As “Gen Z” youth revolts rock many countries in Asia, Green Left’s Peter Boyle spoke to Arveent Kathirtchelva, a youth activist in the Socialist Party of Malaysia (Parti Sosialis Malaysia, PSM) about how right-wing politicians are channeling rising mass dissatisfaction into racist scapegoating of minorities.
Kathirtchelva also explains the significance of the PSM’s electoral pact with Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (MUDA), a youth-centred party.
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Could we see the sort of youth-led revolts in Malaysia, such as we have seen in many other countries in Asia, most recently and spectacularly in India?
Largely speaking, the spirit of protest in Malaysia is generally more subdued than in other countries in Asia, but there is rising dissatisfaction. There is a lot of frustration but in our country we’ve been so polarised, especially by race and religion, that this [dissatisfaction] becomes a breeding ground for right-wing and the fascist ideology.
One such example is the wave of xenophobia against the Rohingya [refugee] community that is distracting the masses from the core problems in the country and from the actual enemy, the capitalists.
We have seen large protest movements, such as the [2007–12] Bersih democracy movement for example, but now we see a rising right-wing force fueled by dissatisfaction.
This dissatisfaction is targeted towards the wrong people, in order to sustain an exploitative economy.
PSM and our election ally MUDA are trying to get in front of that and educate the masses that they have much more in common with each other than with the political elites and billionaires.
What is unfortunate is we are both quite small compared to the big right-wing forces [driving the attacks on the Rohingya]. All the other parties are silent because they are also targeting people by race or religion, to keep themselves them in power.
What is behind this dissatisfaction? Is unemployment rising in Malaysia?
Yes, there is a creeping unemployment and underemployment crisis and rising inequality.
We are looking at the economic conditions due to the United States-Israel war on Iran, such as the spiking oil prices, but also the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its expansion under the Pakatan Harapan Madani government.
We are seeing a lot of workers being retrenched and a lot of graduates not being taken up into the workforce. A lot of our young comrades in the PSM are finding it more and more difficult to get the work they trained for. So we’re seeing a lot more people going into the gig economy and even that is reducing its profitability. We have Grab Food, Panda, etc all paying their workers poorly.
People are being pushed into the margins to such a degree that they are feeling the pressure. Right-wing forces are taking advantage of that pressure to point the anger towards vulnerable communities, like the Rohingya, to preserve the capitalist system.
Why are they targeting the Rohingya community in particular?
Previously, it was Indonesian workers [targeted] and previous to that it was other foreign workers. When elections are coming up, this becomes an issue and the flavour of this month is the Rohingya community, because they are a refugee community.
They are very vulnerable. They have no right to work in Malaysia … and try to earn a living somehow. But that is seen as being unfair and “against the rules” by locals who don’t see that the core issue is a community displaced to a country that doesn’t recognise their rights as refugees.
They are completely reliant on donations from NGOs that are short of funds.
Are there particular parties pushing this campaign against the Rohingya?
All the right-wing parties are. We have a lot of popular leaders within UMNO [United Malays National Organization] — the Malay nationalist party — taking up the cause. We have other political voices from the past joining in as well. The Islamic Party (PAS) is picking it up as well.
Even our prime minister [Anwar Ibrahim] who is from a supposed reformist party [the People's Justice Party, PKR] has been issuing vague threats against the Rohingya and playing to the right-wing crowd by stating that this community needs to “follow the rules”.
But if these rules mean that you can’t eat, and you can’t make money to feed your family, then morally speaking, it is only natural that someone would break those rules.
So, it is left up to the PSM and MUDA to educate the masses on the larger picture and draw them away from this kind of really toxic, xenophobic moment that we’re having.
While Malaysia’s economy has been growing 4–5% a year in recent times, real wages in the private sector, in particular, have been stagnant. Why aren’t trade unions able to make sure that workers share the benefit of economic growth?
It is true that our economy is growing but who gets to share in that wealth is a question that is largely unanswered by our mainstream economists. Real wages are either growing much slower than before or even declining.
That is part and parcel of Malaysia being in an imperialist global economy. We are exporting a lot of our labour and we are put in a position where we are competing against other Third World nations to minimise our costs to the multinational companies [MNCs] that largely run our economy.
The government is also threatened by these MNCs threatening to move to another country and if it is in ASEAN [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations], we are in a free trade agreement, so the government is forced to accept this situation.
This is why we opposed these free trade agreements and why we have fought for [and won in 2012] a Minimum Wage Act.
Every two years, the minimum wage is supposed to be revised. That law is being threatened as well and the government’s wage revision is always delayed by two and a half to three years.
The tiny increase also does not follow the government’s own calculation of how much the minimum wage should be raised. Instead the decision usually follows the demands of the employers’ federation.
So we are a captive economy. Why are the trade unions not able to make workers’ share larger? Firstly, only about 6% of our workforce is unionised and a lot of the union leaders are careerists. They do not really hold the interest of the worker in their hearts. They use their unions to curry favour from the capitalist class or the political elites.
In fact, the largest trade union federation, the Malaysian Trade Unions Congress (MTUC) was deregistered earlier this year and nobody bat an eyelid. That shows how defanged our trade unions have become.
There are some small militant unions. One such union that we work with is the hospital workers’ union that fights, organises pickets and is active on the ground to make sure people get their collective bargaining rights.
But, unfortunately, unions like this are few and far between.
Why was the MTUC deregistered?
It was deregistered because a leadership struggle resulted in a lack of clarity on its leadership. That caused the registrar of societies to deem it deregistered.
A similar thing happened to UMNO in the 1980s when it had a constitutional crisis. But then, too, nobody noticed, nobody cared really.
It’s tragic because we are a country that, back in the 1960s and ‘70s had trade unions that were really strong, really gung-ho in pushing the capitalist class to the edge. But those have been defanged by either being slowly made into careerist unions or destroyed. So, now we have a largely non-unionised working class.
We’re trying to rebuild some of that class consciousness among workers.
How significant is the electoral cooperation between PSM and MUDA in the upcoming Johor and Negeri Sembilan state elections? What does it involve?
Recently, there was a split in PKR, the leading party in the Madani government, and the party of the prime minister. A new party called Bersama was formed by the once right-hand man of the prime minister.
So the political situation in Malaysia is incredibly fractured. For 60 years we had only one coalition [Barisan Nasional] in government, federally. But in the past few years, because of the corruption, mismanagement and hypocrisies of the capitalist parties, the political field has become much more divided.
When we see right-wing forces scattered and bickering amongst each other, what does the left do? We try to consolidate.
I’m not going so far as to describe MUDA is a left-wing party. MUDA describes itself as a centre-left party. But we have worked with them for a few years now on multiple issues, not just electorally. We’ve worked together with them in protests against corruption. We’ve come together to discuss economic and social issues. We see eye to eye on a lot of these issues.
Muda means “young” in Malay. These are a group of young people who have the idealism to want to do something better than before and who do not want the kind of institutionalised corruption we have suffered up to now.
What we can do with MUDA is leverage off of each other’s strengths. So our legitimacy, our class consciousness, our way of understanding in PSM that has led to our survival for the past almost 30 years (which is something to be appreciated) is coupled with MUDA’s idealism, MUDA’s reach to the young people and MUDA’s resources.
With this electoral pact, people tend to listen a little bit more and that allows us to talk to more people about our politics.
How will this alliance work? Would you be running candidates from MUDA in some seats and candidates from PSM in others? Or will you have a common name on the ballot paper?
Under the electoral laws, if we want to run as a coalition, we have to get that registered and that would take some time.
So, we will stand under our own logos, campaign independently with our resources and support each other. So, for example, when PSM ran in the seat of Kajang [in the 2023 Selangor state election], MUDA came to give speeches and gave us some volunteers. We are trying to see what more we can do in the Johor election.
[The election] has been called on short notice so we’re organising ourselves as best as we can. And soon after that is the Negeri Sembilan state election. Nominations close on June 27 for the Johor election and voting is on July 11. Nominations day for the Negeri Sembilan election is July 18.
What are the relative strengths of PSM and MUDA in Johor?
MUDA holds the [federal] parliamentary seat of Muar and the state seat of Puteri Wangsa, but those were won when MUDA was in an electoral pact with Pakatan Harapan. Without that, we have fairly equal electoral prospects.
While MUDA has done a lot of work more in the centre of the state — around the Muar and Puteri Wangsa area — we’ve done a lot more work towards the south.
The issues we are fighting on are similar: youth unemployment and underemployment, but that is a bigger problem in the state capital, Johor Bahru, right at the southern tip [of the state], right next to Singapore.
In Johor Bahru, you can see the effects of its high dependency on the Singaporean economy.
In the Johor elections, is there any prospect of Pakatan Harapan not running against either MUDA or PSM?
At the moment it seems like Pakatan Harapan is going to contest every seat. Barisan Nasional is also going to contest every seat. We are not sure yet about Perikatan Nasional, because it is now in a bit of a tussle with PAS. Then we have the new party Bersama, the splinter from PKR.
So we’re looking at a congested ballot with four or five parties running in every seat.
This is why the Johor and Negeri Sembilan state elections are going to be testing grounds and will inform how people will be moving when it comes to the national elections and elections in other key states like Selangor and Perak.