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CIRCLES OF POWER AND COUNTERBALANCES 1POLITICS AND TIMBER IN MALAYSIAAkiko MorishitaIntroductionThis paper will focus on politics and the timber businessin a forest-rich state in Malaysia. 1 Around 66.1 percent(8.22 million hectares) of the total land of the state iscategorized as forest area, and as much as 60.0 percent ofthe forest has been sold as logging concessions (Brown2001). The state government budget largely depends onthe forest revenue, especially since the timber boom of1979 and the end of the nation-wide recession of thelate 1980s. Forest revenue made up 14.6 percent of thegovernment budget revenue in 1965, 21.1 percent in1970, 17.7 percent in 1980, 21.2 percent in 1985, 50.3percent in 1989 and 44.4 percent in 1995 (see Graph 1). 2The political conditions in the Malaysian state,which I argue in this paper, are much different fromthose in Kalimantan. Here, the state Chief Ministerhas retained his strong political influence for morethan 25 years. He has also held the position of StateMinister of Resource Planning since 1985, which hasthe authority to issue forest concessions. Furthermore,he is the president of the local Muslim-based party ofthe state coalition government. 5 I begin by outlininghow the Chief Minister has concentrated strongpolitical power into his hands, emphasizing his politicalcleverness in establishing political equilibrium amongleading politicians representing other ruling parties andethnic groups, and in gaining the federal support thatstrengthens his power in the state government. I thenfocus on one of the prominent local timber businesspeople to describe how business success largely dependson political patronage in this state. In conclusion, Idiscuss possible future changes in the political conditionsof this state.Managing the federal-state relationship and interpartypoliticsGraph 1: State Forest Revenue(Percentage of Total Revenue of the State Government)The Malaysian federal government has officially givengreat autonomy to the state government, including theentire control over forest concessions. 3 In this sense,the state’s autonomy level is much higher than that ofneighboring Indonesia, where the central governmenttransferred the authority to issue logging concessions ofup to 10,000 hectares to local governments as part ofthe process of decentralization after the fall of Soeharto. 4Indonesia’s decentralization and the subsequentimplementation of the direct election system for localgovernment heads (i.e., governor, mayor, district head)led to collusions and/or severe competition amongpoliticians, bureaucrats and business people at both thenational and local levels for the control of local politicaland economic interests. For example, in Kalimantan(the Indonesian territory of Borneo), national andlocal elites compete in particular over the control offorest concessions and mineral resources such as coal(Morishita 2006).Malaysian political institutions centralize power in thehands of the state government in local administration.In the hierarchical administrative system, localadministrators below the state level are all appointed:the Resident at the divisional level, 6 the District Officerat the district level, and the Administrative Officers atthe sub-district level. Village heads are also appointedby the government. There is no elected body except thestate legislative assembly. Members of the local authoritybodies (i.e., city/municipal/district councils) are allnominated by the state government. They comprise ofParliament members, state assemblymen and women,party politicians, government officers, business peopleand leaders of social organizations who are favored bythe government. It is, therefore, crucial for those seekingpolitical power over the state to gain the top positions inthe state government which controls all political levels,ranging from the state capital to the division, district,sub-district and village.In the eyes of the law, the Yang di-Pertua Negeri(Governor) and the Chief Minister are the mostAsian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows
2CIRCLES OF POWER AND COUNTERBALANCESsignificant positions in the state government. Thegovernor is the formal head of the state, appointedby the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (King). He has theright to appoint the Chief Minister and other stateministers from the state legislative assembly, basedon the assembly’s composition. However, in the stateunder study, these positions were actually decided innegotiations among the state’s ruling coalition parties.The federal government easily intervened and played adecisive role in the negotiations since the componentparties of the state coalition government were oftenunable to unite because of ethnic differences, personalrivalries and disputes over political alliances. In thissituation, the president of a Muslim-based party in theruling coalition has assumed the office of Chief Ministersince 1970 largely owing to backup from the federalgovernment and he, instead of the nominal governor,has controlled the state government.This paper focuses on the present Chief Minister (1981to the present), who was born to a local Muslim familyin 1936. His first occupation was in the judiciary aftergraduating from an Australian university in 1960.Along with his uncle, he became one of the prominentleaders of the Muslim-based party in the state coalitiongovernment of the 1960s. In 1963, he was appointedas state Minister of Communication and Works andthen Minister of Development and Forestry in 1966.He was, however, dismissed from the post in 1967because a non-Muslim based party dominant in thegovernment coalition at the time feared his party’sgrowing influence, backed by the federal government,over the state Cabinet. Afterwards, he was appointed toa federal ministry with the help of his uncle, who heldthe office of federal Minister of Lands and Mines.In 1970, his uncle assumed the office of Chief Ministerwith backup from then Prime Minister Abdul RazakHussein despite his long absence from state politicsdue to his federal ministership. In other words, hismarginalization in state politics by being placed in thefederal government resulted in him gaining a strongconnection with the national political leader, who hadan unofficial but significant influence over the selectionof state Chief Minister. After taking office, his uncle,however, failed to maintain a harmonious relationshipwith the other parties in the coalition government andthe electorate as a result of too great an accumulationof power and wealth in his hands and the neglect ofother communities in terms of the allocation of politicaland economic interests. He was also at enmity withHussein Onn, the successor to Abdul Razak as PrimeMinister, since Hussein regarded him as corrupt andas an ally of his predecessor. The Chief Minister arguedwith the federal government over a plot to overthrowhim and to engineer the state’s secession from Malaysia.Hussein Onn then effectively forced the Chief Ministerout from office and replaced him with his nephew, whowas Minister of Federal Territory at that time (Brown2001).The current Chief Minister succeeded in strikinga political balance among the leading politiciansrepresenting other government parties and ethnic groupsthrough the allocation of executive positions. While heheld the most important and profitable positions in thestate Cabinet (i.e., Chief Minister, Minister of Finance,Minister of Planning and Resource Management—thesuccessor of the Minister of Resource Planning), hedistributed other important positions to the other partyleaders to firm up political patronage. In the 2006Cabinet inauguration, for example, the non-Muslimdeputy president of the Chief Minister’s party and thepresident of the Chinese-based party, whose daughtermarried the Chief Minister’s son, were reappointedas Deputy Chief Ministers; the president of the non-Muslim-based party as Minister of Land Development;the president of another non-Muslim-based party asMinister of Social Development and Urbanization; anda Muslim senior politician as Minister of Housing.During the term of the current Chief Minister, the stateruling coalition parties steadily won the great majorityof seats in both state and general elections throughvarious ways. They include: vote-buying, the allocationof campaign funds only to the government parties’candidates, the establishment of new constituencies sothat the seats of the government parties would increase,the adoption of a ballot-counting system to obtain adetailed breakdown of the voting results of each village,the commitment to infrastructure building in returnfor supporting government parties in rural areas, theacceptance of an opposition party into the governingcoalition after the elections, and so forth. All federalparliamentarians elected from the state governmentparties in general elections have supported the nationalcoalition government (Barisan Nasional, BN) and thePrime Minister. The federal government, thus, does notinterfere with the Chief Minister as long as the statecoalition government provides crucial votes to keep thenational BN in power (Brown 2001).The legitimacy of the Chief Minister’s rule has beenaffirmed by the achievement of economic development.The state GDP progressively grew from 3,488 millionringgit in 1980 to 5,291 million ringgit in 1985, to 6,558million ringgit in 1990 and to 9,629 million ringgit in1995. A decline in the poverty rate has accompaniedAsian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows
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Page 3 and 4: iiiCONTENTSAbout the BookAcknowledg
Page 5 and 6: V. APPENDICESCultivation of Transfo
Page 7 and 8: The Regional Project, entitled “C
Page 9 and 10: ixTHE CONTRIBUTORS(in alphabetical
Page 11 and 12: MYFEL JOSEPH PALUGA is a faculty me
Page 13 and 14: xiiiare common to nations around th
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Page 17 and 18: xviiIt is reasonable and necessary,
Page 19 and 20: xixOVERVIEWCzarina Saloma-Akpedonu,
Page 21 and 22: xxito retain their identity but at
Page 23: xxiiiABOUT THE WORKSHOPThe 6 th API
Page 27 and 28: 4CIRCLES OF POWER AND COUNTERBALANC
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233Day 3, Tuesday, 27 November 2007
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JOSIE M. FERNANDEZExecutive Council
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237MARY RACELISProfessorial Lecture
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239NAPAT TANGAPIWUTInstitute of Asi
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Persistent problems, promising solu
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