Pre-election hopes for Malaysian
opposition By Ioannis
Gatsiounis
KUALA LUMPUR - There is a
cautious optimism running through the opposition
as Malaysia gears up for a March 8 vote that many
are calling the most crucial general election in
the country's 50-year modern history.
Cautious because the long-ruling
government controls the media and school
curriculum, oversees a broken electorate system
tilted to its advantage, and doesn’t look kindly
on freedom of expression; optimistic because Prime
Minister Abdullah Badawi's four-year-old
government has been plagued by a series of
scandals and allegations of corruption.
At
the same time, there is growing anxiety about the
nation’s global competitiveness, race relations
are tense, and the Internet
is
exposing Malaysians every day to the depth and
breadth of official disregard.
This
election arguably represents the best chance the
opposition has to weaken the ruling coalition’s
Barisan Nasional (BN) stranglehold on power in at
least a decade. The opposition’s modest aim is to
win one-third of parliament’s 222 seats, which it
hasn’t done since 1969 and if achieved would put a
check on the ruling government’s power to amend
the constitution.
"We will do well, no
question about it," de-facto opposition leader
Anwar Ibrahim told Asia Times Online in an
interview. "We will deny the BN government a
two-thirds majority. Now the problem is, when you
are talking about the so-called elections, you are
talking about a fraudulent process. You are
talking about phantom voters, you are talking
about [gerrymandering]."
That is the voice
of a man leading the battle cry with one arm
shielding his face. Indeed just four years ago
Anwar watched the elections from prison, waiting
out a politically motivated conviction for
corruption and sexual misconduct, as Abdullah
co-opted the opposition’s bread-and-butter issues
of good governance and accountability to hand the
opposition its worst defeat in history. The BN won
91% of parliamentary seats, although only 64% of
the popular vote.
Fast forward to the
present and Abdullah’s scandal-plagued
administration has forfeited the right to stake a
claim to those issues. Anwar is a free man and his
stump speeches are attracting large crowds around
the country - even though his corruption
conviction bars him from running for public office
until April. It is hardly a coincidence that the
March 8 elections are slated for a month before
Anwar is eligible to run.
Discontent over
inequality, electoral fraud, inflation and a
corrupt judiciary have spilled onto the streets in
recent months - rare in a country where public
meetings of more than five people are illegal
without a permit. Two-thirds of Indians and
Chinese, who combined make up 35% of the
population, said they disapprove of the way the
Malay-dominated government is addressing
inequality and ethnicity, according to a recent
poll by the independent Merdeka Center.
Nonetheless, the opposition will face a
tough challenge converting popular discontent into
actual votes. Despite carping about the
government, many Malaysians have proven loath to
vote for change. And yet Abdullah’s government has
in many analysts’ opinion taken their allegiance
for granted.
Whichever way the electorate
leans, this election will likely have a dramatic
and lasting impact. If the BN wins handily, the
public will have sent the message that injustice,
authoritarianism, and a political culture of
mediocrity is still acceptable. It could also
relegate the opposition to political irrelevance
and ease the pressure on the BN-led government to
change its ways.
That’s a prospect Anwar
considered in his sparse office along a leafy
street in the Kuala Lumpur suburb of Petaling
Jaya, before saying, "I don’t share that view. I
think that we are moving on. People know that; we
see the crowds." Anwar is the fulcrum of the
disparate opposition parties, which include the
Islamist party known as PAS, the Chinese-based
Democratic Action Party (DAP) and his own
multi-religious and multi-racial People’s Justice
Party (PKR). Anwar is arguably their biggest
asset, a religious man espousing justice, equality
and progressive economic policies.
Race-based
bias But walking that tightrope in
Malaysia’s race-based political landscape has
alienated voters as well. Many Muslim Malays
question whether the former Islamic youth leader
is still on their side, or if he’s bending over
backwards to appease what many of them narrowly
consider infidels. Some non-Muslims similarly fear
that Anwar is too Islamic and that if in power he
would give Islam a greater role in the
socio-political domain.
Meanwhile some
Malaysians, irrespective of race, question the
sincerity of his reform agenda. Anwar was once a
fast-rising star in the United Malays National
Organization (UMNO), which heads the BN, rising to
finance minister and deputy prime minister before
being sacked in 1998 by then premier Mahathir
Mohamad and later imprisoned. As the BBC's Stephen
Sackur asked Anwar after his release in 2005, "If
you're telling me that over all of that time you
were making protests about corruption, how come
you kept getting promoted?"
Still, Anwar
is an inspiration to many. He is a cosmopolitan
populist who grasps both the needs and desires of
common folk and the unsympathetic realities of
globalization. More than any other Malaysian
politician, he has laid bare official malaise, and
despite being out of government since 1998 he has
remained the current government’s biggest fear.
Anwar's unique attributes, however, will
not make much of a difference come March 8 unless
the opposition runs a smarter campaign than it did
in 2004. Toward that end the loose coalition of
parties is fielding one candidate per constituency
so as not to self-cannibalize opposition votes.
PAS, for instance, will run in mostly Malay
constituencies, DAP in Chinese ones.
DAP
says that given power it will give 6,000 ringgit
(US$1,877) a year to poor households and see to it
that government contracts are awarded more fairly.
(Abdullah has not disturbed the shopworn
government tradition of awarding projects without
tender.) PKR meanwhile has introduced an
assistance plan that would be based on need to
replace the 37-year-old New Economic Policy
affirmative action program that benefits mostly
the majority Malays over minority groups.
Anwar says Malays will not lose out under
his party's plan because a minority of well-off
Malays have profited from the current structure at
the expense of the poor Malays. Converting that
message into votes won’t be easy, however. Many
Malaysians readily acknowledge that Malaysia is
endemically corrupt but often in the next breath
ask, "Where isn’t their corruption?" They are
often unaware of how the severe government-imposed
limits on freedoms of conscience and expression -
in the name of promoting peace and stability - are
impairing development and competitiveness.
The opposition may get a lift from the
Internet, which the government has been at a loss
to regulate and is increasingly being leveraged by
everyday Malaysians to raise political awareness
and highlight areas of poor governance.
That being said, Malaysians by-and-large
have a low threshold for hard truth. The bulk of
the population with access to uncensored media on
the Internet still turns primarily to the
state-run media for their news - although a couple
of particularly popular on-line news sites have
garnered larger readerships than certain
mainstream outlets.
The government papers
these days are predictably frontloaded with
headlines suggesting Malaysia’s economy is booming
amid growing national nervousness about its
underlying health and medium-term prospects. The
spin is used to feed suspicions about the untested
opposition’s economic credentials and Abdullah
himself milked the formula last week when he urged
Malaysians not to take the "risk" and "experiment"
in voting for the opposition.
The BN is in
particular bringing news of its Midas touch to
Kelantan, the only state currently controlled by
the political opposition. A win there, the BN
feels, would offset the expected loss of
parliamentary seats elsewhere. Many predict the BN
will in the end secure a two-thirds majority, but
the opposition, at least in the run-up to the
polls, has reason to be hopeful.
Ioannis
Gatsiounis, a New York native, is a Kuala
Lumpur-based writer.
(Copyright 2008
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