A pre-paid electronic "Touch and Go" card offers the best way to
negotiate the toll booths along the north-south superhighway that
traverses the Malay Peninsula from Johore to the Thai border. By an
unintended irony, the title of the card captures the current
condition of the Malaysian polity. On the one hand, Malaysia has
emerged from the Asian financial meltdown relatively unscathed
economically. On the other, a series of political scandals and a
bitterly contested election campaign in November 1999 have rocked the
United Malay National Organization (UMNO), the ruling party that has
overseen the development of this multi-ethnic state--composed of 62
percent Malays, 30 percent Chinese and 9 percent Indians, the beliefs
of whom traverse the spectrum of spiritual possibility from animism
to Islam.
Almost daily revelations of alleged corruption and sexual misdeeds
involving former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, his adopted
brother and his chauffeur have disturbed the quiescence of the
recently urbanized Malay middle class, whose undivided loyalty has
until now underwritten UMNO rule. This arriviste class, itself the
product of state policy, had previously left the demands of
modernization to UMNO's guidance. Revelations about buggery in the
upmarket Kuala Lumpur (KL) suburb of Bangsar, and allegations of
attempts to poison, both literally and metaphorically, the still
popular Anwar have, however, tended to disturb middle-class faith in
party guidance. At the same time as the state-controlled media revel
in the gory details of Anwar's alleged private life, the government
bans Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me in deference to Islamic
sensibilities.
