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New Malaysian lawmakers ready to take their seats

Four months ago, Tian Chua was arrested trying to enter the parliament building to protest a constitutional amendment that activists say would curtail civil rights.

But when parliament reopens today, he will walk in to take a seat for the next five years.

Chua is one of several opposition candidates, from human-rights activists to bloggers, who won the March 8 elections that changed the face of Malaysian politics almost overnight.

For the first time since Malaysia’s independence in 1957, the opposition won a record 82 seats in the 222-member parliament, many of them going to first-time candidates like Chua who were long considered by the government as nuisances and rabble-rousers.

The elections ended virtual one-party rule by the National Front coalition.

Parliament “will be a very lively thing. It will resemble a two-party situation,” said Chua, who won a seat for the People’s Justice Party, one of three parties in the opposition People’s Alliance coalition.

After lawmakers are sworn in today, the king will declare parliament open tomorrow.

PROTEST VOTE

The People’s Alliance largely benefited from a protest vote against the National Front because of anger over discrimination faced by the ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities, corruption that subverted an affirmative action program for the majority Malays and inflation.

While the opposition put up professional politicians in the elections, it also fielded a large number of novices including Net-savvy professionals, civil society members, human-rights activists and lawyers.

Among those who won on an opposition ticket is a prominent blogger, Jeff Ooi, who wrote fiery anti-government articles during the campaign, attracting a huge following in cyberspace.

“It’s only with the free flow of information that you get to weed out corruption and so on,” said Ooi, 52, a former advertising executive. “Parliament is going to be a noisy place ... I think we are going to give the backbenchers a run for their money.”

COMPUTER ‘MONKEYS’

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s son-in-law, Khairy Jamaluddin, who also won a seat in parliament for the ruling party, once compared bloggers to “monkeys” living by the law of the jungle.

Nur Jazlan Mohamed, a colleague of Khairy, said he welcomed more debate in parliament as long as it did not touch on sensitive issues such as race.

“They must also be very careful what they say as not to make the other races, especially Malays, angry,” he said.

Chua said he would push to address civil liberty issues and corruption.

Eleven opposition parliamentarians, including Chua, have been imprisoned at one time or another because their activism allegedly made them security threats.

Constitutional amendments, such as the one Chua got arrested protesting, can no longer be made easily. The government needs a two-thirds parliamentary majority to make such changes, but it now only has a simple majority.


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