Malaysia's PM hopes to survive most hotly contested elections

Source: 
The Guardian
Publication date: 
May 01 2013

Barisan Nasional coalition has led Malaysia since independence from Britain in 1957 but faces real challenge in Sunday's polls

They are scandals that would spell political death for almost any government leader: allegations of ministerial corruption, a botched handling of a bloody insurgency, widespread accusations of electoral fraud and a murky case involving submarines and large sums of money.

But Malaysia's prime minister, Najib Razak, who will be heading to the polls this Sunday for the country's most hotly contested elections to date, may well weather this political storm.

His ruling coalition, the Barisan Nasional (BN), is one of the world's longest-serving governments and has led Malaysia since independence from Britain in 1957. As it is largely credited with having turned this backwater into the strong economy it is today, Najib is riding this wave of fiscal success, as well as a series of recent political reforms, to ask Malaysia's 29 million population: "Who says change is good for you?". In rallies he has warned that a defeat for BN would be "a catastrophic ruin for the country".

It is a fear-mongering strategy that has some clout among voters, says Wan Saiful Wan Jan of the Malaysian thinktank Ideas. "A change of government is something really unthinkable for many Malaysians, and that fear is what the BN is riding on," he says. "They argue that if there is change, there will be chaos."

But not everyone in Malaysia agrees. Nearly one-fifth of the country's 13.3 million registered voters are under 30, and Malaysia's youth are not afraid to use their ballots to speak their minds. Rising living costs, endemic corruption and affirmative action policies favouring Malays over ethnic Chinese and Indians are among voters' complaints. Then there is also an ongoing investigation into a citizenship-for-votes scandal in Sabah, the prime minister's alleged involvement in a shady French submarine deal, and an armed Filipino insurgency on Malaysian territory in March that left 70 dead.

A recent Merdeka poll found that voters aged 21 to 30 were those most unhappy with the prime minister's performance, while another poll showed that 52% of new voters were planning to vote for opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, 65, who has promised a "Malaysian spring" ushering in a merit-based system and a government clean-up.

Najib's government has faced allegations of corruption over a $2bn purchase of French Scorpène submarines in 2002 when Najib was defence minister. But the case – which is currently being investigated by French justices – is a complicated and murky one, as it is linked to the mysterious and gruesome murder in 2006 of a Mongolian model and translator who had been hired to help negotiate the Scorpène deal.

Although two of Najib's bodyguards were convicted of her murder and imprisoned, Najib himself has long denied any wrongdoing and alleges instead that the accusations are an attempt to derail him politically.

Najib, 59, is facing tension within his own coalition as well. The BN suffered its greatest political setback in 2008 when Anwar's opposition coalition stole five of Malaysia's 13 states and one-third of parliament's seats, an electoral result that ousted Najib's predecessor from office.

Najib now needs to win this election in order to rule Malaysia under his own mandate – but analysts conjecture that if the BN were to lose any more seats on Sunday, Najib could easily be replaced as leader of the country.

That may explain why Najib's party, Umno, has invested heavily in this election, says Malaysia expert Bridget Welsh at Singapore Management University. According to Welsh's research, Najib's administration has spent nearly 60bn ringgit (£13m) on election-related campaigning in the past four years, making this the most costly runup to any election in Malaysia's history.

Billboards around the country allude to the incumbent coalition as aproduk, or product, that lasts. Voters have been offered food coupons and cash for attending Umno meetings, while Najib himself has handed out thousands of cash bonuses to state-linked corporate employees.

"There is a clear orientation to find potential groups of voters, identify their immediate needs, and provide it," Welsh recently wrote in online news portal Malaysiakini. "The bottom line in the BN's strategy is that it assumes Malaysians can be bought."

Banquets, dinners and free concerts – where guests are enticed by prize draws, free gifts and fundraising appearances by stars such as Jackie Chan and Michelle Yeoh – are used by parties to woo voters in hotly contested states including Penang, says political scientist Wong Chin Huat of the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections.

"There is no effective law on political contributions or funding, so you can actually throw out money from politicians or parties and not be held accountable at all," he says.

Winning control of Penang – a Chinese-majority state currently held by the opposition – is key to both sides, as Malaysian politics is almost entirely divided by race. Critics say the BN has done much to pit Malaysia's ethnic groups against each other in an effort to maintain power. While Malays comprise the largest ethnicity in Malaysia, they are also said to enjoy preferential treatment in business, education and employment, a legacy of the race riots between ethnic Chinese and ethnic Malays in 1969 that many fear could one day recur.

"The government has capitalised on that [fear], saying 'Malaysia is multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multilingual, and to avoid bloodshed you should have a strong government,'" says Wong.

But it seems that way of thinking may be losing clout – particularly with Malaysia's youth, who are more interested in inclusivity and opportunity than division. When Najib introduced Korea's Gangnam Style pop star Psy on a Penang fundraising stage in February, he may have proved just how far the BN is from understanding that.

"Are you ready for Psy?" Najib bellowed into the microphone, to thunderous shouts of "Yes!".

Najib then asked: "Are you ready for BN?" The crowd's answer? A resounding "No".

by:Kate Hodal

source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/01/malaysia-hotly-contested-elections