Malaysia travel guide

It may have become commonplace in Malaysia for opposition politicians, free-thinking jurists, environmentalists and other assorted annoyances to be hounded, arrested, tried and jailed, but not mainstream Malay politicians. It is this that rocked Malaysia’s political establishment when Anwar Ibrahim, former deputy prime minister and Mahathir’s successor in waiting, was arrested in late 1998. Anwar was sacked by Mahathir on 2 September 1998. This was preceded by a series of murky allegations impugning Anwar’s morals. In particular, there were whispers that he was bisexual. Not only is this beyond the pale in a largely Muslim country like Malaysia, but homosexuality remains a crime. Anwar’s supporters saw this whispering campaign as politically motivated and the result of a widening gulf between Mahathir and his deputy over how to manage the economy.

A few days after he was sacked, Anwar was arrested and charged with five counts of sodomy and five charges of abuse of power. But before his second appearance in court Anwar appeared with bruised arms and a black eye, and accused the police of beating him. Mahathir seemed to imply that the injuries were self-inflicted. Anwar’s treatment at the hands of the police as well as the crude and one-sided coverage in the government- controlled press angered many Malaysians. They did not believe the charges, and as the trial continued they became less and less credible. Nonetheless, on 14 April 1999, Anwar was convicted of corruption with a jail sentence for six years and convicted of sodomy and sentenced to nine years in jail. Anwar appealed against both convictions. In 2002, he lost his final appeal against the corruption charges in the federal court. In September 2004, a federal court of three judges overturned the sodomy conviction at 2 to 1 because of inconsistencies in the prosection’s evidence. As Anwar had already served the six years for corruption, he was freed. Shortly after he was freed Anwar tried to have the corruption conviction lifted, but he failed in his appeal. The court found Anwar fairly convicted on those charges. Because his conviction was not lifted, Anwar could not return to politics until April 2008. Directly after Anwar was freed he flew to Germany for back treatment. He alleged the injuries came from abuse during his arrest and jail time. Prime Minister Badawi cautioned overseas leaders not to visit Anwar.

The immediate aftermath of the Anwar affair brought demonstrators onto the streets of Kuala Lumpur, created demands for reformasi and led to the creation of a new opposition party, the Justice Party (Keadilan), led by Anwar’s wife Wan Azizah.

Whether the court had exerted its independence or the order for his release came from above, Anwar’s freedom would have been unthinkable under Mahathir.

Anwar stormed back into politics in August 2008 with a crushing victory in the Permatang byelection, cementing his position in Malaysian political life. However, this victory was tinged with a bitter edge: in July 2008 Anwar was again arrested having been accused by one of his aides of sodomy, a crime carrying a jail sentence of 20 years, a punishment sure to end any effective opposition Anwar could offer to the BN. The doctor who examined the alleged victim claimed in August 2008 that there was no physical evidence to support the accuser’s claims. After Anwar was released on bail, the case was transferred to the High Court with global notables including Al Gore and Condoleeza Rice expressing their alarm at the accusations and proceedings. Gore claimed that Anwar was the victim of a political character assassination. In June 2009 Anwar accused the public prosecutor of conspiring with the government against him. Whilst the noose tightened around Anwar’s political neck, he claimed to have enough BN dissenters to topple the ruling party and wished to push through a vote of no confidence against the government. However, any supporters in the ruling camp he might have had wished to remain silent. On 17 June 2009, an affidavit was filed at the KL High Court to throw out the case against Anwar with the evidence of two doctors to support Anwar’s innocence.

In February 2010, the case went to trial at the Malaysian High Court, with Ibrahim claiming the judge was biased against him as he claimed to be the victim of a conspiracy. The judge refused to vacate his position at the trial and postponed proceedings until March 2010. As the trial went to court, Anwar again saw huge support from the international community.

In foreign affairs Malaysia follows a non-aligned stance and is fiercely anti-communist. This, however, has not stopped its enthusiastic investment in Indochina and Myanmar (Burma). Malaysia is a leading light in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Malaysia’s most delicate relations are with neighbouring Singapore, a country with which it is connected by history and also by water pipelines and a causeway. Until it was ejected in 1965, Singapore was part of the Malaysian Federation and Singapore’s status as a largely Chinese city state makes for an uneasy relationship with Malay-dominated Malaysia. In 1997 sensitivities were made all too clear when a spat threatened to escalate into a major diplomatic conflict. The cause? A dispute over whether Johor Bahru was a safe place or not.

The 2004 general election was the first one since 1981 not contested by Mahathir who had tearfully resigned and handed over to his deputy Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in October 2003. The sacking and imprisonment on allegedly trumped up charges of Anwar Ibrahim was not an issue. The public had forgotten him despite efforts by the opposition to revive his case. Also Badawi’s face was on the election posters, and it was Mahathir who was associated with Anwar’s treatment.

Most observers agree that BN’s landslide victory came because it played the Islamic fundamentalism card. Many of Malaysia’s Muslims follow a moderate form of the religion and do not support the idea of an Islamic state. The Islamist PAS wanted to ban rock concerts, make dress more conservative and separate sexes on beaches and even supermarkets. More- over, the media is under government control; the BN easily dominated newspapers and TV.

The 2008 general elections started off controversially with the election committee announcing on 14 February that nominations for candidates would be announced on 24 February and the election proper held on 8 March, allowing only 13 days for campaigning. Anwar Ibrahim claimed this was ‘a dirty trick’, and also too early for Ibrahim to legally return to politics and stand as a candidate. Again, using the Islamic card, the BN unsuccessfully tried to wrest Kelantan away from the PAS with promises of extensive mosque building and development projects. With claims of fraud ringing through the media and international organisation Human Rights Watch claiming the process was ‘grossly unfair’, the BN claimed victory once more, although the opposition’s gain of 36.9% of the seats was the first time since 1969 that the BN did not gain a two-thirds majority.

On 3 April 2009, Badawi handed over control of the country to the new prime minister and leader of UMNO, Najib Tun Razak, son of former Malaysian PM Tun Abdul Razak, and immediately attracted the wrath of Matahir Mohamed for the inclusion of several ‘unsavoury characters’ in his 28-strong cabinet. Najib quickly unveiled his 1Malaysia scheme, an attempt to bridge many of the gaps between the races of Malaysia. In July 2009 Najib Tun Razak outlined a plan to reduce the grip on economic power held by the Malays, who have long been given a favoured status as bumiputeras (sons of the soil). The new policy outlined by Razak changes the requirement that 30% of the shares of companies need to be held be ethnic Malays, allowing for a freer and fairer market. Many believe this change has been brought about by the resurgence in popularity of Anwar Ibrahim, who promises to undo Malaysia’s system of racial preferences once and for all, allowing Chinese and Indians equal benefits and access to higher education as the Malays. The continuing policy of racial preferencing was seen as a key reason why the opposition parties gained a much larger number of seats in the 2008 general election.

The entrenched position of UMNO and the BN has, in the eyes of the government’s critics, allowed money politics and political patronage to flourish. It is argued that the use of political power to dispense favours and make money has become endemic, so much so that it is accepted as just another part of the political landscape.

Badawi has made stamping out corruption one of his main aims and although it is early days, observers note the prime minister has gone some way to achieving them. He has strengthened a number of anti-corruption agencies and arrested some Mahathir-era cronies. However, critics comment that the pace of change is too slow.

Many suggested that Mahathir worsened the corruption problem. They blamed his style and his emphasis on wealth creation. Chandra Muzaffar, a political scientist at the Science University of Malaysia in Penang argued that “He’s created a culture that places undue emphasis on wealth accumulation for its own sake. The new heroes are all corporate barons”.

Since the race riots of 1969, relations between Malaysia’s Malay and Chinese populations have dominated political affairs. Now that Malaysia is fast attaining economic maturity a debate is beginning to emerge about whether it is time to consign racial politics, and racial quotas, to the dust heap. Former Prime Minister Mahathir’s Vision 2020, which sets out a path to developed country status by 2020, significantly talks of a ‘Malaysian race working in full and equal partnership’. There is no mention here of ‘bumiputras’ and ‘Chinese Malaysians’, but of a single Malaysian identity which transcends race.

In late 2007 Malaysia saw its biggest street demonstrations in years, when the ethnic Indian community gathered in protest about the affirmative-action policy favouring ethnic Malays. They argued that the Malay-dominated ruling coalition government discriminated against minority groups, denying them basic opportunities in education and business.

The British occupied Dutch colonies during the Napoleonic Wars, including the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), following France’s invasion of the Netherlands in 1794. Dutch King William of Orange, who fled to London, instructed Dutch governors overseas to end their rivalry with the British and to permit the entry of British troops to their colonies in a bid to keep the French out. Historian William R Roff writes: “From being an Indian power interested primarily ... in the free passage of trade through the Malacca Straits and beyond to China, the East India Company suddenly found itself possessor not merely of a proposed naval station on Penang island but of numerous other territorial dominions and responsibilities.”

The British had their own colonial designs, having already established a foothold on Penang where Captain Francis Light had set up a trading post in 1786. The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London signed in 1824 effectively divided maritime Southeast Asia into British and Dutch spheres of influence. Britain retained Penang, Melaka (which it swapped for the Sumatran port of Bengkulu) and Singapore – which had been founded by Stamford Raffles in 1819 – and these formed the Straits Settlements. The Dutch regained control of their colonial territories in the Indonesian archipelago. Britain promised to stay out of Sumatra and the Dutch promised not to meddle in the affairs of the peninsula, thus separating two parts of the Malay world whose histories had been intertwined for centuries.

The British did very little to interfere with the Malay sultanates and chiefdoms on the peninsula, but the Straits Settlements grew in importance – particularly Singapore, which soon superceded Penang, which in turn had eclipsed Melaka. Chinese immigrants arrived in all three ports and from there expanded into tin mining, which rapidly emerged as the main source of wealth on the peninsula. The extent of the tin rush in the mid-19th century is exemplified in the town of Larut in northwestern Perak. Around 25,000 Chinese speculators arrived in Larut between 1848 and 1872. The Chinese fought over the rights to mine the most lucrative deposits and organized into secret societies and kongsis, which by the 1860s were engaged in open warfare. At the same time, the Malay rulers in the states on the Peninsula were busily taxing the tin traders while in the Straits Settlements, British investors in the mining industry put increasing pressure on the Colonial Office to intervene in order to stabilize the situation. In late 1873 Britain decided it could not rule the increasingly lawless and anarchic states by remote control any longer and the western-central states were declared a British protectorate. In his account of British intervention, William R Roff quotes a Malay proverb: “Once the needle is in, the thread is sure to follow”.

In 1874, the Treaty of Pangkor established the residential system whereby British officers were posted to key districts; it became their job to determine all administrative and policy matters other than those governing Islam and Malay custom. This immediately provoked resentment and sparked uprisings in Perak, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan, as well as a Malay revolt in 1875. The revolts were put down and the system was institutionalized: in 1876 these three states plus Pahang became the Federated Malay States. By 1909 the north states of Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Terengganu – which previously came under Siamese suzerainty – finally agreed to accept British advisers and became known as the Unfederated Malay States. Johor remained independent until 1914. The British system of government relied on the political power of the sultans and the Malay aristocracy: residents conferred with the rulers of each state and employed the aristocrats as civil servants. Local headmen (known as penghulu) were used as administrators in rural areas.

Meanwhile, the British continued to encourage the immigration of Chinese, who formed a majority of the population in Perak and Selangor by the early 1920s. Apart from the wealthy traders based in the Straits Settlements, the Chinese immigrants were organized (and exploited) by their secret societies, which provided welfare services, organized work gangs and ran local government. In 1889 the societies were officially banned and while this broke their hold on political power, they simply re-emerged as a criminal underworld. In the Federated Malay States, there was an eight-fold population increase to 1.7 million between 1891 and 1931. Even by 1891 the proportion of Malays had declined to a fraction over a third of the population, with the Chinese making up 41.5% and Indians – imported as indentured labourers by the British – comprising 22%. To the south, Johor, which in the late 1800s was not even a member of the federation, had a similar ethnic balance.

For the most part, the Malay population remained in the countryside and were only gradually drawn into the modern economy. But by the 1920s Malay nationalism was on the rise, partly prompted by the Islamic reform movement and partly by intellectuals in secular circles who looked to the creation of a Greater Malaysia (or Greater Indonesia), under the influence of left-wing Indonesian nationalists. These Malay nationalists were as critical of the Malay élite as they were of the British colonialists. The élite itself was becoming increasingly outspoken for different reasons – it felt threatened by the growing demands of Straits-born Chinese and second-generation Indians for equal rights.

The first semi-political nationalist movement was the Kesatuan Melayu Singapura (Singapore Malay Union), formed in 1926. The Union found early support in the Straits Settlements where Malays were outnumbered and there was no sultan. They gradually spread across the peninsula and held a pan-Malayan conference in 1939. These associations were the forerunners of the post-war Malay nationalist movement. In the run-up to the Second World War the left wing split off to form the Kesatuan Melayu Muda – the Union of Young Malays, which was strongly anti-British and whose leaders were arrested by the colonial authorities in 1940. The Chinese were more interested in business than politics and any political interests were focused on China. The middle class supported the Chinese nationalist Kuomintang (KMT), although it was eventually banned by the British, as it was becoming an obvious focus of anti-colonial sentiment. The KMT allowed communists to join the movement until 1927, but in 1930 they split off to form the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) which drew its support from the working class.

Under cover of darkness on the night of 8 December 1941, the Japanese army invaded Malaya, landing in South Thailand and pushing into Kedah, and at Kota Bharu in Kelantan. The invasion, which took place an hour before the attack on Pearl Harbor, took the Allies in Malaya and ‘Fortress’ Singapore completely by surprise. The Japanese forces had air, land and sea superiority and quickly overwhelmed the Commonwealth troops on the peninsula. Militarily, it was a brilliant campaign, made speedier by the fact that the Japanese troops stole bicycles in every town they took, thus making it possible for them to outpace all Allied estimates of their likely rate of advance.

By 28 December they had taken Ipoh and all of northern Malaya. Kuantan fell on the 31st, the Japanese having sunk the British warships Prince of Wales and Repulse, and Kuala Lumpur on 11 January 1942. They advanced down the east coast, centre and west coast simultaneously and by the end of the month had taken Johor Bahru and were massed across the strait from Singapore. By 15 February they had forced the capitulation of the Allies in Singapore. This was a crushing blow, and, according to Malaysian historian Zainal Abidin bin Abudul Wahid, “the speed with which the Japanese managed to achieve victory, however temporary that might have been, shattered the image of the British, and generally the ‘whiteman’, as a superior people”. Right up until the beginning of the Second World War, the British had managed to placate the aristocratic leaders of the Malay community and the wealthy Chinese merchants and there was little real threat to the status quo. The Japanese defeat of the British changed all that by altering the balance between conservatism and change. Because Britain had failed so miserably to defend Malaya, its credentials as a protector were irrevocably tarnished.

For administrative purposes, the Japanese linked the Peninsula with Sumatra as part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. All British officials were interned and the legislative and municipal councils swept aside. But because the Japanese had lost their command of the seas by the end of 1942, nothing could be imported and there was a shortage of food supplies. The ‘banana’ currency introduced by the Japanese became worthless as inflation soared. Japan merely regarded Malaya as a source of raw materials, yet the rubber and tin industries stagnated and nothing was done to develop the economy.

After initially severing sultans’ pensions and reducing their powers, the Japanese realized that their co-operation was necessary if the Malay bureaucracy was to be put to work for the occupation government. The Indians were treated well since they were seen as a key to fighting the British colonial regime in India, but Malaya’s Chinese were not trusted. The Japanese, however, came to recognize the importance of the Chinese community in oiling the wheels of the economy. The Chinese Dalforce militia (set up by the Allies as the Japanese advanced southwards) joined the communists and other minor underground dissident groups in forming the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army. British army officers and arms were parachuted into the jungle to support the guerrillas. It was during this period that the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) broadened its membership and appeal, under the guise of a nationwide anti-Japanese alliance.

The brutality of the Japanese regime eased with time; as the war began to go against them, they increasingly courted the different communities, giving them more say in the run of things in an effort to undermine any return to colonial rule. But the Japanese’s favourable treatment of Malays and their general mistrust of the Chinese did not foster good race relations between the two. A Malay paramilitary police force was put to work to root out Chinese who were anti-Japanese, which exacerbated inter-communal hostility. The Japanese never offered Malaya independence but allowed Malay nationalist sentiments to develop in an effort to deflect attention from the fact they had ceded the North Malay states of Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Terengganu to Thailand.

With the arrival of successive waves of Malay immigrants about five millennia ago, the earliest settlers – the Orang Asli aboriginals – moved into the interior. The Malays established agricultural settlements on the coastal lowlands and in riverine areas and from very early on were in contact with foreign traders, thanks to the peninsula’s strategic location on the sea route between India and China. Although the original tribal inhabitants of Malaya were displaced inland, they were not entirely isolated from the coastal peoples. Trade relations in which ‘upriver’ tribal groups exchanged forest products for commodities like salt and metal implements with ‘downstream’ Malays, were widespread. Malay culture on the Peninsula reflected these contacts, embracing Indian cultural traditions, Hinduism among them. In the late 14th century, the centre of power shifted from Sumatra’s Srivijayan Empire across the Strait to Melaka. In 1430, the third ruler of Melaka embraced Islam and became the first sultan; the city quickly grew into a flourishing trading port. By the early 1500s it was the most important entrepôt in the region and its fame brought it to the attention of the Portuguese who, in 1511, ushered in the colonial epoch. They sacked the town and sent the sultan fleeing to Johor, where a new sultanate was established. But because of internal rivalries and continued conflict with the powerful trading sultanate of Aceh in north Sumatra as well as the Portuguese, Johor never gained the prominence of Melaka, and was forced to alternate its capital between Johor and the Riau archipelago.

The expulsion of Singapore did not solve the racial problem on the peninsula, however. As the Malay and Chinese communities felt threatened by each other – one wielded political power, the other economic power – racial tensions built up. Resentment focused on the enforcement of Malay as the medium of instruction in all schools and as the national language and on the privileged educational and employment opportunities afforded to Malays. The tensions finally exploded on 13 May 1969, in the wake of the general election.

The UMNO-led Alliance faced opposition from the Democratic Action Party (DAP) which was built from the ashes of Lee Kuan Yew’s People’s Action Party. The DAP was a radical Chinese-dominated party and called for racial equality. Also in opposition was Gerakan (the People’s Movement), supported by Chinese and Indians, and the Pan-Malayan Islamic Party, which was exclusively Malay and very conservative. In the election, the opposition parties – which were not in alliance – deprived the Alliance of the two-thirds parliamentary majority required to amend the constitution unimpeded. Gerakan and DAP celebrations provoked counter-demonstrations from Malays and in the ensuing mayhem hundreds were killed in Kuala Lumpur.

The government suspended the constitution for over a year and declared a State of Emergency. A new national ideology was drawn up – the controversial New Economic Policy, which was an ambitious experiment in social and economic engineering aimed at ironing out discrepancies between ethnic communities. The Rukunegara, a written national ideology aimed at fostering nation-building, was introduced in August 1970. It demanded loyalty to the king and the constitution, respect for Islam and observance of the law and morally acceptable behaviour. All discussion of the Malays’ ‘special position’ was banned as was discussion about the national language and the sovereignty of the sultans. In the words of historian John Gullick, “Tunku Abdul Rahman, whose anguish at the disaster had impeded his ability to deal with it effectively,” resigned the following month and handed over to Tun Abdul Razak. Tun Razak was an able administrator, but lacked the dynamism of his predecessor. He did, however, unify UMNO and patched up the old Alliance, breathing new life into the coalition by incorporating every political party except the DAP and one or two other small parties into the newly named Barisan Nasional (BN), or National Front. In 1974 the Barisan won a landslide majority.

Tun Razak shifted Malaysia’s foreign policy from a pro-Western stance to non-alignment and established diplomatic relations with both Moscow and Beijing. Yet within Malaysia communist paranoia was rife: as Indochina fell to communists in the mid-1970s, many Malaysians became increasingly convinced that Malaysia was just another ‘domino’ waiting to topple. There were even several arrests of prominent Malays (including two newspaper editors and five top UMNO politicians). But when Chin Peng’s revolutionaries joined forces with secessionist Muslims in South Thailand, the Thai and Malaysian governments launched a joint clean-out operation in the jungle along the frontier. By the late 1970s the North Kalimantan Communist Party had been beaten into virtual submission too. In 1976 Tun Razak died and was succeeded by his brother-in-law, Dato’ Hussein Onn (the son of Umno’s founding father). He inherited an economy that was in good shape, thanks to strong commodity prices, and in the general election of 1978 the BN won another comfortable parliamentary majority. Three years later he handed over to Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

During the war the British drew up secret plans for a revised administrative structure in Malaya. The plan was to create a Malayan Union by combining the federated and unfederated states as well as Melaka and Penang, leaving Singapore as a crown colony. Plans were also drawn up to buy North Borneo from the Chartered Company and to replace the anachronous White Rajahs of Sarawak with a view to eventually grouping all the territories together as a federation. As soon as the Japanese surrendered in September 1945, the plan was put into action. Historian Mary Turnbull noted that “Malaya was unique [among Western colonies] because the returning British were initially welcomed with enthusiasm and were themselves unwilling to put the clock back. But they were soon overwhelmed by the reaction against their schemes for streamlining the administration and assimilating the different immigrant communities.”

A unitary state was formed on the Peninsula and everyone regardless of race or origin who called Malaya ‘home’ was accorded equal status. But the resentment caused by British high-handedness was the catalyst which triggered the foundation of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) which provided a focus for opposition to the colonial regime and, following independence, formed the ruling party. Opposition to UMNO, led by the Malay ruling class, forced the British to withdraw the Union proposal. The sultans refused to attend the installation of the governor and the Malays boycotted advisory councils. Mary Turnbull noted that the Malayan Union scheme was “conceived as a civil servant’s dream but was born to be a politician’s nightmare”. Malay opposition prompted negotiations with Malay leaders which hammered out the basis of a Federation of Malaya which was established in February 1948. It was essentially the same as the Union in structure, except that it recognized the sovereignty of the sultans in the 11 states and the so-called ‘special position’ of the Malays as the indigenous people of Malaya. The federation had a strong central government (headed by a High Commissioner) and a federal executive council.

In this federal system, introduced in 1948, non-Malays could only become Malaysian citizens if they had been resident in Malaya for a minimum of 15 out of the previous 25 years, were prepared to sign a declaration of permanent settlement and were able to speak either Malay or English. This meant only three million of Malaya’s five million population qualified as citizens, of whom 78% were Malay, 12% Chinese and 7% Indian. Historian Mary Turnbull said that while the British believed they had achieved their objective of common citizenship (even on more restricted terms), they had, in reality “accepted UMNO’s concept of a Malay nation into which immigrant groups would have to be integrated, and many difficulties were to develop from this premise”.

The Portuguese were the first of three European colonial powers to arrive on the Malay peninsula. They were followed by the Dutch, who took Melaka in 1641 . When Holland was occupied by Napoleon’s troops at the end of the 18th century, Britain filled the vacuum and the British colonial era began.

During the 17th century, the Dutch came into frequent conflict with the Bugis, the fearsome master-seafarers who the Dutch had displaced from their original homeland in South Sulawesi. In 1784, in league with the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, the Bugis nearly succeeded in storming Melaka and were only stymied by the arrival of Dutch warships. The Bugis eventually established the Sultanate of Selangor on the west coast of the Peninsula and, in the south, exerted increasing influence on the Johor-Riau sultans until they had reduced them to puppet-rulers. By then however, offshoots of the Johor royal family had established the sultanates of Pahang and Perak. The Minangkabau-dominated states between Melaka and Selangor formed a confederacy of nine states, or Negeri Sembilan. To the northeast, the states of Kelantan and Terengganu came under Siamese influence.

The Chinese and Indian communities were not consulted in these Anglo-Malay negotiations and ethnic and religious tensions between the three main communities were running high, unleashing the forces of racialism that had been lying dormant for years. Because their part in the political process had been ignored, many more Chinese began to identify with the Malaysian Communist Party (MCP), which was still legal. It was not until the communist victory in China in 1949 that the Chinese began to think of Malaya as home. During the war the MCP had gained legitimacy and prestige as a patriotic resistance movement. The MCP’s de facto military wing, the MPAJA, had left arms dumps in the jungle, but the communist leadership was split as to whether negotiation or confrontation was the way forward. Then in 1947 the MCP suffered what many considered to be a disastrous blow: its Vietnamese-born secretary-general, Lai Teck, absconded with all the party’s funds having worked as a double agent for both the Japanese and the British. He was suspected of having betrayed the entire MCP central committee to the Japanese in 1942. The new 26-year-old MCP leader, former schoolmaster Chin Peng, immediately abandoned Lai’s soft approach.

In June 1948 he opted for armed rebellion and the Malayan Communist Emergency commenced with the murder of three European planters. According to John Gullick, the historian and former member of the Malayan civil service, it was called an ‘Emergency’ because the Malayan economy was covered by the London insurance market for everything other than war. Premiums covered loss of stock, property and equipment through riot and civil commotion, but not through civil war, so the misnomer continued throughout the 12-year insurrection. Others say it got its name from the Emergency Regulations that were passed in June 1948, designed to deny food supplies and weapons to the communists.

The Emergency was characterized by indiscriminate armed communist raids on economic targets – often rubber estates and tin mines – and violent ambushes that were aimed at loosening and undermining central government control. Chinese ‘squatters’ in areas fringing the jungle (many of whom had fled from the cities during the Japanese occupation) provided an information and supply network for the communists. In 1950 the British administration moved these people into 500 ‘New Villages’, where they could be controlled and protected. This policy, known as ‘The Briggs Plan’ after the Director of Operations, Lieutenant-General Sir Harold Briggs, was later adopted (rather less successfully) by the Americans in South Vietnam.

In much the same way as they had been caught unprepared by the Japanese invasion in 1941, the British were taken by surprise and in the first few years the MCP (whose guerrillas were labelled ‘CTs’ – or Communist Terrorists) gained the upper hand. In 1951 British morale all but crumbled when the High Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney, was ambushed and assassinated on the road to Fraser’s Hill. His successor, General Sir Gerald Templer, took the initiative, however, with his campaign to ‘win the hearts and minds of the people’. Templer’s biographer, John Cloake, gave him Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita’s old sobriquet ‘Tiger of Malaya’, and there is little doubt that his tough policies won the war. In his book Emergency Years, former mine-manager Leonard Rayner says the chain-smoking Templer “exuded nervous energy like an overcharged human battery”. Within two years the communists were on the retreat. They had also begun to lose popular support due to the climate of fear they introduced, although the Emergency did not officially end until 1960. Historians believe the communist rebellion failed because it was too slow to take advantage of the economic hardships in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and because it was almost exclusively Chinese. It also only really appealed to the Chinese working class and alienated and shunned the Chinese merchant community and Straits-born Chinese.

The British had countered the MCP’s claim to be a multi-racial nationalist movement by accelerating moves towards Malayan independence, which Britain promised, once the Emergency was over. The only nationalist party with any political credibility was UMNO. Its founder, Dato’ Onn bin Jaafar wanted to allow non-Malays to become members, and when his proposal was rejected he resigned to form the Independence of Malaya Party. The brother of the Sultan of Kedah, Tunku Abdul Rahman, took over as head of UMNO and to counter Onn’s new party he made an electoral pact with the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) and the Malayan Indian Congress (MIC). With the MCP out of the picture the Chinese community hesitantly grouped itself around the MCA. The Alliance (which trounced Onn’s party in the election) is still in place today, in the form of the ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front). After sweeping the polls in 1955, the Alliance called immediately for merdeka, or independence, which the British guaranteed within two years.

With independence promised by non-violent means, Tunku Abdul Rahman offered an amnesty to the communists. Together with Singapore’s Chief Minister, David Marshall and Straits-Chinese leader Tan Cheng Lock, he met Chin Peng in 1956. But they failed to reach agreement and the MCP fled through the jungle into the mountains in southern Thailand around Betong. While the Emergency was declared ‘over’ in 1960, the MCP only finally agreed to lay down its arms in 1989, in a peace agreement brokered by Thailand. The party had been riven by factionalism and its membership had dwindled to under 1000. In 1991, the legendary Chin Peng struck a deal with the Malaysian government allowing former guerrillas to return home. Historian Mary Turnbull wrote: “When Malaya attained independence in 1957 it was a prosperous country with stable political institutions, a sound administrative system and a good infrastructure of education and communications – a country with excellent resources and a thriving economy based on export agriculture and mining”. Under the new constitution, a king was to be chosen from one of the nine sultans, and the monarchy was to be rotated every five years. A two-tier parliament was set up, with a Dewan Rakyat (People’s House) of elected representatives and a Dewan Negara (Senate) to represent the state assemblies. Each of the 11 states had its own elected government and a sultan or governor.

Politicians in Singapore made it clear that they also wanted to be part of an independent Malaya, but in Kuala Lumpur, UMNO leaders were opposed to a merger because the island had a Chinese majority (a straight merger would have resulted in a small Chinese majority in Malaya.) Increasing nationalist militancy in Singapore was of particular concern to UMNO and the radical wing of the People’s Action Party, which was swept to power with Lee Kuan Yew at its head in 1959, was dominated by communists. Fearing the emergence of ‘a second Cuba’ on Malaysia’s doorstep, Tunku Abdul Rahman proposed that Singapore join a greater Malaysian Federation, in which a racial balance would be maintained by the inclusion of Sarawak, Brunei and British North Borneo (Sabah). Britain supported the move, as did all the states involved. Kuala Lumpur was particularly keen on Brunei joining the Federation on two scores: it had Malays and oil. But at the eleventh hour, Brunei’s Sultan Omar backed out, mistrustful of Kuala Lumpur’s designs on his sultanate’s oil revenues and unhappy at the prospect of becoming another sultan in Malaya’s collection of nine monarchs.

Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman was disheartened, but the Malaysia Agreement was signed in July 1963 with Singapore, Sarawak and Sabah. Without Brunei, there was a small Chinese majority in the new Malaysia. The Tunku did not have time to dwell on racial arithmetic, however, because almost immediately the new federation was plunged into an undeclared war with Indonesia – which became known as Konfrontasi, or Confrontation – due to President Sukarno’s objection to the participation of Sabah and Sarawak. Indonesian saboteurs were landed on the Peninsula and in Singapore and there were Indonesian military incursions along the borders of Sabah and Sarawak with Kalimantan. Konfrontasi was finally ended in 1966 after Sukarno fell from power. But relations with Singapore – which had been granted a greater measure of autonomy than other states – were far from smooth. Communal riots in Singapore in 1964 and Lee Kuan Yew’s efforts to forge a nation-wide opposition alliance which called for ‘a democratic Malaysian Malaysia’ further opened the rift with Kuala Lumpur. Feeling unnerved by calls for racial equality while the Malays did not form a majority of the population, Tunku Abdul Rahman expelled Singapore from the federation in August 1965 against Lee Kuan Yew’s wishes.

Malaysia is good value for overseas visitors. If you stay in the bottom- end guesthouses, eat at hawker centres and use public transport, you can get by on US$15-20 (RM60-80) per day. Cheaper guesthouses charge around RM30-50 (US$8-15) a night for two. Dorm beds are less common these days, but are available in big towns for around RM10-25. It is usually possible to find a simple a/c room for US$10-20 (RM40-80). A tourist-class hotel, with a/c, room service, restaurant and swimming pool costs US$26-40 (RM100-150). International- class hotels charge US$80-130 (RM300-500).

Eating out is also comparatively cheap: a good curry can cost less than RM5 (US$1.50). Overland travel is a bargain; the bus network is extremely good.

A service charge of 10% is automatically added to restaurant and hotel bills, plus a 5% government tax (indicated by the + and ++ signs). For personal services, such as porters, a modest tip is appropriate.

Most of the bigger hotels, restaurants and shops in Sarawak and Sabah accept international credit cards, including American Express, BankAmericard, Diners, MasterCard and Visa. The latter 2 are the most widely accepted. Cash advances can be issued against credit cards in most banks, although some banks limit the amount that can be drawn. A passport is usually required for over-the-counter transactions. It is also possible to draw cash from ATMs. Maybank will accept Visa and MasterCard at its ATMs; cards with the Cirrus mark will also be accepted at most ATMs. TCs can be exchanged at banks and money changers and in some big hotels (often guests only). Money changers often offer the best rates, but shop around. Major currencies are widely accepted, but US dollars are probably best.

Peninsular Malaysia has an excellent bus system with a network of public express buses and several privately run services. Air-conditioned express buses connect the major towns; seats can be reserved and prices are reasonable. The air conditioning is often very cold. Prices vary between companies. Note that buses are less frequent on the east coast.

Recommended companies are Plusliner, T03-2274 0499, http://www.plusliner.com/ index.asp, and Transnasional, T03-4047 7878, http://www.transnasional.com.my. Although these may cost a few ringgit more, it’s usually money well spent. In larger towns there may be a number of bus stops. Increasingly, long-distance bus terminals are being built outside of major towns, often necessitating a taxi ride into town.

Buses in East Malaysia are more unreliable because of the poorer road conditions. With heavy rain, the highway connecting KK with Sandakan is sometimes blocked by mudslides. Recently the governments of Sabah and Sarawak have started to invest extensively in road infrastructure; in some places road surfacing has outpaced public transport.

Car hire companies are listed in the transport listings of individual towns. Visitors can hire a car provided they are have an international driving licence, are aged 23-65 and have had a licence for at least a year. Car hire costs RM100-RM250 per day. Cheaper weekly and monthly rates and special deals are available.

Driving is on the left; give way to drivers on the right. However, local drivers often don’t obey traffic lights or road signs and hardly ever give way so you will need to have your wits about you. Within towns the speed limit is 50 kph; the wearing of seat belts is compulsory for front seat passengers and the driver. Road maps are on sale at most petrol stations; Petronas produces an excellent atlas, Touring Malaysia by Road. Most roads are kept in good repair. However, during the monsoon season, heavy rains may make some east coast travel difficult and the west coast roads can be congested.

In Sarawak the road network is limited: air or water transport are sometimes the only option. In Sabah, 4WDs are readily available, but expensive. On some islands, such as Penang, Langkawi and Pangkor, motorbikes are available for hire, starting around RM25 per day. If bringing your own car into the country, no carnet or deposit is required.

Bicycles are available for hire from some guesthouses and hire shops, especially on islands such as Pangkor, Penang, Langkawi and Tioman, but also in some towns and hill resorts. Compared with motorbikes, bike hire can seem expensive – RM10-20 per day and substantially more by the hour. Prices vary a good deal depending on the type of bike.

Touring, hybrid or mountain bikes are fine for most roads and tracks in Malaysia. Mountain bikes have made a big impact in the country, so accessories and spares are widely available. Less common are components made of unusual materials – titanium and composites. Cycling clubs are springing up across the country. Unlike Indonesia and Thailand, a foreigner on a bike is not such an object of interest. Cars and buses rarely give way to a bicycle so be very wary; avoid major roads and major towns. Cheaper buses usually carry bicycles, but air-conditioned tour buses may refuse. Many international airlines take bicycles for no extra cost, provided they are not boxed. Take the pedals off and deflate the tyres.

Useful items include: pollution mask if travelling to large cities; puncture repair kit; spare inner tubes; spare tyre; pump; a good map; bungee cords; and a water filter.

There are two types of taxi in Malaysia: local and ‘out-station’ (long-distance). The latter, usually Mercedes or Peugeot, connect all major towns and cities. They operate on a shared-cost basis – as soon as there are four passengers, the taxis set off. It is possible to charter the whole taxi for the price of four single fares. Taxi stands are usually next door to major bus stations. If shared, taxi fares usually cost about twice as much as bus fares, but they are much faster. For groups travelling together taking a taxi makes good sense. It is easier to find other passengers in the morning than later in the day.

Local taxi fares in Malaysia are fairly cheap, but it is rare to find a taxi with a meter (except in KL); you will need to bargain. On the east coast, air-conditioned taxis cost more.

In KL it has long been too dangerous for trishaws, apart from around Chinatown and suburban areas. In towns such as Melaka, Georgetown and Kota Bharu, as well as in many other smaller towns, trishaws are still available but they have largely become an expensive way to travel for well-heeled tourists. Bargaining over fares is acceptable.

There are flights to Kuala Lumpur (KL) from all regional capitals. Air Asia (http://www.airasia.com) has flights connecting KL with Jakarta, Singapore, Hanoi, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Bangkok, and Bangkok with Penang and Johor Bahru. Many airlines fly from Hong Kong, Manila and Tokyo. Budget carriers now fly between KL and Singapore, including Tiger Airways (http://www.tigerairways.com), Jetstar Asia (http://www.jetstar.com) and Air Asia.

Note that budget airlines arrive and depart from KLIA LCCT (Low Cost Carrier Terminal), some 20 minutes’ drive from the main KLIA terminal building.