Upset in Malaysia: Opposition Breakthrough, Anwar Makes Comeback

By John Gee


	Nurul Izzah Anwar, the 27-year-old daughter of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, acknowledges supporters, accompanied by her husband, Raja Ahmad Shahrir (l), after defeating veteran Barisan National politician and cabinet minister Shahrizat Jalil in March 9 elections (AFP photo/STR.)

MALAYSIA’S RULING Barisan National (“National Front”) coalition is accustomed to winning elections with a hefty majority of parliamentary seats—so being returned with 63 percent of them was treated as a serious defeat. The loosely allied opposition parties not only captured 82 of the 222 seats at stake, but also five of the 16 states in the federal kingdom.

In the previous election of 2004, the Barisan National (BN) took 199 of the 219 parliamentary seats, and all but one state government. The widespread expectation this time was that the BN would lose some seats, but retain the two-thirds majority that would allow it to amend the constitution. One leading political figure insisted otherwise: Anwar Ibrahim, leader of the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (“People’s Justice Party,” or PKR), predicted that the opposition would take enough seats to deprive the BN of that power.

Speaking at a press conference in Singapore two days before the March 8 elections, he described the growth in support for the opposition parties as “phenomenal” and said confidently that they would win at least 75 parliamentary seats.

Not only did the election results vindicate Anwar’s claim; they also confirmed the restoration of his fortunes.

Anwar had risen rapidly through the ranks of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the senior partner in the BN coalition. A very effective speaker, he was regarded as something of a populist by his critics. He became deputy prime minister and was seen as the heir apparent to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, until he was sacked in September 1998 after calling for political reform and attacking “cronyism.” Tried for corruption and sodomy, he was sentenced to six years in prison on the first charge and nine on the second.

Anwar consistently denied the allegations made against him. In September 2004, Malaysia’s Federal Court, in a majority decision, set aside his conviction for sodomy, citing the unreliability of the testimony of the chief prosecution witness. It was noted by Anwar at the time, with appreciation, that Mahathir’s successor, Abdullah Badawi, did not attempt to interfere with the court’s decision-making process. Anwar was further vindicated the following year, when he sued Khalid Jafri, author of Fifty Reasons Why Anwar Ibrahim Cannot Become Prime Minister. The book was a hatchet job, produced in time for UMNO’s general assembly in 1998: many copies were given out free on that occasion. The allegations it contained provided a basis for the police investigation against Anwar that resulted in his prison sentence. The High Court found in Anwar’s favor and awarded him damages of 4.5 million ringgits (over $1.2 million).

Despite this finding, Anwar’s conviction for corruption still barred him from standing for office until April 2008. Although the government insisted that he was finished politically, Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi’s decision to name March 8 as the date of the national and state elections was widely believed to be an attempt to exclude Anwar’s candidacy at the head of the opposition parties.

Anwar nevertheless played the leading role in rallying opposition to the government. Following his arrest, his wife, Wan Azizah, set up the Keadilan (Justice) party. It won five seats in the 1999 elections, but seemed set for oblivion after the 2004 polls, when Wan Azizah was re-elected following a recount as the party’s only successful candidate. Anwar’s release helped reinvigorate the organization. His public appearances drew large crowds, despite being unpublicized by the pro-government media. He worked to cement the co-operation among the opposition’s unlikely partners: Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS), the Malay-based, socially conservative Islamist party; the mainly Chinese-based, secular Democratic Action Party (DAP); and PKR, a reformist party with a strong Malay base but able to draw support from other communities.

In anticipation of elections, the three parties ensured that in all constituencies, they would not stand against each other, and they committed themselves to urge their own supporters to back whichever opposition candidate was running in their districts. Government domination of media coverage was circumvented through personal contact by activists and through the Internet, which has become an alternative source of information for millions of Malaysians.

The final result was that all three opposition parties made substantial gains, but by far the largest winner was the PKR. It took 31 parliamentary seats, compared to 28 for the DAP and 23 for PAS (up from 1, 12 and 6, respectively). The BN’s share of the popular vote dropped from 62.5 to 51.4 percent, and that was buoyed up by the performance of its affiliates in East Malaysia (in northern Borneo), where the opposition challenge was much weaker.

Before the election, some commentators predicted a vote polarized along communal lines, with Indians and Chinese rallying to the opposition and Malays backing the BN, but the outcome reflected an across-the-board unhappiness with the government. Many Indians and Chinese were discontented with official government policies that discriminate in favor of Malays, but it appears that dissatisfaction with government inaction and ineffectualness ran through all communities.

Polled on their concerns before the 2004 elections, 80 percent of Malaysian respondents listed their number one concern as corruption. Abdullah Badawi had only recently stepped into Mahathir’s shoes as prime minister, and his promises of clamping down on corruption helped him to win a big victory then. He is now seen as having done too little to tackle the problem.

The election results left both sides with problems. The BN’s Chinese and Indian-based affiliates lost more heavily than UMNO in the elections. The Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) was seen as having been a poor advocate of Chinese interests against discrimination and the assertion of a stronger voice for Islam in Malaysian society; the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) was widely rejected by Hindu Indians for its participation in a government that had recently demolished temples said to have been built illegally and acted forcefully against the resultant protests.

The MCA customarily is given 15 government posts and the MIC allocated seven; following the election, there were exactly 15 MCA members of parliament, but the MIC had only three elected members.

The opposition parties face the challenge of maintaining their cooperation while having political positions that could set them at odds now that their different components hold power in five states.

One of their longer term gains will be in experience. They will go into future elections with leadership teams who have held office; only PAS, of the opposition parties, had direct experience of running a state. Anwar is likely to be well to the fore: Wan Azizah declared she would give up her seat so that he could take it over in a by-election once his disqualification had lapsed.

Politics in Malaysia has entered uncharted territory—and many of its people clearly think that’s a good thing.

John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Southeast Asia, and the author of Unequal Enemies: The Palestinians and Israel, available from the AET Book Club.