Once a pushover, Pakatan sniffs power
January 30, 2013
Speculation is rife that Pakatan
could win enough in the polls to lure ruling coalition defectors and form a
government.
By Dan Martin
KUALA
LUMPUR: After bloodying the government’s nose in 2008 elections, a more
experienced and organised Malaysian opposition is eyeing the once-unthinkable:
toppling one of the world’s longest-serving governments.
Malaysians vote soon with the
formerly hapless opposition buoyed by a new track record of state-level
government, signs of growing voter support, and what its leader Anwar Ibrahim
calls a sense of history in the making.
“I am convinced, Inshallah (God
willing), that we will win government,” Anwar told AFP, evoking the winds of
change that powered the “Arab Spring” elsewhere in the Muslim world.
“Of course we call it a ‘Malaysian
Spring’, but our method is elections (not uprisings).”
Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak is
expected to call a fresh vote in weeks, pitting his Malay-dominated Barisan
Nasional coalition against Anwar’s multi-ethnic opposition alliance Pakatan
Rakyat.
The 57-year-old ruling bloc enjoys
deep pockets, mainstream media control, an electoral system the opposition says
is rigged, and a record of decades of economic growth under its authoritarian
template.
Few expect the opposition to win the
112 parliamentary seats needed to take power. The three-party alliance won 82
seats in the 2008 polls, up from 21, stunning the BN with its biggest-ever
setback.
But speculation is rife that Pakatan
could win enough in the polls — which must be held by late June — to lure
ruling coalition defectors and form a government.
“Before this year, many were in
denial about Pakatan’s potential. Today, we see society beginning to accept
that the possibility (of a BN defeat) is real,” said Wan Saiful Wan Jan, who
runs the independent Malaysian think tank IDEAS.
The country’s stock market has
trembled recently over the uncertainty as opinion polls suggest the vote will
be tight. One recent survey put Najib and Anwar neck-and-neck as prime
ministerial candidates.
In a Jan 12 show of force, the
opposition held a rally that drew clsoe to 100,000 people.
“I think it’s very close, and the
party that makes the least mistakes will be the party that wins,” said S
Ambiga, , head of Bersih, an NGO coalition that has organised large public
rallies for electoral reform.
Pakatan’s promise
Pakatan attacks the ruling
coalition, and particularly its dominant partner Umno, as corrupt, repressive
and lacking a long-term vision for Malaysia.
Anwar says Pakatan would end
authoritarianism and free the media.
It would lure foreign investment by
attacking rampant graft and reforming the system of preferences for Malays that
is blamed for harming national econonomic competitiveness and stoking
resentment among minority Chinese and Indians.
“The people are committed to reform.
There is a legitimate expectation among the public for them to see that reforms
do take place,” Anwar said.
Anwar, who was acquitted a year ago
on sodomy charges he called a bogus Umno attempt to ruin him politically, has
been integral to the opposition’s revival.
The former BN heir-apparent’s
spectacular 1998 ouster in a power struggle with then-premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad
gifted the opposition a charismatic leader with top government experience to
rally around.
The loose alliance of 2008 is
stronger today, having since agreed on a common manifesto, and has shown it can
govern in four states won five years ago, the most ever in opposition hands.
Malaysia has 13 states.
“Cooperation between the parties is
much stronger than 2008. They have done more to prepare the ground for new
voters,” said leading political pollster Ibrahim Suffian.
Concerns linger over Pakatan’s
ability to govern nationally.
Besides Anwar’s multi-racial PKR, it
includes PAS representing Muslim ethnic Malays, and the secular DAP dominated
by ethnic Chinese.
PAS’s calls for an Islamic state are
a source of alliance squabbling, but Anwar dismisses any concern, saying PAS
realises the goal is a non-starter in the diverse nation.
Economists, meanwhile, warn that
populist Pakatan promises such as free primary-to-university education could
sink Malaysia into debt, while noting ever-larger public handouts by Najib’s
government also posed a risk.
Najib took office in 2009 and has
portrayed himself as a reformer but surveys suggest BN is still viewed as a
corruption-plagued, status-quo force.
Eroding minority support,
particularly Chinese, that hurt the coalition in 2008 appears to be
accelerating, independent polls show, while first-time voters estimated to
number up to three million are a question mark.
One top Umno official told AFP that
party officials fear the coalition could lose 20 more seats — it now has 140 —
raising the spectre of a Pakatan power play.
“All said, Najib still has the
advantage, but an opposition victory is clearly possible,” said Bridget Welsh,
a Southeast Asian politics expert at Singapore Management University.
AFP
