The supposed bastions of liberalism need to fix their picker
Malaysian prosecutors charged Muhyiddin Yassin, the leader of the opposition, with sedition. His crime? Complaining that the king did not ask him to form a government after the last general election, even though he claimed to have the support of a majority of parliament. It was the second indictment for Mr Muhyiddin. Last year, prosecutors charged him with misuse of funds while prime minister from 2020 to 2021, which he denies.
The charges might seem unremarkable in an illiberal democracy like Malaysia’s, except for one thing. The man whom the king did ask to form a government in 2022 was Anwar Ibrahim, himself twice jailed on false charges of sodomy when leader of the opposition. Back then, Mr Anwar had been a favourite of Western reporters and officials, heralded as a man who could liberalise Malaysian politics if only the prime minister would unlock his cell. But after taking power at the head of a coalition government in November 2022, Mr Anwar has emerged as a very different kind of leader.
He defends the use of the sedition act to protect the monarchy and denies that its use against his opponents is the result of political interference. In a country defined for far too long by the institutionalised privileges of the Malay majority, he tells supporters that campaign promises of greater pluralism must wait. And though Malaysia has yet to recover fully from the scandal involving 1MDB, a state investment fund which had $4.5bn pilfered from its coffers, he has embraced a deputy prime minister accused of corruption and defended the decision to drop charges against him.
Nor did Western governments’ support during his years in the wilderness win them any favour with Mr Anwar. The prime minister will visit Vladivostok next week to meet Vladimir Putin. In May he was in Qatar to meet Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas who was killed in Tehran on July 31st. Courting Beijing, in June he unexpectedly announced after meeting Li Qiang, China’s prime minister, that Malaysia supports the “reunification” of Taiwan with the mainland.
The West got Mr Anwar wrong. But that should be no surprise. Western governments often champion Asian opposition figures who promise a liberal approach without looking too closely at their track records, or their statements in the vernacular to crowds back home. In Mr Anwar’s case, his time as deputy to Mahathir Mohamad—the authoritarian and anti-Western prime minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003—should have been a clue as to how he would rule.
Why do Western officials so often back the wrong Asian leaders? For a start, they tend to be too easily persuaded by those who have spent a lot of time in Europe or North America, where they tend to pick up a way of speaking about universal values that Westerners recognise. It does not always follow that they pick up the values themselves. When Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s former leader, was under house arrest in the 1990s, she drew on decades in Britain and America, urging Westerners to “use your liberty to promote ours”. But as head of government she trampled on notions of liberty or democracy, defending military atrocities against the Rohingya Muslims.
Western opinion-makers’ view of a country’s politics are often refracted through the prism of influential individuals. Many in America came to understand Malaysian politics in the 1990s through the perspective of Robert Rubin, the treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton. He became a friend of Mr Anwar’s when both served as finance ministers. Diasporas can play a role, too. The cause of Sam Rainsy, Cambodia’s opposition leader, has benefited from the skilful activism of prominent exiles, even though his campaigns back home have been full of invective against ethnic Vietnamese residents of the country.
Power can also change a leader. One example is Joko Widodo, Indonesia’s president. But when it becomes apparent that an Asian leader is no liberal, Western officials can stick with them for too long. There is an element of Orientalism to this: Western officials are more willing to excuse conduct by Asian leaders that they would not tolerate in Europe or the Americas.
It is possible to avoid these traps. Independent institutions are more reliable guardians of rights and freedoms than individuals. They deserve more support. But when it comes to leaders, Western governments should stick to their principles, even when their friends abandon them.
