By any measure Malaysia's civil and political human rights record has been poor and Malaysians have not enjoyed social, economic and cultural rights in an equitable and non-discriminatory way. The new Pakatan Harapan government's election manifesto promised to fix this. During its first year in office, however, it has not produced a consistent programme. Rather, as the examples of child marriage and racial equality show, when faced with a choice between adopting international human rights standards or heeding ethno-nationalist and religiously based claims, the Pakatan Harapan administration has chosen the latter.

Rights under the Former Regime

It is indisputable that the fundamental civil and political rights and freedoms Malaysians are ostensibly guaranteed by the Federal Constitution have long been abridged by draconian laws and policies administered by successive United Malays National Organisation (UMNO)-led Barisan Nasional (BN) governments. It is also beyond doubt that Malaysians’ enjoyment of the internationally recognised human rights they could expect their government to protect and promote – because it has repeatedly promised to do so – has similarly been compromised (Whiting, 2013). Within the vast United Nations (UN) human rights apparatus, trenchant criticisms have been made during the cyclical reviews conducted by the committees established under the International Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and during the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) Universal Periodic Review Process (the UPR) in 2009 (UPR1, 1st cycle) and 2013 (UPR2, 2nd cycle). With vengeful and embattled UMNO's narrow return to power in the 13th general election in May 2013, the situation became dire (Whiting, 2017).

At the same time, it must be conceded that the old regime's state development plans and policies delivered significant advances in education, employment and health (Gomez and Saravanamuttu, 2013) – what might, through another lens, be termed economic and social human rights. A price for these socio-economic achievements, however, has been the erosion of civil and political liberties, and racial and religious polarisation (Munro-Kua, 2017). It is thus also indisputable that the politicisation of religion and ethnicity have infected, rather than enriched, the public sphere (Welsh, 2018a).