Contesting power in post-mahathir Malaysia : a case study of Malay professional satirists
Authors:   , Shaharuddin Fairuzzaman 
Published: December 2023

This study examines the political contestation among Malay Professional Satirists (MPS) through their selected political satire works between 2011-2018. Political satire challenges those in power and is often regarded as fake news and libel. Therefore, political satirists tend to be frequently subject to legal action and are accused of disrupting national harmony. However, there is another group within the social and cultural community, which I call Social and Cultural Professionals (SCP), who also use satire but are supported by the government. This group frequently received financial benefits from the state and are at lower risk of suffering legal consequences. These contrasting conditions raise several important questions: who are the Malaysian Professional Satirists? Who are the targets of MPS in their satirical work? Why do MPS satirise them? And why do the MPS still produce political satire despite the potential legal consequences? Therefore, this study attempts to identify the characters, themes, and issues the MPS highlight; it also considers the reasons and motivations that political satirists have for creating such allegedly controversial works. Malaysia’s Reformasi movement and the booming use of the internet in 1998 mobilised multiple alternative social movements, mainly through art-related activities. Art workers, NGOs, as well as musical and cultural groups, protested creatively against the UMNO-BN ruling regime. Creative protests that employed satire and humour somehow succeeded in attracting a significant proportion of the public to follow political and current issues, especially youths in universities who had been depoliticised with the inception of the University and University College Act (AUKU 1979). This study establishes a point of view that political satire is a fun, loose, free form of resistance, contrasting with formal procedural democracy. The previous literature proposes that the study of Malaysia’s political system should focus on formal political procedures, especially election and representation. However, the study of political satire vis-à-vis democratisation is often neglected and thus such studies are scarce, which might have resulted from how satire is strictly discussed in terms of language and media. There has been a growing interest in how satirist and satirical works are regarded; hence, this study attempts to fill a gap in research on political satire in Malaysia. In contrast, democratisation is often discussed in terms of history, politics, anthropology, sociology, and economics. This qualitative study presents a comprehensive account of interviews with four (4) art workers identified as MPS, as based on appropriate criteria. Each informant had either partaken in alternative social movements or faced legal action from authorities or, indeed, both. In this study, the Theory of Contestation and Two-Social Reality serves as a primary framework to lead to an understanding of the contestation of power in Malaysia through political satire. This study further intends to broaden the knowledge of political satire and humour in the study of democratisation, adding to the existing literature, particularly outside formal political procedures.