Within Malaysian politics, I do think economic philosophies have taken a back seat to the point that typical left-right classification of political parties is meaningless. Nevertheless, I would like to classify Barisan Nasional, DAP, Keadilan and PAS accordingly. I will leave the others alone since I do not think the rest are worth talking about at this point.
First stop is the Barisan Nasional, the coalition that has ruled this part of the world for more than 50 years; BN itself is older than Malaysia. Labeling BN is no easy task because, in my opinion, the parties of the coalition band together for power more than anything else. Classification is not made any easier when, the most important party, UMNO for instance, has pursued liberal economic policies as much as it has advocated some left leaning ones. More often than not, UMNO economic policies are ethnocentric which perhaps could fit into typical protectionist policies. UMNO and in my opinion, even MCA and MIC for that matter, are too pragmatic to simply fit into a class. Another component party, Gerakan, on the other hand is pretty liberal. Regardless of Gerakan, given how much central planning is observable in this country and the fact that Malaysia is a mixed economy, I would say BN sits somewhere in the center with slight variation from time to time.
If the act of classifying BN is tough, trying to do the same thing with Keadilan is harder. While BN is a coalition of parties with diverging economic ideals where pragmatism has taken over, at least, if one goes through of the component parties, one might be able to recognize each party’s leaning. The same method unfortunately will not work with Keadilan because Keadilan is a party by itself. Instead of a coalition of parties with different backgrounds, Keadilan is a party of individuals with different backgrounds. They have liberals in classical sense, they have communists, socialists, Islamists; you name it, they have got it. I do not know how Keadilan manages to get liberal and socialists along with Islamist under one roof. A greater mystery is how Keadilan manages to keep them from ripping each other apart. Therefore, I am unsure which direction Keadilan would be taking and I bet Keadilan as a party itself is unsure which path it would want to embark on. The best word I could uses to describe Keadilan is populist. Some people that I know in Keadilan themselves are contented to be mere populists.
Contrary to the two, DAP is easy to label. Without doubt, it is a socialist party. Or, if you like it, a social democrat party.
Finally, PAS. I am happy to say it out loud that PAS has no economic policy; they are too busy policing morality that they have no time for the economy. Nevertheless, Islamic economics does support welfare state arrangement to some extent. Yet, I am hesitant to take that into account as far as PAS is concerned because PAS is pretty clueless about the economy.
