As Malaysia heads for elections dominated by seething ethnic tensions, an invigorated opposition is hopeful of making unprecedented gains against the coalition that has ruled for half a century.
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi scored a thumping victory in 2004, a year after taking over from long-time leader Mahathir Mohamad, but since then he has been criticized as weak and ineffective.
His government has been rocked by a series of public protests -- unthinkable during Mahathir's era -- accusing the government of discriminating against Indians, electoral fraud and failing to cap rising prices of food and fuel.
PHOTO: AFP
In the latest protests on Saturday, police fired teargas and water cannons to disperse ethnic Indians who had defied a ban and attempted to gather in Independence Square in Kuala Lumpur to protest alleged discrimination.
Support from Malaysia's ethnic Indian and Chinese minorities is thought to be melting away because of anger over the system of positive discrimination for Muslim Malays, who control government and dominate the population.
Lim Kit Siang from the Chinese-based Democratic Action Party (DAP), who leads the opposition in parliament, sees chinks in the armor of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), which leads the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition.
"I think there is a glimmer of hope that we can try to break the UMNO political hegemony and deny the Barisan Nasional its parliamentary two-thirds majority which has always been the unreachable holy grail in Malaysian politics," he said.
Such a development in the March 8 polls would prevent the government from amending the Constitution at will.
"For the first time, the Indians are prepared for change. For the past 50 years they were a vote-bank for the government," Lim said, adding that ethnic Chinese also feel they "want to have an equal place under the Malaysian sun."
Malaysia's opposition is a disparate collection, including the DAP with 12 seats in parliament, the fundamentalist Islamic party PAS with six and former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, whose Keadilan party has one seat.
They are trying to put aside their differences and field just one candidate against the government in each constituency.
Anwar, who was sacked and jailed in 1998 on corruption and sodomy charges that were widely seen as politically motivated, has emerged as an key figurehead, even though he is barred from standing for office until April.
He has condemned the timing of the elections as a "shameful" attempt to sideline him.
But the opposition faces barriers including a government-friendly media that gives it virtually no airtime and an electoral process it says is rigged.
Key battlegrounds will be urban areas where the pain of rising prices is most keenly felt, the island state of Penang with its large Chinese population, and PAS-held Kelantan, the only state not in government hands.
Khoo Kay Peng from the think tank Sedar Institute tips the opposition to win just five to 10 new seats, with the government losing the support of the ethnic minorities but retaining Malays, who make up 60 percent of the population.
He said there is a risk the outcome would emphasize the ethnic divide in Malaysia.
Bridget Welsh, a Southeast Asia expert at John Hopkins University in the US, said that even relatively modest gains by a more professional and less quarrelsome opposition will boost its watchdog role.
"We all know the BN is going to win because the system is structured that way," she said.
"But this is not necessarily going to be about the result, it's going to be the process," she said, adding that the campaign could see small parties' profiles boosted.
"Things are very optimistic, more than the last election by far, and there is a sense of purpose among the opposition to illustrate to the government the real concerns about where the country is going," Welsh said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS