A two-year election campaign nears its climax

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On Mar 22, 2013

(The Economist) – That he still has some chance of becoming prime minister is testimony to widespread anger at the corruption endemic in Malaysia.

WITH a tight election coming up, it is politics as usual in Malaysia—only more so. This month alone has seen the opposition accused of colluding in a foreign invasion of the state of Sabah in Borneo; the death of a private investigator, reviving stories of the grisly murder in 2006 of a beautiful Mongolian woman linked to a friend of the prime minister, Najib Razak; the leader of the opposition, Anwar Ibrahim, denying that he was one of two men appearing in grainy pictures online in an affectionate clinch; and a film shot on hidden cameras that appears to show large-scale corruption in the government of the other Malaysian state in Borneo, Sarawak.

Sailing blithely above the mud and filth that make Malaysian political waters so murky, Mr Najib went on national television on March 19th to deliver the scorecard on the “transformation programme” his government has implemented. He had a good story to tell, of robust economic growth of 5.6% in 2012, poverty virtually eliminated, inequality reduced and 400 legal cases against corruption initiated. And he was able to announce that a scheme to give cash handouts to poorer households will become an annual event.

All should be set fair, you might think, for Mr Najib’s ruling coalition, the Barisan Nasional (BN), to romp home again at the election, as it has done in every ballot since independence in 1957. Mr Najib is expected to dissolve parliament any day now, with the voting to follow in mid-April after a brief official campaign period (the unofficial one has now lasted two years or more). If he does not dissolve parliament, its term will expire at the end of April, and the election must then be held by the end of June.

In fact, the outcome is in doubt, for the first time in Malaysia’s history. In the election five years ago the opposition coalition, the Pakatan Rakyat, for the first time deprived the BN of the two-thirds majority that allows it to change the constitution. That led to the downfall of the BN prime minister of the day, Abdullah Badawi. His replacement by Mr Najib was decided by their party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which represents the Malays (who make up about 55% of the population) and dominates the BN. In 2008 Pakatan actually won a slight majority of the popular vote in peninsular Malaysia (ie, excluding Sabah and Sarawak). Affirmative-action policies introduced more than 40 years ago to favour Malays and other indigenous groups over the Chinese and Indian minorities were no longer enough to ensure an overwhelming victory for the ruling coalition.

The BN says it would like to campaign on Mr Najib’s record of relative economic success, modest liberalising reform and statesmanship. The opposition wants to keep the focus on issues of fairness and corruption. It can boast of good performances by governments in some of the four (out of 13) states it controls in Malaysia’s federal system. But its best hope is that, after more than five decades of BN rule, many Malaysians want change.