Malaysia’s deep divides

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On May 29, 2013

National elections on May 5 haven’t cooled political and racial tensions, writes Asia Sentinel’s John Berthelsen

Any hope that May 5 national elections in Malaysia would cool the political atmosphere appears to have been misguided, leaving a country entangled in deepening racial problems and creating the risk of a real threat to the legitimacy of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s reign.

While not calling for Najib’s removal, the prime minister’s most potent critic, former Premier Mahathir Mohamad, damned him with faint praise, telling Bloomberg News in an interview in Tokyo last week that the United Malays National Organization will continue to support him “because of a lack of an alternative.”

Najib himself appears to have gone quiet as figures close to Mahathir including his longtime ally Daim Zainuddin have gone public to say the prime minister’s closest political advisors should be sacked. Instead of even attempting to woo Chinese voters, Daim said in an interview with the Chinese News, “surely the Barisan Nasional knows that the Chinese majority areas were gone. Why waste time and money? As a strategy you should concentrate on those areas where you lost by slim majorities in 2006 and strengthen the seats you won in 2008.”

In the same interview, Daim echoed criticisms that Najib’s forces had in some cases picked the wrong candidates for the race and accused the advisors of attempting to run the election as a popularity contest for Najib instead of a parliamentary race, although in public opinion polls, Najib consistently ran far ahead of his party, which is widely viewed as corrupt, racist and tired.

The Daim interview was picked up on a blog maintained by A. Kadir Jassin, editor in chief of Berita Publishing and a longtime close confidant of Mahathir.

“Daim let Najib have it,” an UMNO source told Asia Sentinel. “He should go if you ask me. I’d much rather have Muhyiddin. UMNO is particularly upset as we told Najib not to throw money at the Chinese as other constituencies needed the resources and the Chinese wouldn’t vote us anyway. So now he has to answer for it.”