KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 27 — Having exhausted every trick in its political playbook to stay in power, Umno is now balancing on a trapeze, trying to allow democracy to flourish but without losing its place in Putrajaya, the Human Rights Watch said today.

HRW Asia Director Brad Adams added that the government’s insistence of remaining in power is what is preventing them from accepting HRW’s many recommendation for a more democratic society, like repealing “draconian” laws such as the Sedition Act.

“Umno has hung on every possible trick in the book so we’ll see whether they allow free and fair elections next time but when they have electoral constituencies where one seat has 10,000 people and another has 100,000 that’s not a particularly democratic structure.

“What this government is doing as with many others is balancing those concerns, taking into account the political desire to become more a liberal, tolerant society, and maybe they really would like that in a perfect world, against what they consider their political imperitism (sic) to stay in power,” Adams said after launching the HRW report titled “Creating a Culture of Fear: the Criminalisation of Peaceful Expression in Malaysia.”

He added, however, that the Najib administration could improve its political standing if it merely engaged with the same group of people it was trying to silence as continuously avoiding them could be far more detrimental.

“One could lay out plan for this government to improve its political standing which involves going in the completely different direction and trying to bring society with them and trying to persuade them instead of trying to avoid them.

“I know nobody I've spoken to believes that's likely to happen because of what we've seen but at some point it's possible that the prime minister and the people around him will stop and look around them and see they're stepping off a cliff and they'll decide not to do that,” he said.

He explained that in other countries similar to that in Malaysia, governments who suppress public criticism often come from a place of paranoia, thinking that there are forces working to topple the government.

“The danger is that, and I'm not a political analyst, the danger is that in this country and other countries is that when the government feels week they tend to retrench and become more... paranoid and see genuine, honest critics as part of the plot or attempt to topple the government, but that hasn't happened here.

“The more insecure people in power are, the more they take traumatic measures. Obviously that's not happening here and I'm not predicting that at all but my point is that sort of the pathology of authoritarian leaders who want to stay in power and who don't necessarily accept the idea that every five years is an election,” he said.

HRW's 145-page report today accused Putrajaya of turning its back on pledged reforms and instead used criminal laws to crack down on its critics.

The report cited a long list of arrests of people seen to be critical of Najib and his administration, and also the suspension of two newspapers, the blocking of websites and the declaration that peaceful protests were unlawful.