It was still the
evening of Feb. 9 on the US east coast when I learned that the Federal Court,
Malaysia’s highest, had upheld the conviction of the opposition leader
Anwar Ibrahim.
The
next day I saw a press release issued by a spokesperson for President Barack
Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), saying that “the United States is
deeply disappointed with Mr. Anwar’s conviction.” It said that “the decision to
prosecute Mr. Anwar and the conduct of his trial have raised a number of
serious concerns about rule of law and the fairness of the judicial system in
Malaysia.”
While the content of the press
release was good enough, many observers pointed out that it was issued in a
name of a mid-ranking official in the NSC and not by a higher-ranking person in
either the NSC or the White House itself. As such, to many people it seemed
that the White House might just be “doing the necessary” and issuing a pro
forma statement because it had to. Their suspicions were raised because Obama
himself had been seen playing golf in Hawaii with Malaysia’s Prime Minister
Najib Tun Razak just a few weeks earlier.
The golf match with Najib was a rare
occasion for Obama, for as The New York Times pointed out in a March 10
article, Obama’s relationships with foreign leaders are almost all cool and
businesslike. It is rare for him to invest his time in a personal relationship
or to “click” with a foreign leader. According to present and former US
Administration officials, however, Obama likes Najib. They “click.” They say
that Obama likes meeting and talking to Najib.
Malaysia’s Obama Problem
After learning of the verdict
against Anwar, I decided that one step I could take was to write a petition on
the White House “We, the People” website and see if we could hit the magic
number of 100,000 signatures. That would get attention.
The problem when it comes to
Malaysia and Obama is two-fold. First, Obama believes what Najib tells him. He
has drunk Najib’s Kool-Aid. He truly believes that
Najib wants to reform his country but is being held back by conservative
elements within his ruling party. According to people in the know, Obama thinks
that pushing Najib in private or public will only make Najib’s task harder. So
Obama took a light approach when he met Najib in Malaysia in April 2014, and it
was only because of pressure from US human rights groups and others that the
trip plans changed. Obama met with Malaysian civil society representatives for
almost an hour (instead of the scheduled 15 minutes), and Obama NSC advisor
Susan Rice met privately with Anwar and other opposition party leaders on the
last day of the visit.
The second and broader problem is
the failure of the Obama Administration for six years to make human rights and
the promotion of democracy and political freedom a central element in its
overall foreign policy. This is surprising for a president from the Democratic
Party, which traditionally has placed great value on civil rights and political
and personal freedom. It is even more surprising for Obama, our first African-American
president and a man who regularly summons the rhetoric of Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. and the images of America’s civil rights struggle.
Will the Real Najib Please Stand Up?
Obama is not the first person whom
Najib has fooled. The “international Najib” is impeccably dressed in expensive
suits and speaks great English. He is courtly, polite, and soft-spoken. He
talks of his dreams to reform Malaysia and move it forward. When he addresses the United Nations and
international think tanks, he speaks of leading a global movement of moderates
and describes Malaysia as a tolerant, multi-racial, multi-religious paradise
where everyone lives in harmony. He talks about his plans to reform Malaysia’s
political system. But none of those promised reforms – from abolishing the
sedition act to allowing for a free press – has ever taken place. In fact,
Malaysia under Najib has become more repressive, not less. And thanks to
Najib’s silence and passivity, racial and religious strains are higher than at
any point since the murderous race riots of 1969.
Most of the world, however, fails to
understand the gap between Najib’s international rhetoric and his actions at
home. That is because few people around the world, other than the Malaysian
diaspora, follow developments in Malaysia. They only know the “Good Najib” and
not the Najib surrounded by scandal, from 1MDB to Scorpene submarines to the
Mongolian translator who was murdered by Najib’s personal bodyguards.
God Bless the Queen
One who did pay attention, however,
was Queen Elizabeth II.
In January 2012, Najib hosted the
first international meeting of his “Movement of Moderates” in Kuala Lumpur and
once again proclaimed his belief in democracy and tolerance. Yet three months
later, he sent his police force onto the streets of KL to beat and tear gas his
own citizens, over 100,000 of them, whose only crime was to gather peacefully
and express their hopes for free and fair elections in Malaysia. People whose
only “crime” was to walk down the street wearing the color yellow – the symbol
of Bersih, the organizers of the protest – were arrested.
One week after his police force
fired chemical-laced water on the protestors and detained over 1,600 people,
the “good Najib” took a trip to London. But when he walked in the room to meet
Queen Elizabeth, he got a big surprise. The Queen was wearing yellow. No one
thinks it was an accident. Even the flowers in the vases behind her were
yellow. The Queen had sent a clear message.
That was in 2012. So it is surprising that three years later the
Obama Administration still seems not to understand the reality of what is
happening in Malaysia. I am very sure that the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur is
reporting the situation accurately. The problem is that few people at the
senior levels in Washington pay attention to Malaysia, and lower-level officers
no doubt find it hard to counter the ideas about Najib and Malaysia that seem
to be well-entrenched in Barack Obama’s mind.
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