The Anwar Conviction in n Parts — The White House Petition (Annex I)
Updated this to be an annex to the series. Doesn’t bear directly on the case but is a related issue of interest, which is why it isn’t one of the ‘n’ parts.
Soon after the Federal Court dismissed Anwar Ibrahim’s appeal against his sodomy conviction (analysis part one of that case here) former US ambassador to Malaysia John Malott fired up a We The People petition to the White House to make Anwar’s release a top American foreign policy objective.
At the time of writing the petition has another 23,000 or so signatures to go before it lands at the desk of the Obama Administration. Opposition DAP leaders appear to be making a strong push for those last 23,000 signatures, sharing the petition around on Facebook.
The last time this happened was after the country’s 13th general election, where angry Malaysians flooded the White House petitions website with over 200,000 signatures demanding action against a ‘democracy crisis’ in the country.
Is the ongoing petition a legitimate diplomatic tool, or a signing away of Malaysian sovereignty? What does the apparently broad support among some Malaysians for the petition mean?
TL;DR: It is a legitimate diplomatic tool, and it is not a signing away of sovereignty. But…
The second question has a variety of possible answers (which aren’t mutually exclusive) — take your pick:
- These Malaysians are savvy to the ways of international politics and diplomacy, and know the White House is unlikely to respond but hopes that some political pressure or leverage will come of it.
- These Malaysians are less savvy to the ways of international politics and diplomacy, and think the White House will actually embark on some diplomatic Anwar rescue mission.
- These Malaysians don’t know if it will lead to anything, but figure that it costs nothing and is worth a shot anyway.
- These Malaysians are care enough to be critical of the court decision, but aren’t willing to do more.
- Something else.
Will the White House actually do something?
Any petition reaching 100,000 signatures will prompt a response from the administration, barring a few rare cases where the law may preclude them from responding. And while the website appears geared towards US citizens, there isn’t anything that explicitly excludes non-citizens from starting (and signing) petitions. So it’s fair to say that Malaysians are not ‘hijacking’ some other nation’s internal petition system.
The White also responded to the GE13 petition, so it seems likely that they will have an answer to this one too, if it gets enough signatures by the deadline.
There’s pretty much a snowball’s chance in hell that the result will be any substantial shift in American foreign policy, however. Permanent interests rather than permanent friends, and all that. The Obama Administration responded to the GE13 petition by reiterating an earlier statement they made expressing concerns at irregularities in the election. Similarly, the US already issued a statement on Anwar’s conviction. The probable outcome is that they will reiterate that one, too.
Well, OK, but they’ve done similar things before, haven’t they?
As Malott himself points out, the US did do more than issue statements when it came to cases like Natan Sharansky and Aung San Suu Kyi. And as we know full well, the US is not one to be shy about abstaining from action when it comes to supposedly promoting human rights and democracy (see: Iraq and Afghanistan).
But Malaysia is not junta-led Burma, or the Soviet Union. Neither is it China. To quote a Congressional Research Service report on US-Malaysia relations:
The two nations are major trade and investment partners. In 2013, Malaysia was the 25th-largest market for U.S. exports and the 18th-largest supplier of U.S. imports. The United States was Malaysia’s 4th-largest export market (after Singapore, China, and Japan) and the 4th-largest supplier of imports (after China, Singapore, and Japan). Both countries are parties to the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, which aim to create a high-standards trade agreement among 12 countries comprising nearly 40% of the global economy. The United States’ main trade-related concerns are Malaysia’s government procurement policies, protection of intellectual property rights, and market access for key goods and services.
In other words, the US doesn’t stand to gain much more from pushing more aggressively for Anwar’s release — but they do have more to lose. Unlike Burma, we aren’t in a situation so bad and so visible as to force a response — just how many countries issued more than a brief statement expressing concern over the verdict? Unlike China, we aren’t anywhere close to being a rising economic rival with an expanding sphere of influence in the region. (As a matter of fact more recent US diplomatic efforts in Southeast Asia are likely geared towards countering Chinese influence, not inviting it by antagonising key states in the region) And unlike the Soviet Union — well, that one should be obvious.
To the US we are a key ‘moderate’ Muslim-majority ally, a major party to the ongoing Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement negotiations and an all-around not-too-bad ‘developing’ country. Some electoral irregularities and political oppression are a small price to pay for our friendliness.
It’s probably true that we need the US relationship more than they do, but the point is that they gain less out of calling for Anwar’s release and potentially losing a regional ally, than they do keeping that ally and tolerating Anwar’s imprisonment.
Criticism was more heightened during the tenser years of Mahathir’s anti-West rhetoric; most famously, then-Vice President Al Gore publicly rebuked Malaysian leadership and name-dropped the burgeoning Reformasi movement that sprung up after Anwar’s ouster (at a Malaysia-hosted APEC conference, too). Still, US-Malaysia relations were cosier than you might think during Mahathir’s time (see: Barry Wain, Malaysian Maverick).
Hang on, isn’t this petition somehow a violation of Malaysian sovereignty?
Sovereignty is a big word, and like other big words (genocide, for example) it’s sometimes overused and used wrongly.
Vaughan Lowe in International Law refers to it as an ‘elusive concept’ with a ‘complex genealogy’. It’s more helpful to think in terms of specific legal consequences and principles arising from the concept of sovereignty, though, rather than focus on sovereignty itself. Per Lowe:
In international law, discussions of sovereignty commonly focus on the principles of non-intervention in the affairs of other States, prohibitions on the use of force and coercion, the principles of sovereign equality and sovereign immunity, and the like, all of which are said to be in some sense dependent upon or derived from the concept of sovereignty (though I suspect that the relationship is precisely the opposite, and that sovereignty is a concept extrapolated from these components).
Sovereignty is commonly expressed in terms of state territory, but obviously it also extends to matters like self-determination and non-intervention in domestic affairs (as the argument would go in the case of the petition).
It’s quite clear, then, that signing a petition asking the White House to adopt a specific foreign policy objective is not in itself a violation of anyone’s sovereignty. It may have been if Malott used an internal Malaysian petition system (does such a thing even exist?). And it certainly would be if the US invaded Malaysia tomorrow. But signing a petition is not.
If the US took Malott’s suggestion, it wouldn’t be a violation either. What it would do to secure Anwar’s release is what could make it a violation. Simply making it a diplomatic mission would not be enough, because a lot of diplomacy involves States trying to convince each other to do things, anyway.
So much for the Anwar petition, then. Now the GE13 petition is a more interesting case. That one asks the US to ‘provide solidarity supports [sic] and necessary assistances [sic] for us, to ensure the election can be conducted in clean and fair manners [sic].’
It’s hazy, but depending on what you think that petition is asking for, there may be a stronger case for the sovereignty or non-intervention argument. The petition was created on May 4th (a day before the election) but many of the signatures and the White House response came after. If the request was for the US to come to Malaysia and make sure there weren’t any fishy Bangladeshis voting in the election (their source for this is, laughably, iReport on CNN), then arguably US compliance would have constituted an intervention.
Elections are, after all, a domestic affair, and no matter how suspicious you think your government is, it isn’t quite the business of other States to judge and come into your country, uninvited, to arrange your elections ‘fairly’ for you.
There are of course plenty of international observers on hand for general elections, but it’s one thing to extensively document irregularities and later apply political pressure on states, and another to come in and directly affect the handling or running of elections. As with anything law-related there can be exceptions, but those are probably irrelevant here.
So, to the counter-petitioners calling on the US to ‘stop interfering in Malaysia’s judiciary and rule of law’: there’s no need to worry.
So is it worth signing, then?
That depends on what you expect out of it, what you want out of it, and what it will actually do.
What you want out of it:
For the US government to reorient its Malaysian foreign policy towards actively securing Anwar’s release, hopefully culminating in some sort of overturning of Anwar’s guilty verdict.
We've established (and Malott has explained) that the petition will not get Anwar released, even if the petition is successful. But as he points out, there’s some diplomatic merit in simply making a statement:
But the US Government can make it clear to Najib and the Malaysian government at all levels that we are greatly concerned by these developments and by the general suppression of political dissent in Malaysia, such as the increased use of the Sedition Act, which Najib promised to repeal but didn't.
Diplomacy in a nutshell. Which brings us to…
What you expect out of it:
For the US government to reorient its Malaysian foreign policy towards actively securing Anwar’s release, or at least to pressure a state (which claims to act in furtherance of human rights objectives) to act on a fundamentally worrying development in the Malaysian human rights scene.
The former is again unlikely, as we've discussed. The latter is possible, but I wonder how many people consider that their objective in signing the petition. More on this later.
What it will actually/probably do:
Prompt a response from the White House pointing to its previous statement ‘expressing concern’, and a thank-you for writing in.
This is of course the most probable response. Kudos to the White House if it decides to do anything more. The signs aren’t favourable, though. Obama’s last visit to Malaysia saw some pretty tame criticisms of failings in Malaysian democracy (and only a month after the Court of Appeal’s overturning of Anwar’s acquittal, too). It’s probably fair to say we will not be seeing an Al Gore-type knock against the government, unless perhaps VP Biden decides to drop by.
(In all fairness though, Gore is a friend of Anwar, as is Malott)
No harm at all, then. Feel free to sign it. Just don’t expect a whole lot out of it. But the real worry isn’t that there’s a petition going around — it’s that many Malaysians seem to be very keen on it.
What does it say about Malaysians opposing the conviction?
This is the tricky bit. I outlined four possible answers above, and it isn’t a closed list (I may have missed something). In all likelihood it’s a mix of those answers.
I suspect that the DAP leaders so keenly pushing the petition around fall under #1 — they don’t think it’ll amount to much, but hope that it will at least add to the international political pressure on Malaysia. Or at least I hope this is what they think, because if answers 2, 3 or 4 apply to them I’d be quite worried about the quality of our opposition leadership.
Malott of course falls under #1.
Answers #2 and #3, I think, go to the people who simply aren't all that engaged in politics and think that the US, arguably the world’s reigning superpower, may just respond positively. I find this an odd view and I’m guessing that if anything these people are a significant minority, since there hasn't exactly been a shortage of criticism in Muslim-majority Malaysia against Iraq- and Afghanistan-invading America.
But then again apparently 51% of Malaysians viewed the US favourably in 2014, so I may not know what I’m talking about!
(If I had to explain that though, it’d probably be to say that there’s a fairly major split between Muslim approval of the US and non-Muslim approval of the US in Malaysia, as the 2013 survey illustrates — and that much of the support from the petition likely comes from the non-Malay or Chinese community)
Answer #4 is the one I’m really interested in, and it ties into larger discussions over citizen engagement with politics in Malaysia and the rise of armchair criticism.
How many Malaysians supposedly dissatisfied with the system do little more than write about it on Facebook? It’s easy to imagine these Malaysians signing a petition — it’s quick and easy, carries no risk of tear gas and is unlikely to land you in prison. Score!
There’s no way of determining how widespread #4 is, though. How we perceive the electorate to be depends so much on the personal network we see online that one person’s view on things is bound to be different from another’s.
If it is true though that plenty of Malaysians only care enough to sign a petition, but not to do a hundred other things that might actually effect change from within the country — attending protests, promoting more political debate and discourse, working in government, taking greater student leadership in politics — then that’s sobering.
It would be a reminder of how far we have yet to go to overcome the institutional hurdles we face in becoming a more mature, more competent democracy — not all these roadblocks are the Election Commission’s doing.
I hope you found this useful (and somewhat objective, at least). Whether you sign the petition or not, be sure that the decision is an informed one, and that signing a petition is not all you do for something you care so much about.
(The cartoon at the top comes from, of course, the wonderful Zunar)
If you’re interested in the case of Anwar Ibrahim’s second sodomy trial, see also my series of articles breaking down the entire case:
