By Angus Whitley
March 8 (Bloomberg) -- Malaysians voted today in elections after appeals by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to disaffected minorities to help return him to power.
Abdullah, 68, is confident he'll win two-thirds of parliament's seats after a 91 percent landslide in 2004. Opposition parties have argued the government failed to stamp out graft or relieve fears among the country's ethnic Chinese and Indians that they're second-class citizens.
Former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim, 60, is coordinating opposition attempts to deny Abdullah the super-majority. The ruling coalition, in power since independence in 1957, says its policies favoring the majority ethnic Malays are still needed as the community continues to lag behind in their share of the country's economic growth.
``There is a lot of unhappiness about a lot of things in this country now, expressed openly,'' said Shamsul Amri Baharuddin, a political analyst at Universiti Malaya. ``They swing like monkeys, these voters.''
Polling stations for Malaysia's 10.9 million registered voters closed at 5 p.m. local time. Voter turnout was 58 percent at 3 p.m., according to Election Commission Secretary Kamaruzaman Mohd Noor. In 2004 74 percent of voters turned out.
Racial tensions, which have dominated opposition campaigns, have increased since an unauthorized demonstration against discrimination and the destruction of temples last November brought more than 10,000 Indian supporters of theHindu Rights Action Force onto Kuala Lumpur's streets.
Violence Breaks Out
Violence broke out in the state seat of Ru Rendang in Terengganu, eastern Malaysia, at about 10 a.m. local time today as supporters of the opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party stopped and smashed the windows of two buses they suspected contained unregistered voters. Some passengers had their identity cards taken by the crowd.
About 100 police officers in riot gear fired tear gas into the 300-strong crowd as it barricaded the polling station. Voting was disrupted at the site, a military helicopter hovered overhead, and police prepared to deploy water cannon.
Twenty people were detained, Malaysia's Inspector General of Police Musa Hassan said by phone. The ruling coalition yesterday rejected PAS claims that unregistered voters were being ferried to the state to bolster support for the government.
Some analysts expect possible opposition gains in the election to come largely from ethnic minorities. While Abdullah's coalition includes the Malaysian Chinese Association and the Malaysian Indian Congress parties, it's dominated by the United Malays National Organisation.
`Crisis of Representation'
The MCA and the MIC may suffer a ``crisis of representation'' after the polls, Farish Ahmad Noor, Singapore- based senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, told a gathering of mainly opposition supporters in Kuala Lumpur on March 2. ``Things have begun to unravel.''
Abdullah has said ethnic Chinese and Indians will be better represented in his coalition, even as minority parties, than in a stronger parliamentary opposition.
Indians and Chinese together are a third of Malaysia's population of 27 million. If enough vote against the ruling coalition, it would lose the two-thirds parliamentary majority that allows it to change the constitution unopposed.
Hotly contested areas in the election include Penang, predominantly Chinese, where opposition rallies have drawn record crowds. Koh Tsu Koon, the government's chief minister in the state, told reporters yesterday the coalition is facing its biggest challenge for control of Penang since 1990.
Other battlegrounds are Terengganu, mainly Malay, and Kelantan, where thePan-Malaysian Islamic Party is seeking to keep control of the only state not in coalition hands.
`Confident of Winning'
``I'm confident of winning if there is transparency in the system,'' said Nik Aziz Nik Mat, 77-year-old chief minister in Kelantan state and spiritual leader of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic party, at a voting center in his constituency near Kota Bharu, the state capital.
The Barisan Nasional coalition has promised economic development in Kelantan, Malaysia's third-poorest state. That may not be enough for some traditional voters.
``Islam is the people's way of life here and PAS promotes just that,'' said Ismail Hussein, a 42-year-old fisherman from Batu Gajah village in Kelantan, as he covered a hole in his boat with a wooden board. ``Life is peaceful under PAS.''
Some voters are concerned a stronger opposition may trigger racial unrest. In 1969, after urban Chinese and rural Islamic opposition groups won a majority of votes and more than a third of parliament, Chinese victory parades prompted a bloody backlash by Malays and emergency rule.
Multiracial Country
``You wouldn't want to see the country facing instability with illegal demonstrations,'' Abdullah said in a live television interview on the eve of election day, advising Malaysians to vote for the future and coalition candidates ``without any doubt or suspicion.''
Anwar's People's Justice Party is co-operating with the Chinese-based Democratic Action Party and PAS against the government, and pledges to scrap an affirmative-action policy giving Malays educational, housing and job preferences created in 1971 after parliamentary rule was restored.
Malaysia's electoral process is ``grossly unfair'' on the opposition, New York-based Human Rights Watch said on March 5. Authorities allow the ruling coalition to campaign freely while refusing permits for some opposition rallies, the group said. The government rejected the allegations.
Abdullah promised to build a more inclusive multiracial country and crack down on corruption in his 2004 manifesto. Malaysia slid to 43rd in Transparency International's 2007 Corruption Perceptions Index from 39th in 2004, when he won his landslide.
There are 222 parliamentary seats and 576 state seats at stake in the election,according to the Election Commission.
To contact the reporter on this story: Angus Whitley in Kuala Lumpur at awhitley1@bloomberg.net
No comments:
Post a Comment