by R.C. | KUALA LUMPUR
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Update, May 7:Since this blogpost was published, the Election Commission (EC) has officially announced a record voter turnout of 85% instead of the estimated 80% earlier mentioned. In addition, the EC confirms that 46.5% of the votes went to Barisan Nasional (BN), the lowest share of the popular vote ever.
IT IS more of the same in Malaysia as the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition has been re-elected in the country’s 13th general election. Voting on May 5th, with a record turnout of 80%, gave Barisan a majority of seats in parliament of 133 out of 222, probably a slightly bigger margin of victory than many had predicted. It means that the same government that has ruled Malaysia ever since the country became independent from Britain in 1957 gets yet another five-year term in office.
Scratch the surface, however, and there must be plenty to worry Barisan strategists in this result. For a start, it looks as if they have won on a minority of the popular vote: 49% to the opposition Pakatan Rakyat’s 51%, according to unofficial estimates. This alone is more evidence of how the voting system has always been skewed in Barisan’s favour, allowing it to stack up seats in its rural Malay heartlands with far fewer voters than Pakatan need to win seats in the more urban areas it dominates. This will prompt more criticism about the fairness of Malaysia’s “democracy”.
Furthermore, Pakatan not only won seven more seats than it did in 2008 (up from 82 to 89) but the government’s coalition was all but wiped out as a credible political force in some areas of the country. In Penang, an island in the north, for instance, its defeat was so heavy that its chief-ministerial candidate resigned more or less instantly from all his party positions.
All in all, this leaves Malaysia more divided along ethnic lines than ever, at least in political terms. The ethnic-Chinese party that is part of the ruling coalition saw its vote collapse, to the extent that some question whether it can actually survive. Most Chinese (who make up about 25% of the population) voted instead for Pakatan's predominantly ethnic-Chinese DAP party, which won an unprecedented 38 seats in the federal parliament, ten up from last time. Even the victorious prime minister, the Barisan’s Najib Razak, spoke of a “Chinese tsunami” that had hit his coalition. He says that the country now needs a period “of national reconciliation”.
For the opposition Pakatan and its leader, the veteran Anwar Ibrahim, it was all desperately disappointing. His coalition did better than ever. But it had really been hoping to win the big prize this time. The nature of the defeat will leave a lot of bitterness, as many of Mr Anwar’s allies argue that they lost many marginal seats to Barisan’s dirty tricks as much as anything. Barisan certainly spent an enormous amount of money on the campaign. Its “supporters” (as they called themselves, to distance themselves from the coalition) were doling out endless free food, drink, straight cash and even raffling cars to tempt voters their way in tight races. As Mr Anwar has summed it up, “It’s an election that we consider fraudulent and the election commission has failed.”
In the end, however, Pakatan lost because, as ever, it could not crack open the “fixed deposits” of Barisan seats in the Borneo states of Sarawak and Sabah, which together account for about 20% of the seats. The DAP made some gains among the ethnic-Chinese urban seats here, but in the wide-open rural spaces it was, as usual, Barisan all the way.
(Picture credit: AFP)
the economist.com
Update, May 7:Since this blogpost was published, the Election Commission (EC) has officially announced a record voter turnout of 85% instead of the estimated 80% earlier mentioned. In addition, the EC confirms that 46.5% of the votes went to Barisan Nasional (BN), the lowest share of the popular vote ever.
IT IS more of the same in Malaysia as the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition has been re-elected in the country’s 13th general election. Voting on May 5th, with a record turnout of 80%, gave Barisan a majority of seats in parliament of 133 out of 222, probably a slightly bigger margin of victory than many had predicted. It means that the same government that has ruled Malaysia ever since the country became independent from Britain in 1957 gets yet another five-year term in office.
Scratch the surface, however, and there must be plenty to worry Barisan strategists in this result. For a start, it looks as if they have won on a minority of the popular vote: 49% to the opposition Pakatan Rakyat’s 51%, according to unofficial estimates. This alone is more evidence of how the voting system has always been skewed in Barisan’s favour, allowing it to stack up seats in its rural Malay heartlands with far fewer voters than Pakatan need to win seats in the more urban areas it dominates. This will prompt more criticism about the fairness of Malaysia’s “democracy”.
Furthermore, Pakatan not only won seven more seats than it did in 2008 (up from 82 to 89) but the government’s coalition was all but wiped out as a credible political force in some areas of the country. In Penang, an island in the north, for instance, its defeat was so heavy that its chief-ministerial candidate resigned more or less instantly from all his party positions.
All in all, this leaves Malaysia more divided along ethnic lines than ever, at least in political terms. The ethnic-Chinese party that is part of the ruling coalition saw its vote collapse, to the extent that some question whether it can actually survive. Most Chinese (who make up about 25% of the population) voted instead for Pakatan's predominantly ethnic-Chinese DAP party, which won an unprecedented 38 seats in the federal parliament, ten up from last time. Even the victorious prime minister, the Barisan’s Najib Razak, spoke of a “Chinese tsunami” that had hit his coalition. He says that the country now needs a period “of national reconciliation”.
For the opposition Pakatan and its leader, the veteran Anwar Ibrahim, it was all desperately disappointing. His coalition did better than ever. But it had really been hoping to win the big prize this time. The nature of the defeat will leave a lot of bitterness, as many of Mr Anwar’s allies argue that they lost many marginal seats to Barisan’s dirty tricks as much as anything. Barisan certainly spent an enormous amount of money on the campaign. Its “supporters” (as they called themselves, to distance themselves from the coalition) were doling out endless free food, drink, straight cash and even raffling cars to tempt voters their way in tight races. As Mr Anwar has summed it up, “It’s an election that we consider fraudulent and the election commission has failed.”
In the end, however, Pakatan lost because, as ever, it could not crack open the “fixed deposits” of Barisan seats in the Borneo states of Sarawak and Sabah, which together account for about 20% of the seats. The DAP made some gains among the ethnic-Chinese urban seats here, but in the wide-open rural spaces it was, as usual, Barisan all the way.
(Picture credit: AFP)
the economist.com