China and US, different but similar

The US and China are said to practise very different systems, but only if the details are excluded.

THE world’s two biggest economies exercised the selection of their next leaders just two days apart.

The international media made the usual observation that here were two systems working in ways that could not be more different. That is valid only up to a point, beyond which it only obscures the realities of the US and Chinese systems.

Externally, US democracy is said to offer citizens a choice of government every four years. If an incumbent fails to deliver as promised, voters can vote him out the next time.

China’s one-party system undertakes no regular elections for the public. Every 10 years, the Communist Party meets at a National Congress to identify the country’s next president and prime minister.

The common implication is that while the US system offers freedom of choice, China’s does not. These contrasting stereotypes become fuzzy in practice, however.

The US system sets two presidential terms of four years each as the limit for any individual. If an incumbent opts for re-election, his party is unlikely to entertain any challenger from the party’s ranks.

Thus the party’s candidate is predetermined, beyond the control of even party members. For the other party, some jostling among prospective candidates precedes the eventual candidate, over which ordinary party members may have no choice.

For both parties, money and party machinery (monetised infrastructure) are prerequisites. Any candidate, whether from one of the two main parties or any other, can have no hope of seriously running for the presidency without the vast financial backing required.

That is why in the US and many other Western democratic systems, the choice voters have is only one out of two parties. Third, fourth, fifth and other parties have no real chance, regardless of the value of their policies or the virtues of their candidates.

The supposedly free mainstream news media is also an accessory to this limitation. They give alternative parties scant print space or air time, on the premise that they have little clout, which ensures that they continue to have little clout.

The result is that when either the Republi­can or the Democratic Party wins the presidency, they differ little in the flesh. With hardly any alternative ideas penetrating this political establishment, Republicans and Democrats tend to become more conservative.

As far-right neo-conservatives entered the fray in the 2000 election, both parties moved further to the right. Critics describe the two main parties as merely two wings of the same party, or as being two right wings of the Republican Party.

The US presidency is also the choice of the system rather than of the people. The eventual winner is “elected” by the electoral vote of the Electoral College, rather than the popular vote of ordinary voters.

There are currently only 538 members of the Electoral College who decide on the next president and vice-president out of a choice of two teams. The candidacy that can secure 270 votes wins the White House.

In China, 2,270 delegates of the Communist Party meet at the National Congress every five years to elect the party’s highest decision-making body, the Central Committee (CC). Some 350 members of the CC then decide on the party’s General Secretary and members of the Politburo, Standing Committee and Central Military Commission.

The CC is said to experience high turnovers at election time. In each of the past half-dozen national congresses, more than 60% of committee members have been replaced.

There has also been no shortage of candidates, particularly for this year’s 18th National Congress. It was the first time that nominees for the 2,270 party delegates had been assessed, with candidates continuing to outnumber the available slots.

At this latest National Congress, both a new CC and a new Central Commission for Discipline Inspection were elected. The Communist Party’s Constitution is also being amended, with the main themes being intra-party democracy and fighting corruption.

The governing party’s Standing Committee has also sought the views of other political parties in China on the draft report for the 18th National Congress. President Hu Jintao, as party General Secretary, pledged to strengthen cooperation with the other parties.

Beijing has thus become a magnet for journalists during the week more than for previous National Congresses. More than 1,000 international journalists gained accreditation, with another 400 from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

If more of Beijing’s proceedings were in English, they would enjoy wider global coverage. That day may soon come as China’s prospect grows.

In 1997, China granted the Carter Center in the US the role of observing village-level elections around the country. The next level of governance, the provincial level, has also experimented with elections for the general public, with only the national level still to do so.

Since 2002, the Carter Center has also played a significant part in voter education in China, on issues like improved governance and political reform. In both rural and urban areas, the Carter Center works with China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs and with NGOs
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Meanwhile during the week’s 18th National Congress in Beijing, a multitude of issues surfaced for the government to consider. Among these are challenges from growing income disparities, corruption, inadequate market access for local businesses, environmental degradation and moral decay from public indifference to private suffering.

As elsewhere, the responsibility of government is to ensure fulfilment of public welfare without neglecting private business needs. Whereas in the US critics of the government accuse Washington of adopting socialist policies, critics of Beijing accuse the government of abandoning them.

The world’s two largest economies are often compared to see how different they are, while neglecting how much they are similar and how exactly they actually differ. Economically they have become so interdependent within a single global system as to become mutually complementary.

By implication, they are also not as different politically as is so often presumed. While classical ideologists may persist, the reality is that the political business of government has largely become managing national economies competently in a single globalised world.

Kenichi Ohmae is wrong; countries are in no danger of being replaced by corporations in the present or the foreseeable future, no matter how much some corporate budgets dwarf some national incomes. Rather, countries will remain unitary entities, albeit essentially as political economies increasingly governed by national economic needs and supranational economic parameters.

A symptom of this is how economic ideo­logies have replaced political ideologies between the world’s leading major powers. The Washington Consensus of supposedly antagonistic public and private sectors is under serious challenge by the Beijing Consensus of a harmonious complementary relationship between state and industry.

The latter model in Asia originated in Japan, and was soon adopted by the Newly Industrialising Economies (NIEs) of Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore. Now China is the main player of this game, with its size of play earning it the “Beijing Consensus” as the name of the game.

But some of it had already been seen before in Europe, particularly Germany. It had also been evident in the US itself, in a different time and under a different name.

All of which serves to confirm the unitary nature of the global economy, with time, circumstance and level of development being the real differentials.

BEHIND THE HEADLINES By BUNN NAGARA

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Don't mess religion with politics!

Religion and politics - that's a potent mix guaranteed to be explosive.  Keep faith out of politics!

IN the run-up to the general election, holding forums on political issues, even in churches, has become fairly common.

While most churches would be careful about bringing politicians into a house of worship to talk politics, there are some that are prepared to organise or at least play host to such events.

Last Saturday, the Oriental Hearts and Mind Study Institute (OHMSI) conducted a talk on “Islamic State: Which Version? Whose Responsibility?” with the keynote address by Dr Ahmad Farouk Musa, director of the Islamic Renaissance Front. The forum was held at a church in Subang.

But the person who captured the headlines was PKR deputy president Nurul Izzah Anwar who was one of the moderators. In response to a question from the floor, she found herself caught in a controversy over whether Malays have a right to choose their religion.

She was speaking to a largely urban non-Malay audience and, as seen in a video recording of the event that has now gone viral, she was greeted with loud applause.

The feisty politician has since denied making any statement suggesting that there should be no compulsion on Malays to be Muslims.

But she earned a royal rebuke from the Sultan of Selangor and she has quickly blamed Utusan Malaysia for allegedly distorting and twisting her reply to a member of the audience.

To make things more complicated, the person who posed the question to Nurul Izzah has now expressed her disappointment over the latter's about turn on the issue.

Lawyer Siti Zabedah Kasim was quoted as saying by news portal Free Malaysia Today that “I believe Nurul Izzah was just trying to impress the people. She didn't think of the consequences.”

For many non-Muslims, especially those living in urban areas, the issue was probably dismissed as a non-starter and seen as another political move to discredit Nurul Izzah.

But for conservative Muslims in the rural areas, it would be unthinkable and unacceptable.

Luckily for Nurul Izzah, the language used at the forum was English and the video that's currently going around does not have Bahasa Malaysia subtitles, thus making the damage less severe for now.

But for Nurul Izzah to deny it vehemently now would suggest that she has woken up to the grave political consequences of what she has done. If there was no impact, she would have just shrugged it off. She now wants to get out of this tricky spot.

The easy part is to blame Utusan Malaysia, which is well known for its nationalist slant, but the pro-Pakatan Rakyat news portal Malaysiakini also carried the same story using the same angle on Nov 3.

Nurul Izzah has also put PAS in a corner. On Friday, PAS spiritual adviser Datuk Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat said that if Nurul Izzah had indeed made her controversial statement on religious freedom, “then something is not right” while PAS president Datuk Seri Hadi Awang wanted to hear from her.

Their only purported concerns, or a way out, seem to be that they have doubts over the accuracy of reporting by the media.

DAP strongman Ngeh Koo Ham tweeted last week in support of Nurul Izzah, quoting Article 11 of the Federal Constitution which states that every person has the right to profess and to practise his or her religion. But Ngeh, a lawyer, did not say it has to be read with other applicable laws.

There are laws restricting the propagation of other religions to Muslims. Article 160 of the Federal Constitution, for example, is clear that all ethnic Malays are Muslims. A Malay is defined as someone who professes to be a Muslim, habitually speaks the Malay language and adheres to Malay customs.

The fact remains that the majority of Malays want this to remain as law and as practice and convention.

Nurul Izzah's slip has been seized on by Umno because the fight in the polls is essentially over the majority Malay votes, especially in the rural constituencies which are heavily in favour of the ruling party. Of the 222 parliamentary seats, only about 45 are Chinese-majority in urban areas and there is not a single seat with an Indian majority.

Nurul Izzah's case will also have a deep impact in PAS where the divide between those regarded as sympathetic to Anwar and the more orthodox ulamas is concerned. Former deputy president Nasharuddin Mat Isa, for example, is solidly in the Islamist party despite his overtures to Umno. He has regularly spoken up against the DAP, a PAS ally, but remains untouched because he is said to be protected by the anti-Anwar forces in the party.

The church in Subang has found itself in the spotlight for hosting the forum. Recently, another church which hosted a forum on the elections found its speakers and the media squabbling over the accuracy of some negative remarks made on Pakatan Rakyat.

There's a lesson here keep religion out of politics. But as long as there are politicians masquerading as theologians of their respective faiths, no one will take this advice kindly.

ON THE BEAT By WONG CHUN WAI

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Former Malaysian leaders were clear on Secularity of the Constitution but their successors today seem unclear!

Former leaders were clear about the secularity of the Constitution. Today, however, not all their successors in the political and judicial worlds seem to agree.

CONTROVERSY over our country’s position as a secular or Islamic state has flared again, motivated by politics, of course.

Headlined in this newspaper in 1983 were statements by Tunku Abdul Rahman (former Secretary-General of the OIC) and former Prime Minister Tun Hussein Onn that Malaysia was and should continue to be a secular state.

Former Lords, President Tun Suffian Hashim and Tun Salleh Abas, were also clear about the secularity of the Constitution.

Today, however, not all their successors in the political and judicial worlds seem to agree.

The recent provocations have triggered recent forums on Muslim history and political philosophy, asking the fundamental question of whether Islamic text and tradition mandate a particular form of government, or merely describe the qualities and virtues that a Muslim society should have.

Even amongst proponents of the latter, there are arguments as to what extent the state should use its power to coerce citizens to mandate or promote Islamic values.

Indeed, Muslim political philosophy is just as lively as Western political philosophy, with lineages of thinkers promoting order and obedience on one side and individual liberty and responsibility on the other.

The historical record, too, shows huge diversity in Muslim governance structures, and still today there are Muslims who justify communism, dictatorship, republican democracy and constitutional monarchy – though in country comparative indices, Muslim monarchies usually fare better than republics, a distinction the Arab Spring seems to reinforce.

Some have pointed out that in drafting our Federal Constitution, our monarchs initially opposed including a declaration that Islam should be the religion of the federation.

Alas, the reason for this has not been properly explained. It has been claimed that it shows that the Malay Rulers were themselves “secular” (which some then incorrectly define as “hostile to religion”).

No, they merely accepted the co-existence of secular institutions alongside religious ones – nothing new, as the Ottomans amply showed.

More crucially, the Rulers and their predecessors had, in law and reality, been Heads of Islam in their own states for centuries.

The Federal Constitution would not, it was thought, affect that, and thus Justice Abdul Hamid’s recommendation to insert Islam as the religion of the federation for ceremonial purposes prevailed.

This idea that religion was a state matter was re-emphasised when Malaysia was created: the first of the 18 and 20 points that Sarawak and Sabah agreed as a condition of merger was that they would have no state religion.

Alas, the Rulers and founding fathers could not foresee how politics would alter the nature of religion in our country, nor predict how check and balance institutions would be weakened in favour of centralising ever more powers in the federal executive.

The administration of Islam was no exception, becoming concentrated in institutions at the federal level controlled by politicians and bureaucrats.

This is the main reason why Islam in Malaysia has become so prone to politicisation.

You can still experience the beauty of non-political Malaysian Islam: the meticulously maintained mosques and cemeteries, the tastes and smells of Raya, the blessings invoked at wedding kenduri, and the harmonies of accompanying nasyid.

The heirs of Al-Idrus, Al-Attas, Al-Habshi, Al-Qadri, Alsagoff and others continue to produce champions of Islamic leadership, philosophy, philanthropy and entrepreneurship.

Despite the noises of those who want to ban concerts on one side and those who support theatre on the other (I recommend Nadirah at KLPac), there is also space for the Maulids of the legendary Haqqani Maulid Ensemble and less famous ones like last week’s session at Istana Hinggap Seremban organised by Persatuan Asyraaf Negri Sembilan.

For centuries, Muslims here have known that Islam can flourish without politics.

The Rulers for their part have continued pushing for progress in this vein: in Perak one of the most exciting recent appointments to the royal court was of Oxford Fel­low in Islamic Studies Datuk Dr Muhammad Afifi Al-Akiti; in Negri Sembilan the palace has hosted efforts leading towards Egypt’s Al-Azhar University establishing a local faculty; and in Perlis the Raja recently hosted Prof Tariq Ramadan’s dialogue with 2,000 religious officials, and last week the Raja Muda graced an unprecedented interfaith forum in the state.

This is the kind of Muslim leadership the country is crying out for, rather than the ostentatious politicisation of religion which has only caused consternation and division.

In the meantime, there is not going to be a political resolution on the Islamic state issue at the federal level anytime soon, and thus it seems sensible to instead re-affirm the intentions of the Rulers and the founding fathers.

Only in this way can we rejoin the dynamic, intellectual, spiritual and moderate narrative of Islam that we were long a part of.

ROAMING BEYOND THE FENCE  By TUNKU 'ABIDIN MUHRIZ
newsdesk@thestar.com.my

 > Tunku ’Abidin Muhriz is President of IDEAS

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