Malaysia's election upset
Anwar overturns the apple cart
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10854829
Mar 13th 2008 | KUALA LUMPUR
From The Economist print edition
A new political game—and the players struggle to work out the rules
AFP
THE bravest face the government can put on it is a crestfallen one. The result of the election of March 8th was "a huge setback", admits Khairy Jamaluddin, a leader of the youth wing of the United Malays National Organisation, UMNO, which dominates the coalition that has ruled Malaysia since independence. The reason for Mr Khairy's gloom may not be immediately apparent. He won his seat. UMNO is still much the biggest party in the federal Parliament, where its coalition, the National Front, has a thumping majority (see chart). The Front still forms the government in eight of Malaysia's 13 states. But the huge swing against it has shaken Malaysia's rulers and put in doubt the system of racially-based politics on which their power depends.
Before the election only one state, Kelantan, in the relatively backward north-east of the peninsula, was in opposition control. Now bigger and richer Penang, Selangor, Perak and Kedah have fallen. And at the centre, the Front lost the two-thirds parliamentary majority it has enjoyed since 1969. This matters in practical terms since the Front can no longer override legislation passed by the states or amend the constitution. Hundreds of constitutional changes—mostly trivial, but some that strengthen the power of the executive branch—have been incorporated into law since independence in 1957. More important still was the symbolic impact of losing its two-thirds majority. The prime minister, Abdullah Badawi, knowing he could not repeat the landslide he achieved in 2004, had set this as the electoral winning-post. He fell eight seats short.
The swing against him partly reflects the high hopes of four years ago. After 22 years of rule by the abrasive and authoritarian Mahathir Mohamad, Mr Badawi was seen as more conciliatory and more committed to tackling corruption. He has indeed offered a less acerbic style. But few believe corruption has lessened. Instead, there has been a series of ugly scandals. And the high-flying Mr Khairy, Mr Badawi's son-in-law (and a former intern at The Economist), has become what one observer calls a "walking, talking, boasting" symbol of nepotism.
Chinese Malaysians (25% of the population) and Indians (8%) turned against the Front's ethnic-minority parties. Indians are especially disgruntled. M. Manoharan, an ethnic-Indian lawyer, was elected to the state assembly of Selangor, despite being detained without charge under the Internal Security Act after a street protest last November. He was elected in a predominantly ethnic-Chinese constituency.
Minorities' faith in UMNO was dented when party leaders waved the kris, a traditional Malay sword, at conferences in 2005 and 2006. The implicit threat of violence to protect Malay interests recalled bloody race riots in 1969, which followed a strong opposition showing at the polls. Fears remain that UMNO supporters might stir up trouble. But despite some inflammatory text messages spread by mobile phone, Malaysia has remained admirably calm.
Many Chinese Malaysians have tolerated the New Economic Policy (NEP), introduced in 1971 to redistribute wealth to the poorer Malay majority, as a guarantor of communal harmony at a time when all ethnic groups were getting richer. Now even some Malay voters appear to have turned against it, seeing it as an excuse for cronyism and corruption. Some voted for the opposition, a loose alliance of three parties, which called the NEP obsolete and, on taking power in Penang, has started to dismantle it, saying its provisions will not apply to state-government contracts.
The forging of this alliance is the other reason for the opposition's breakthrough. The biggest Malay opposition party is the Parti Islam Se-Malaysia, known as PAS. Traditionally it called for Malaysia to become an Islamic state. This deterred non-Muslims from voting for the opposition at all. In this election, however, PAS toned down its Islamist rhetoric, and teamed up with two secular parties—the Democratic Action Party, whose base is predominantly Chinese, and the People's Justice Party, the PJP, led by Anwar Ibrahim. Mr Anwar is a former deputy prime minister, who spent six years in jail after falling out with Dr Mahathir.
Still banned from public office until April (one reason the election was held this month), Mr Anwar is now in practice leader of the opposition, as well as of Malaysia's first truly multiracial party. A number of successful PJP candidates, who include Mr Anwar's wife and daughter, have offered to make way for him in a by-election. But his coalition will be fractious. It is already squabbling about forming a government in Perak. And he says attempts have begun to lure away PJP members in the hope of restoring the government's two-thirds majority.
For his part, Mr Badawi has so far ignored calls for his resignation, coming most bitterly from the man who installed him as prime minister, Dr Mahathir. But he may well face a challenge at UMNO's general assembly later this year. In his favour, the obvious successor, Najib Razak, the deputy prime minister, is just as closely implicated in the scandals. But Mr Badawi seems unlikely to last beyond the next election. Chandra Muzaffar, a political scientist at the University of Science Malaysia in Penang, compares him to Cory Aquino in the Philippines and Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie in Indonesia, both liberalising successors to long-serving strongmen, who were derided as ineffectual and turfed out. From the point of view of Malaysian democracy, if not of Mr Badawi, it is a rather encouraging analogy.
----------------------------
The internet and Malaysian politics
The perils of modernity
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10854822
Mar 13th 2008 | KUALA LUMPUR
From The Economist print edition
The government's cyber-enthusiasm comes back to haunt it
ON MARCH 8th Malaysia's electoral upset unfolded at glacial pace on government-owned television channels. As the approved pundits stumbled to grasp the stunning implications, some 500,000 Malaysians lost patience, and turned to Malaysiakini, an independent online newspaper, with 35 staff. It was faster and did not fight shy of trumpeting the opposition's excellent showing.
Even before election night, the internet had already played a big part in the vote. Malaysia has an unusual combination of high internet penetration and pliant mainstream media. It is therefore fertile ground for cyber-politics. According to the government's multimedia regulator, 3.9m of the country's 28m people have dial-up internet subscriptions and 1.2m broadband. Some 60% of the population, it reckons, use the internet. Even if that is an overestimate, the limitations of the mainstream media are enough to drive politics
online.
Television hardly ever covers opposition rallies and speeches. But the online world is delightfully free. Anxious to make Malaysia a high-tech cyber-hub, the county's former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, exempted websites from the annual licensing requirements that help keep print publications deferential. The 1998 Communications and Multimedia Act decreed that there would be no censorship of the internet.
That does not, of course, make it a free-for-all. Strict laws—on defamation, for example—still apply. But the air of the blogosphere is refreshing after the stultifying fug of Malaysia's mainstream press. Jeff Ooi (www.jeffooi.com) and Tony Pua (tonypua.blogspot.com) were among several successful opposition candidates to have made their names as bloggers. Mr Pua thinks all parties underestimated the effects of "secondary access" to the internet, as news broken on the web—of opposition rallies, for example—was disseminated by word-of-mouth and mobile-phone text messages.
Most worrying for the government and the mainstream media, Malaysia is young. A new generation sees the internet as its primary news source. Founded in 1999 as a free site, Malaysiakini was forced to start charging in 2002, but was free for the election. In normal times, it has just 10,000 subscribers. But the election has been a great advertisement for it, as well as for democracy.
-------------------
Friday March 14, 2008
Denial syndrome must end
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/3/14/nation/20637966&sec=nat\
ion
The winds of change have swept through not only the political landscape but also the media environment. It's time for media practitioners to do some serious soul-searching to stay relevant and accurately feel the pulse of the nation.
THE SMS has got to be the most effective weapon in helping the Opposition knock out the Barisan Nasional. With over 22 million mobile subscribers, the SMS link connected urban and rural Malaysia such that news in one part of the country reached another part in mere seconds.
Three hours before polling closed, Malaysians were flooded with messages alleging electoral fraud in several constituencies contested by key Barisan leaders. That was enough to further raise the political temperatures of many Malaysians, who had already made up their mind to vote against the coalition.
There were more blows to come. Umno Youth deputy leader Khairy Jamaluddin was accused of being in a sex video. Those who took the trouble to check the blog found it didn't even resemble him, but the question remains – how many people were duped into believing this rumour or took the trouble to check?
Some of these messages were serious and direct but most poked fun at the Barisan. And certainly they worked effectively in this general election.
The bloggers and alternative media also inflicted serious wounds onto the Barisan but the impact may not be as strong as it has been made out to be. Admittedly, Urban Malaysia preferred these channels of information to the mainstream media, which certainly was part of the debacle of the Barisan defeat.
But it was the mammoth-sized ceramah, especially in Penang, that translated into votes, especially in the western states of Penang, Perak, Selangor and Kedah.
New Media analyst Oon Yeoh correctly commented in an article that the Internet was mainly for city folk. Many rural folk do not have access to the Internet and so did not benefit from information sent via online media, blogs or e-mail, he said.
During his visit to Jelutong, where blogger Jeff Ooi contested, Oon found out that most voters had barely heard of Jeff's blog and even fewer had visited it. It was the Chinese dailies, according to Ooi, who helped make him a known face to Penangites.
Oon wrote that one of the volunteers, a 42-year-old salesman who wanted to only be known as William, confessed he had never heard of Ooi before nomination day, much less visited his blog.
Ooi himself stopped blogging midway during the campaign period, preferring to give press conferences to the print media, speak at ceramah and meet his voters directly.
It was the traditional method of campaigning that played the major role. Certainly, it was the Rocket symbol, rather than Jeff Ooi the blogger, riding on the anti-establishment mood that led to his strong victory.
Some Barisan candidates also turned to blogging, hoping to connect with the young, but they gave up because the number of visitors was just too low.
Another development was that the Internet helped raise over RM100,000 in online donations, primarily for the Opposition candidates, with a large portion coming from overseas. It is probably the first time in Malaysian political history that political donations were raised this
way.
Two news websites emerged during the elections, MalaysiaVotes.com and MalaysianInsider.com, but being newcomers, it was difficult for them to compete with the more established Malaysiakini.
The websites of mainstream newspapers had an even tougher time, being overly cautious on accuracy, particularly on results, and not wanting to rely too much on unconfirmed news.
In the end, the alternative media scored better as it did not have to worry too much about accuracy. An example was the newsflash on the purported 14 unopened ballot boxes in Lembah Pantai, implying there
would be rigging. The report turned out to be false.
But this election was a wake-up call to the nation, not just to the leadership, but also the media. A serious and honest soul searching is required to truly feel the pulse of Malaysians. The mainstream newspapers have to learn, quickly, or face being abandoned by their readers.
As Bernama general manager Datuk Azman Ujang rightly said, Malaysians have spoken loud and clear, "not only on what kind of government they want but also the kind of media they prefer".
Despite the mainstream media bashing, newspapers have sold well over the past two weeks, with the Singapore Straits Times quoting a media consultant G. Manimaran as saying that "for the first time in 20 years of journalism, I am seeing people queuing up to buy newspapers".
With opposition parties now in control of five state governments, the media, including government-run TV stations, must be prepared to relook its editorial policies. Some vernacular newspapers, too, must end their communal slant as they should take into account that the votes for the Opposition came from all races.
The winds of change have swept through Malaysia and the fact is everyone, especially the media, has to wake up to that reality. It should be accepted, not resisted. The denial syndrome has to stop.
A new political game—and the players struggle to work out the rules
AFP
THE bravest face the government can put on it is a crestfallen one. The result of the election of March 8th was "a huge setback", admits Khairy Jamaluddin, a leader of the youth wing of the United Malays National Organisation, UMNO, which dominates the coalition that has ruled Malaysia since independence. The reason for Mr Khairy's gloom may not be immediately apparent. He won his seat. UMNO is still much the biggest party in the federal Parliament, where its coalition, the National Front, has a thumping majority (see chart). The Front still forms the government in eight of Malaysia's 13 states. But the huge swing against it has shaken Malaysia's rulers and put in doubt the system of racially-based politics on which their power depends.
Before the election only one state, Kelantan, in the relatively backward north-east of the peninsula, was in opposition control. Now bigger and richer Penang, Selangor, Perak and Kedah have fallen. And at the centre, the Front lost the two-thirds parliamentary majority it has enjoyed since 1969. This matters in practical terms since the Front can no longer override legislation passed by the states or amend the constitution. Hundreds of constitutional changes—mostly trivial, but some that strengthen the power of the executive branch—have been incorporated into law since independence in 1957. More important still was the symbolic impact of losing its two-thirds majority. The prime minister, Abdullah Badawi, knowing he could not repeat the landslide he achieved in 2004, had set this as the electoral winning-post. He fell eight seats short.
The swing against him partly reflects the high hopes of four years ago. After 22 years of rule by the abrasive and authoritarian Mahathir Mohamad, Mr Badawi was seen as more conciliatory and more committed to tackling corruption. He has indeed offered a less acerbic style. But few believe corruption has lessened. Instead, there has been a series of ugly scandals. And the high-flying Mr Khairy, Mr Badawi's son-in-law (and a former intern at The Economist), has become what one observer calls a "walking, talking, boasting" symbol of nepotism.
Chinese Malaysians (25% of the population) and Indians (8%) turned against the Front's ethnic-minority parties. Indians are especially disgruntled. M. Manoharan, an ethnic-Indian lawyer, was elected to the state assembly of Selangor, despite being detained without charge under the Internal Security Act after a street protest last November. He was elected in a predominantly ethnic-Chinese constituency.
Minorities' faith in UMNO was dented when party leaders waved the kris, a traditional Malay sword, at conferences in 2005 and 2006. The implicit threat of violence to protect Malay interests recalled bloody race riots in 1969, which followed a strong opposition showing at the polls. Fears remain that UMNO supporters might stir up trouble. But despite some inflammatory text messages spread by mobile phone, Malaysia has remained admirably calm.
Many Chinese Malaysians have tolerated the New Economic Policy (NEP), introduced in 1971 to redistribute wealth to the poorer Malay majority, as a guarantor of communal harmony at a time when all ethnic groups were getting richer. Now even some Malay voters appear to have turned against it, seeing it as an excuse for cronyism and corruption. Some voted for the opposition, a loose alliance of three parties, which called the NEP obsolete and, on taking power in Penang, has started to dismantle it, saying its provisions will not apply to state-government contracts.
The forging of this alliance is the other reason for the opposition's breakthrough. The biggest Malay opposition party is the Parti Islam Se-Malaysia, known as PAS. Traditionally it called for Malaysia to become an Islamic state. This deterred non-Muslims from voting for the opposition at all. In this election, however, PAS toned down its Islamist rhetoric, and teamed up with two secular parties—the Democratic Action Party, whose base is predominantly Chinese, and the People's Justice Party, the PJP, led by Anwar Ibrahim. Mr Anwar is a former deputy prime minister, who spent six years in jail after falling out with Dr Mahathir.
Still banned from public office until April (one reason the election was held this month), Mr Anwar is now in practice leader of the opposition, as well as of Malaysia's first truly multiracial party. A number of successful PJP candidates, who include Mr Anwar's wife and daughter, have offered to make way for him in a by-election. But his coalition will be fractious. It is already squabbling about forming a government in Perak. And he says attempts have begun to lure away PJP members in the hope of restoring the government's two-thirds majority.
For his part, Mr Badawi has so far ignored calls for his resignation, coming most bitterly from the man who installed him as prime minister, Dr Mahathir. But he may well face a challenge at UMNO's general assembly later this year. In his favour, the obvious successor, Najib Razak, the deputy prime minister, is just as closely implicated in the scandals. But Mr Badawi seems unlikely to last beyond the next election. Chandra Muzaffar, a political scientist at the University of Science Malaysia in Penang, compares him to Cory Aquino in the Philippines and Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie in Indonesia, both liberalising successors to long-serving strongmen, who were derided as ineffectual and turfed out. From the point of view of Malaysian democracy, if not of Mr Badawi, it is a rather encouraging analogy.
----------------------------
The internet and Malaysian politics
The perils of modernity
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10854822
Mar 13th 2008 | KUALA LUMPUR
From The Economist print edition
The government's cyber-enthusiasm comes back to haunt it
ON MARCH 8th Malaysia's electoral upset unfolded at glacial pace on government-owned television channels. As the approved pundits stumbled to grasp the stunning implications, some 500,000 Malaysians lost patience, and turned to Malaysiakini, an independent online newspaper, with 35 staff. It was faster and did not fight shy of trumpeting the opposition's excellent showing.
Even before election night, the internet had already played a big part in the vote. Malaysia has an unusual combination of high internet penetration and pliant mainstream media. It is therefore fertile ground for cyber-politics. According to the government's multimedia regulator, 3.9m of the country's 28m people have dial-up internet subscriptions and 1.2m broadband. Some 60% of the population, it reckons, use the internet. Even if that is an overestimate, the limitations of the mainstream media are enough to drive politics
online.
Television hardly ever covers opposition rallies and speeches. But the online world is delightfully free. Anxious to make Malaysia a high-tech cyber-hub, the county's former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, exempted websites from the annual licensing requirements that help keep print publications deferential. The 1998 Communications and Multimedia Act decreed that there would be no censorship of the internet.
That does not, of course, make it a free-for-all. Strict laws—on defamation, for example—still apply. But the air of the blogosphere is refreshing after the stultifying fug of Malaysia's mainstream press. Jeff Ooi (www.jeffooi.com) and Tony Pua (tonypua.blogspot.com) were among several successful opposition candidates to have made their names as bloggers. Mr Pua thinks all parties underestimated the effects of "secondary access" to the internet, as news broken on the web—of opposition rallies, for example—was disseminated by word-of-mouth and mobile-phone text messages.
Most worrying for the government and the mainstream media, Malaysia is young. A new generation sees the internet as its primary news source. Founded in 1999 as a free site, Malaysiakini was forced to start charging in 2002, but was free for the election. In normal times, it has just 10,000 subscribers. But the election has been a great advertisement for it, as well as for democracy.
-------------------
Friday March 14, 2008
Denial syndrome must end
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/3/14/nation/20637966&sec=nat\
ion
The winds of change have swept through not only the political landscape but also the media environment. It's time for media practitioners to do some serious soul-searching to stay relevant and accurately feel the pulse of the nation.
THE SMS has got to be the most effective weapon in helping the Opposition knock out the Barisan Nasional. With over 22 million mobile subscribers, the SMS link connected urban and rural Malaysia such that news in one part of the country reached another part in mere seconds.
Three hours before polling closed, Malaysians were flooded with messages alleging electoral fraud in several constituencies contested by key Barisan leaders. That was enough to further raise the political temperatures of many Malaysians, who had already made up their mind to vote against the coalition.
There were more blows to come. Umno Youth deputy leader Khairy Jamaluddin was accused of being in a sex video. Those who took the trouble to check the blog found it didn't even resemble him, but the question remains – how many people were duped into believing this rumour or took the trouble to check?
Some of these messages were serious and direct but most poked fun at the Barisan. And certainly they worked effectively in this general election.
The bloggers and alternative media also inflicted serious wounds onto the Barisan but the impact may not be as strong as it has been made out to be. Admittedly, Urban Malaysia preferred these channels of information to the mainstream media, which certainly was part of the debacle of the Barisan defeat.
But it was the mammoth-sized ceramah, especially in Penang, that translated into votes, especially in the western states of Penang, Perak, Selangor and Kedah.
New Media analyst Oon Yeoh correctly commented in an article that the Internet was mainly for city folk. Many rural folk do not have access to the Internet and so did not benefit from information sent via online media, blogs or e-mail, he said.
During his visit to Jelutong, where blogger Jeff Ooi contested, Oon found out that most voters had barely heard of Jeff's blog and even fewer had visited it. It was the Chinese dailies, according to Ooi, who helped make him a known face to Penangites.
Oon wrote that one of the volunteers, a 42-year-old salesman who wanted to only be known as William, confessed he had never heard of Ooi before nomination day, much less visited his blog.
Ooi himself stopped blogging midway during the campaign period, preferring to give press conferences to the print media, speak at ceramah and meet his voters directly.
It was the traditional method of campaigning that played the major role. Certainly, it was the Rocket symbol, rather than Jeff Ooi the blogger, riding on the anti-establishment mood that led to his strong victory.
Some Barisan candidates also turned to blogging, hoping to connect with the young, but they gave up because the number of visitors was just too low.
Another development was that the Internet helped raise over RM100,000 in online donations, primarily for the Opposition candidates, with a large portion coming from overseas. It is probably the first time in Malaysian political history that political donations were raised this
way.
Two news websites emerged during the elections, MalaysiaVotes.com and MalaysianInsider.com, but being newcomers, it was difficult for them to compete with the more established Malaysiakini.
The websites of mainstream newspapers had an even tougher time, being overly cautious on accuracy, particularly on results, and not wanting to rely too much on unconfirmed news.
In the end, the alternative media scored better as it did not have to worry too much about accuracy. An example was the newsflash on the purported 14 unopened ballot boxes in Lembah Pantai, implying there
would be rigging. The report turned out to be false.
But this election was a wake-up call to the nation, not just to the leadership, but also the media. A serious and honest soul searching is required to truly feel the pulse of Malaysians. The mainstream newspapers have to learn, quickly, or face being abandoned by their readers.
As Bernama general manager Datuk Azman Ujang rightly said, Malaysians have spoken loud and clear, "not only on what kind of government they want but also the kind of media they prefer".
Despite the mainstream media bashing, newspapers have sold well over the past two weeks, with the Singapore Straits Times quoting a media consultant G. Manimaran as saying that "for the first time in 20 years of journalism, I am seeing people queuing up to buy newspapers".
With opposition parties now in control of five state governments, the media, including government-run TV stations, must be prepared to relook its editorial policies. Some vernacular newspapers, too, must end their communal slant as they should take into account that the votes for the Opposition came from all races.
The winds of change have swept through Malaysia and the fact is everyone, especially the media, has to wake up to that reality. It should be accepted, not resisted. The denial syndrome has to stop.
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