MALAYSIA:THE WIDELY expressed comment that Malaysia's general elections at the weekend caused a political earthquake may be a cliche, but the metaphor is apt.
Malaysia's premier said yesterday he has no plan to step down after leading his ruling coalition to its worst election result in decades. Prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's multiracial National Front coalition won just a simple majority in parliament, and his future as leader is in doubt after he watched a record majority collapse as the opposition Islamists and reformists won control of five of the nation's 13 states.
The National Front has effectively ruled Malaysia since independence from Britain in 1957. The coalition ended up with 62 per cent of federal seats, down from 90 per cent previously and without a two-thirds parliamentary majority, it can no longer change the constitution or make some key appointments.
Malaysia's political landscape has been shaped by the underground stresses of ethnic tensions and income disparity for decades but the fact that the greatest upheaval occurred this year during an election campaign that was considered boring even by Malaysia's staid standards took almost everyone by surprise.
But an aide to Mr Abdullah admitted before the election that the government was sensing that public frustration was reaching "the psychological breaking point" over the failure to curb corruption, crime and inflation.
The huge protest vote is seen as a victory for democracy in a country that has been ruled by a semi-authoritarian government since independence. Such an outcome would have been dismissed as political fantasy just a week ago. The results could lead to a period of fragmented government and will test the delicate relations between the ethnic Malay majority and Chinese and Indian minorities.
Mr Abdullah is seen as perhaps fatally weakened and his chances of surviving party elections this year as head of the United Malays National Organisation, the coalition government's dominant partner that selects the prime minister, are questionable.
The result "will expose the latent tensions between Abdullah and Najib Razak", the deputy prime minister, said Yang Razali Kassim at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. Mr Najib is seen as being favoured by the Umno old guard that wants to entrench the programme of preferential treatment of the Malay majority. The programme was criticised by minorities as discriminatory, which led to their overwhelming support for the opposition that campaigned against it.
The hand of Umno hardliners may be strengthened by the virtual elimination from the National Front of the two junior coalition partners that represented minority interests.
However, the sharp rebuke delivered to the government "was a revolt among all of Malaysia's races against mismanagement and corruption and I think that Najib, if he becomes the new leader, will have to crack down on entrenched interests if he wants the National Front to recover," said Ooi Kee Beng, of the Institute of South-East Asian Studies in Singapore.
- (Financial Times, additional reporting Reuters)