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.
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