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| 1 |
ID:
084599
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| Publication |
2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
On 27 October 2007, five Malaysian civil society organizations collaborated to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Operasi Lalang. This police operation was sanctioned by the government in 1987 and saw 107 Malaysians, mainly opposition party members and activists, detained without trial for as long as two years. Operasi Lalang is regarded by many critics of the Malaysian government as the most egregious deployment of the repressive Internal Security Act, under which these detentions were made. This article examines the social and political impacts of the Internal Security Act and Operasi Lalang before describing the commemoration which was styled as a court hearing with the Internal Security Act as the accused. Evident at the commemoration was a comprehensive loss of faith in the infrastructures of the state that are supposed to carry out justice and protect the citizenry from abuses of power. Thus the commemoration-cum-trial declared guilt and took justice, rather than seeking it through infrastructures of the Malaysian state.
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| 2 |
ID:
162649
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article develops a general articulation of the politics of offence and outrage by drawing on examples of high profile political furores in Malaysia. In these furores, minority ethno-religious groups and individuals ostensibly caused offence to the majority Muslim Malay population. Although these offences were framed as transgressions of genuine sensitivities, I argue that politics of offence must be seen for the political utility it holds for those who claim to represent the majority group that has been putatively offended. In Malaysia, a key component of this political strategy is the positioning by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) of its constituency—the Malays—as being comparatively economically weaker than non-Malay groups. This positioning in turn warrants the continuation of the positive discrimination policies of the New Economic Policy of the 1970s, which was implemented to achieve parity between the major ethnic groups in Malaysia. An example of this was when UMNO vehemently rejected the findings of a think tank that argued that the New Economic Policy’s target of having 30% Malay ownership of equity had been achieved. This positioning of an in-group as weak, and the normalisation of privilege in the Malaysian context, is analysed in view of two other cases studies, Erving Goffman’s concept of ‘the turn’, and Ward Goodenough’s description of the human experience of outrage. I also show that ‘outrage’ as a politico-emotional strategy remains effective despite the momentous results of Malaysia’s general elections in 2018, which might otherwise herald a new era of inter-ethnic co-operation.
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