UK’s ‘neglect’ of Malaysia is over

If Jakarta had the buzz and rough/smooth of an Asian New York, Malaysia’s seat of government, Putrajaya, is clearly meant to be Washington DC …. designed to inspire awe, only with more than a whiff of Tracy Island.

 We’ve just heard Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak hold a “press conference” where he took only 1 question from his native media – even though government parties control just about the lot.

To the right of this picture you can see a framed photo of the PM’s wife, Rosmah Mansor. In Indonesia I was told that she is hugely superstitious and won’t let her husband call an election until the right stars or some such are aligned.

Both PMs said the world should give its backing to President Thein Sein’s attempt to reform Burma. Both cited Aung San Suu Kyi’s belief in the president as proof they were right to back what David Cameron called a “flowering” of democracy in a world of many “dark and depressing chapters.”

David Cameron praised Prime Minister Najib for his attempts to reform Malaysia. Only this week he promised to get rid of Malaysia’s emergency laws which date back to the Communist insurgency and the 1960’s. But is he seriously dismantling this authoritarian variant of democracy? Some think the replacement laws being brought in after the old Internal Security Act is done away with will give the government very similar powers of detention and suppression.

The Malaysian PM told David Cameron in talks that the UK had treated Malaysia to “benign neglect” in the nearly two decades since John Major dropped in for talks. David Cameron said that neglect was now over.

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