Is Malaysia Slipping into Dictatorship?

Joshua Kurlantzick

Politics, Asia

“We are really witnessing the collapse of democratic institutions and the emergence of a new dictatorship.”

On Saturday, as the Diplomat reported, Malaysia’s former deputy prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, released a statement on Facebook warning that the country was slipping into dictatorship. Yassin lashed out against Prime Minister Najib tun Razak for overseeing this reversal from democracy. “In the face of public outrage at his leadership, Najib is using all the power that he has to suppress the voice of the opposition and silence his critics,” warned Yassin. “We are really witnessing the collapse of democratic institutions and the emergence of a new dictatorship.”

This was not new criticism by Yassin, but it was probably his harshest attack on the prime minister to date. Najib sacked Muhyiddin Yassin last year, after earlier revelations in the 1MDB scandal reportedly prompted Yassin to call for Najib to step down. Yassin’s political career has been on a downward spiral ever since. Last week, already stripped of his Cabinet position, Yassin was also suspended as the deputy president of UMNO, the main party in the governing coalition.

Yassin’s statement echoed a similar one released by former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad last week. Mahathir, who has been harshly criticizing Najib for more than a year over allegations of widespread graft by Najib and his family members, last week blasted Najib’s leadership once more. Mahathir, like Yassin, claimed that the prime minister was leading Malaysia into a dictatorship, toward becoming a country little different from Asia’s most authoritarian regimes.