KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's democracy ranking has remained robust, despite the political turmoil last year that led to the resignation of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad as prime minister and his replacement within 10 days.
In fact, in the Democracy Index 2019 report released by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Malaysia secured 39th position last year, up from 43 in 2019, out of 67 countries being surveyed.
The country scored 7.19 points out of the full score of 10, improving from last year's score of 7.16 points.
Malaysia also ranked sixth in a regional grouping of 28 Australasian and Asian countries.
The top-ranked countries were New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. These countries were deemed full democracies.
Malaysia did well in electoral process and pluralism; functioning of government and political participation, as well as political culture.
The report, however, said, political stability in Malaysia had deteriorated since the departure of Dr Mahathir as prime minister in March 2020.
"However, improvements in electoral process and pluralism have resulted in more democratic political institutions."
Malaysia has come a long way since the index began in 2006 when it scored 5.98 points, followed by 6.36 (2008), 6.19 (2010, 2011), 6.41 (2012), 6.49 (2013, 2014), 6.43 (2015), 6.54 (2016, 2017) and 6.88 (2018).
Other countries in the region ranked below Malaysia with a similar category of flawed democracies were Timor-Leste, India, the Philippines, Mongolia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, Thailand and Singapore.
Flawed democracies have been defined as countries that have free and fair elections and, even if there are problems (such as infringements on media freedom), basic civil liberties are respected.
However, there were significant weaknesses in other aspects of democracy, including problems in governance, an underdeveloped political culture and low levels of political participation
On the impact of the global Covid-19 pandemic, the report said: "The willing surrender of fundamental freedoms by millions of people was perhaps one of the most remarkable occurrences in an extraordinary year.
"Most people concluded, on the basis of the evidence about a new, deadly disease, that preventing a catastrophic loss of life justified a temporary loss of freedom.
"Many critics of the lockdown approach accepted that some form of social distancing was necessary to contain the spread of the disease, but they failed to put forward convincing alternatives to the policy of enforced lockdowns, and the question of how many deaths would be acceptable as the price of freedom was one that few lockdown sceptics were prepared to answer."
The report said the symbolism of Asia gaining three new "full democracies" (Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) in 2020 and western Europe losing two (France and Portugal) was apt as the Covid-19 pandemic had accelerated the shift in the global balance of power from the West to the East.
"Asia lags behind the West in democratic terms, having only five 'full democracies', compared with Western Europe's 13, and the region also has seven 'authoritarian regimes' while western Europe has none.
"Yet the Asia region has, so far, handled the pandemic much better than virtually any other, with lower infection and mortality rates and a fast economic rebound. Having learned from the experience of SARS, Asian governments reacted decisively (albeit deploying coercive powers in some cases), benefited from well-organised health systems and retained the confidence of their populations.
"By contrast, European governments were slow to act, some health systems came close to collapse and public trust in government declined. Europe's handling of the pandemic was not a good advert for democracy, something that authoritarian China did not fail to point out.
"The pandemic has highlighted the widening gap between a dynamic East and a declining West and is likely to further accelerate the shift in the global balance of power towards Asia."