Now it's time to kick Najib out of office!

[oldjunkee]

The New York Times

May 6, 2013
Close Election Leaves the Fate of Malaysia’s Premier Uncertain
By JOE COCHRANE

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Though it held on to power in the election on Sunday, the governing National Front coalition suffered an important loss: For the first time in 44 years, it failed to win more than 50 percent of the popular vote. Analysts said the results left Prime Minister Najib Razak’s position far from secure.

Mr. Najib and his National Front coalition, which has governed Malaysia since independence in 1957, won 133 of the 222 seats in Parliament on Sunday, aided by favorably drawn district boundaries. News of the victory prompted Malaysian stocks to surge nearly 8 percent on Monday, and the country’s currency, the ringgit, jumped in value.

Both had been depressed by signs that the National Front was in greater danger of losing power than ever before. As it was, the three-party opposition People’s Alliance took seven seats from the National Front, extending the gains it made in the last election in 2008, when the Front lost the two-thirds majority that had allowed it to amend the Constitution at will. The 2008 vote hastened the resignation of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as prime minister the next year, giving way to Mr. Najib.

The leader of the People’s Alliance, Anwar Ibrahim, said Monday that the latest elections were marred by fraud and that his coalition would challenge the results of some races.

Mr. Najib was sworn in for a five-year term on Monday at the National Palace, though analysts said the electoral victory did nothing to burnish his leadership mandate.

“The prime minister has been strategizing and campaigning for this day for many years,” said Karim Raslan, a Malaysian newspaper columnist and political observer. “Many in the ruling elite will look at the results and ask, ‘Is that all?’ ”

The turnout in the election — 80 percent, a record — broke along racial lines that analysts said would be troublesome for Mr. Najib. The country’s Malay majority voted for the governing coalition in greater numbers than in 2008. Chinese-Malaysian voters overwhelmingly backed the opposition, including the Democratic Action Party, which is dominated by ethnic Chinese.

Mr. Najib, 59, told reporters early on Monday that he had not expected that trend. But Lim Teck Ghee, head of the Center for Policy Initiatives in Kuala Lumpur, said the prime minister “needs to play to the Malay gallery even after the election has been won,” to keep rivals at bay in his own party, the United Malays National Organization, which dominates the 13-member National Front.

Mr. Anwar, 65, the opposition leader, said Monday that the People’s Alliance would challenge the announced results in 30 to 40 races he said were tainted by fraud, and would begin holding rallies this week, calling for the governing coalition to hand over power peacefully.

“We want the unique experience of transitions through elections, and not Tahrir Square,” he said, referring to the protests in Cairo that brought down President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.

Opposition workers and independent election monitors have accused the government of vote-rigging tactics, including stacking the election commission with partisans, marshaling foreign laborers to vote using illegal identity cards and marking the voters’ fingers with supposedly indelible ink that could be wiped off.

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[methink]

Crikey Independent News
May 07, 2013 10:35AM

The more things stay the same, the more they change in Malaysia

Despite winning more of the vote, Malaysia’s opposition coalition
Pakatan Rakyat didn’t win government. Is there any hope for a real
two-party system? Malaysian freelance journalist Hari Raj reports.

In the wee hours of Monday morning, Malaysia’s ruling Barisan Nasional
coalition won the right to extend its governance to at least 60
uninterrupted years. But in a country where little is straightforward,
there are positives in defeat for the opposition — and a growing
urban-rural divide that traces racial fault lines.

As the results dribbled in, so did allegations of irregularities. Many
Malaysians turned up at polling stations to be told they had already
cast a ballot. There were viral reports of phantom voters. The furore
over all-too-delible indelible ink descended into typical farce, with
authorities’ claims that its strength was affected by halal
requirements.

This electoral dodginess is, however, a mere selection of the fauna in
the vast forest of Malaysian gerrymandering. The Electoral Commission
has not yet released final tallies, but various estimates say Barisan
Nasional won 133 seats in Parliament with just 46.5% of the popular
vote. With more than 51%, the Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition won
only 89 seats.

Gerrymandering doesn’t easily lend itself to rants on social media,
but its lack of visibility is testament to how deeply it is
entrenched. A report from before the election pointed out that one
rural vote is the equivalent of six urban votes, and that in 2008
Barisan Nasional had won a simple majority in Parliament by the time
it had just 18.9% of the popular vote.

The rise of independent news portals and increased social media use —
Facebook users, for instance, increased from 3% of the population in
2008 to 47% this year — were seen as a key factor in this election.
This contributed to the popularity of Pakatan Rakyat in urban
Malaysia, as seen by its wins in Johor and Selangor, the country’s
most urbanised states. Rural areas, however, overwhelmingly voted for
Barisan Nasional — just as they have always done.

The space between urban and rural Malaysia is set to become the
country’s next political battleground. Just as Barisan Nasional will
look to win back Malaysians in the cities over the next five years,
Pakatan Rakyat will campaign harder away from its power base. More
than one commentator has pointed out that change will be difficult, if
not impossible, without Malay support.

While rural voters are predominantly Malay, and Chinese voters are
clustered in the country’s urban centres, it was a cross-section of
races that contributed to the better opposition showing, including
Malaysia’s ethnically Indian population. Analysts have pointed out
that middle-class Malay support for Pakatan Rakyat means the swing was
predominantly urban in nature. Perceptions of polarisation were not
helped by Prime Minister Najib Razak, who managed to dexterously
contradict himself by saying his party survived a “Chinese tsunami“
while in the same breath pointing out that the racial sentiments
played up in the election were “not very healthy for this country”.

“Petitions are being signed, profile pictures are being blacked
out, and the tenor of conversation ranges from acceptance of small
gains to furious denial.”

Xenophobia, alas, is a renewable resource in Malaysia. In the days
leading to the election, an abundance of reports that non-nationals
were given identification cards and voting rights led to aggressive
posturing online as to how to identify and deal with them, with
Bangladeshi nationals the main target. On Sunday, those suspected of
being or looking non-Malaysian — the latter a truly arbitrary
denomination in an immigrant nation — were confronted and harassed on
their way to vote. One man was filmed cowering, in tears, in the back
of a car. Others were jeered as they left polling stations.

Malaysia has 3 million migrant workers, predominantly from Bangladesh,
Indonesia and India. It is the largest importer of labour in Asia. No
matter their origin or status, the treatment of these people came
worryingly close to the sort of intolerance Malaysians are trying to
vote out of power.

Still, there were encouraging signs. Voter turnout was a record 84.9%.
Pakatan Rakyat won seven more seats than it did in 2008, while Barisan
Nasional failed to regain the two-thirds parliamentary majority it has
used to make unilateral amendments to the constitution.

Pakatan Rakyat leader Anwar Ibrahim had promised to step aside if he
lost the election, but yesterday said he might not retire from
politics. If he stays, his decision will boost a coalition that at
times seemed to be kept together purely by his charisma. The
performance of the next generation of opposition politicians,
particularly Anwar’s daughter Nurul Izzah, was also promising.

As for Najib, no one can decide if he will stay or be pushed. While
Barisan Nasional’s performance was its worst ever, the coalition did
win back Malaysia’s rice-bowl state of Kedah from the opposition.
Najib has called for reconciliation, but Anwar has been outspoken in
his criticism of electoral practices and has called for an assembly on
Wednesday. The police have banned celebrations and demonstrations, so
the response to the rally will be worth watching.

While some Malaysians celebrate, those likely to turn up in support of
Anwar are those who are expressing their disappointment online.
Petitions are being signed, profile pictures are being blacked out,
and the tenor of conversation ranges from acceptance of small gains to
furious denial.

But there is one small irony worth remembering: Barisan Nasional’s
manifesto for this election promises rural development. The more wired
rural voters are, the more they may be exposed to alternate sources of
media and information, and the closer Malaysia may teeter towards
maintaining its embryonic two-party system.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/05/07/the-more-things-stay-the-same-the-more-they-change-in-malaysia/

 

[andyfisher]

kick out najib, then who become pm?

mukhriz or muhyddin?

or will anwar bugger them all?

Coming to a tv screen near you, the mudland sandiwara, akan datang, :oIo: