New ethnic fears
THE CHINESE: FRUSTRATION
The elections had raised hopes for a post-racial Malaysia, but if anything, the changes appear to have deepened the fault lines.
The Straits Times
The last place Jonathan Chew expected to find himself was on the political front line of a general election.
The 29-year-old copywriter had steered clear of politics for most of his life, but the mood of change that gripped Malaysia last year swept him up as well. And not just as a passive voter, but as a boots-on-the-ground volunteer for the opposition.
Chew signed up as a counting agent for Parti Keadilan Rakyat candidate R. Sivarasa, now an MP in Selangor, and convinced friends to join him.
“I was not interested in politics before, but the frustration of the last four years was enough to wake me up,” he said.
That frustration was the four-year administration of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, which began with high expectations of reform but ended in shattered hopes.
The opposition was swamped with volunteers, a large number of whom were Chinese.
Opposition DAP MP Tony Pua had considerably more than the 500 volunteers he needed as polling and counting agents. There were so many that a lot of them were not assigned jobs. “They were scolding my staff because they were not allotted anything,” he recalled.
It was a remarkable change for the community. Malaysia's Chinese, particularly middle-class urbanites, have generally been reticent about their political views. They have not earned the reputation for being inscrutable without good reason — or, as Pua put it, “scared of everything”.
One year after the landmark elections, the Chinese have become even more comfortable in their new political skin. He has found that Chinese businessmen, whose greatest fear was being photographed with the opposition, now clamour for invitations to its events.
This is grim news for the Barisan Nasional, in particular the MCA and Gerakan, the ruling coalition's Chinese component parties. Last March, Chinese support for the BN fell to 30 per cent from over 50 per cent in the 2004 election.
A year later, indications are that support remains low. The independent Merdeka polling centre's surveys consistently show poor sentiment among the Chinese towards the BN government.
Although the Chinese are a minority — forming 23 per cent of Malaysia's 27 million people — their vote can be decisive if the Malays are split.
Of course, there has not been a wholesale swing to the opposition. The Kuala Terengganu by-election in January, in fact, saw the Chinese vote increasing slightly for the BN, possibly in reaction to the conservative Pas, which dominates the state.
But large Chinese crowds have also been turning out at opposition rallies and donating substantial sums of money. What has made the middle-class Chinese less reticent, speculated Pua, is possibly “safety in numbers”.
Political analyst Khoo Kay Peng thinks that the Chinese now have a greater sense of security in being vocal and open partly because there is now a strong opposition that appeals to minorities.
One year later, the Chinese sentiment towards BN is no better than it was before March 8; in fact, it is possibly worse.
