(From Article)
KUALA LUMPUR — After a bruising electoral battle, Mr Najib Razak was sworn in yesterday as Malaysia’s Prime Minister, but his victory was marred by continuing allegations of fraud at the polls, a refusal by the opposition to accept the results, and whispers from within his own party that he would not remain in power for very long.
Mr Najib’s swearing-in came hours after official results showed that his Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition won 133 seats in the 222-member parliament in Sunday’s closely-fought election. This was well short of the two-third majority he had aimed for, and down a fraction from the 135 parliamentary seats it won in the 2008 poll.
The BN retained the states of Johor, Perak and Negeri Sembilan, while the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) alliance, which garnered 89 parliamentary seats, retained power in Kelantan, Penang and Selangor.
Shortly after the majority was confirmed, Mr Najib told a news conference that his government will work towards “more moderate and accommodative policies for the country”.
He acknowledged the election, which indicated that ethnic Chinese had continued a trend of deserting Barisan, had laid bare deep racial divisions.
“Overall, the results show a trend of polarisation which worries the government. If it is not addressed it can create tension or division in the country,” he said, pledging to soon reveal a “national reconciliation” plan to heal racial rifts.
Political analysts noted divisions in Malaysian politics could hamper the BN’s national reconciliation efforts. Young voters, urban dwellers and minority races, political analysts said, have ditched their support for the BN and are now firmly behind the opposition PR coalition.
Mr Najib faces the looming possibility of a power struggle within the BN’s main party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), for failing to deliver a two-third majority in Parliament and for losing the popular vote, despite witnessing the highest percentage of voter turnout. He also faces a difficult task persuading UMNO to press ahead with economic reforms and phase out policies favouring majority ethnic Malays over other races.
“Given the pressure that (former Prime Minister) Abdullah (Badawi) came under after the 2008 elections, everyone is waiting to see what transpires within UMNO in the coming weeks and months as the party considers its options going ahead,” noted Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) Professor Joseph Liow.
While Mr Najib had attributed the BN’s less-than-stellar performance to Chinese voters abandoning the BN in a “Chinese tsunami”, analysts said the ethnic divisions in Malaysian society were more nuanced.
RSIS Senior Fellow Oh Ei Sun, who was formerly Mr Najib’s political secretary, felt that Malaysian society is now more deeply divided, “not due to parochial racial or socio-economic reasons, but due to the more inspired political and ideological awareness among Chinese, middle-income, urban folks”.
“While we do not know at this stage the pattern of the Malay vote, there is strong evidence to suggest that BN has not made a significant improvement on their performance among Malay voters,” added RSIS’ Malaysia Programme Coordinator Nawab Osman.
While Prof Liow felt there is “a pattern where urban support has gone mostly to the Pakatan, while the rural base has voted for UMNO”, RSIS Associate Professor Farish Noor said this trend has been “conflated” to overemphasise a socio-economic divide. He said the trend of strong urban support for the opposition can be attributed to “political awareness among the urban youth” and hence, the rural-urban divide “is more a generational thing rather than a class thing”.
On divisions along socio-economic lines, meanwhile, Prof Liow believes that “many on the upper rungs of the socio-economic scale would also have voted for continuity, which for them translates to stability”.
The political analysts said national reconciliation would require the BN to address ethnic divisions, especially given the strong Chinese support for the opposition.
“Can the MCA (Malaysian Chinese Association) ever revive itself or reinvent itself, and whether there is going to be an effective means for both the BN to win back the support of Malaysian Chinese, and whether the DAP can reinvent itself as a Malaysian party and not as a Chinese party,” said Assoc Prof Farish.
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