs and flows.

While other coalitions remain a threat, BN/Umno can be expected to successfully sell themselves as the ‘stable’ ones. Any period of prolonged dominance however, such as may be experienced by BN in the coming years, tends to give rise to internal conflicts – such as it experienced in the 80s and 90s, and in the wake of the 1MDB scandal.

It is surely reasonable to want at least some degree of political stability and predictability. Perhaps this is an opportune time to reflect a little more deeply about what kind of stability we should aspire to.

Given all that’s happening in the world, it might be interesting to look at some examples from overseas.

Russia and America are obviously key players in the current war in Ukraine.

The different way these two countries have approached war in recent decades is quite reflective of their own internal political dynamics and experiences with “stability”.

Ben Rhodes, a former White House staffer under Barack Obama, published an interesting article in The Atlantic in June 2018 describing some key decision-making moments regarding America’s military involvement in Syria around 2013.

The article displayed great hesitation on the part of Obama, as he considered ramping up military actions in response to chemical warfare in Syria.

He was worried about how his Republican political opponents would attack him, how the US Congress would respond, and how these actions would affect his popularity among voters.

Compare this with Vladimir Putin, who was also intervening militarily in Syria at the same time.

Putin’s ironclad grip on domestic power within Russia allowed him to act decisively and without any significant checks and balances. As a result, Putin ran circles around the Americans in Russia.

He also used his military to effectively pursue political goals in Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea. These consecutive successes were arguably a key emboldening factor in today’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

So on one level, we can argue that a more ‘stable’ government with fewer checks and balances is both more successful and more efficient in achieving its goals.

The flaws in this argument emerge however when we look at what is happening right now.

It’s challenging to know exactly what goes on in the Kremlin and whether Putin has a few more aces up his sleeve, but it appears that the conventional wisdom is that Putin has at last overextended.

Putin spent a long time surrounding himself with more and more yes men and removing not only checks and balances, but any person or institution that dared to contradict him or his propaganda.

Drug dealers sometimes say: don’t get high on your own product. It is possible that the scenario above increasingly caused Putin to have an extremely distorted view of reality, and grossly overestimate the likelihood of benefitting from his invasion of Ukraine.

This comparison might tempt one to conclude that ‘too much democracy’ (as in America) can be paralysing, and too little (as in Russia) creates autocrats who are drunk on their own dangerous versions of reality.

I won’t argue with the latter conclusion, but might offer an alternative to the former.

I think it is not “too much democracy” which paralyses countries like America. Rather, I would say that the situation there, with its “cold civil war” or “culture war” (which ultimately is of course preferable to the actual ‘hot’ war in Eastern Europe) is a result of a corruption or perversion of what democracy should be.

I’ve written about this extensively previously, but in short: we tend to think of voting and democracy as one and the same thing.

When we understand democracy that way, we end up being constantly goaded into fighting over which elite we should surrender our democratic agency to.

In fact, voting should only be the final step or resort in a functional democratic process – one taken when all other measures have failed.

The first step in a truly functional democracy should instead be citizens engaging with one another. The ultimate goal of this engagement is to find ways to make joint decisions that most help the common good - preferably without having to involve too many elites or “representatives”.

This is obviously easier said than done, but if we can pull it off (perhaps by starting on a small scale at the grassroots level, and building upwards), I think we will have a shot at creating a vibrant, functional democracy that avoids the twin pitfalls of paralysing partisanship and unhinged authoritarianism.

In the long run, that strikes me as the only genuine, valuable type of stability worth aspiring to.

Nathaniel Tan works with Projek #BangsaMalaysia. Twitter: @NatAsasi, Email: [e-mail]. #BangsaMalaysia #NextGenDemocracy. The views expressed here are solely the writer’s own.