Malaysia's rulers poised for election
victory By Anil Netto
PENANG,
Malaysia - Just a day left before polling day on March
21 and all indications are that Malaysia's ruling
Barisan Nasional (BN, or National Front) coalition is
poised for a comfortable victory. Political analysts
predict that the coalition will have no problem
retaining its commanding majority in parliament.
By all accounts, it has been a quiet and
uneventful election campaign so far. Missing is the
fever that election ceramahs (small public
political gatherings) used to generate. The BN has
exploited its control of the media to the hilt. It has
also overrun the country with a public relations
offensive that bears the mark of an intensive
advertising campaign.
From billboards and
television to radio and newspapers, the themes are the
same. The tag line on the numerous ads resembles that of
a cigarette ad: "Barisan Nasional: Excellence, Glory,
Distinction."
The PR boys for the BN have been
busy. The ads have consistently hammered home the
message: Only the BN can bring peace and stability; vote
BN for development and so on. There are slight
variations, but that is the underlying theme.
Faced with this advertising onslaught, along
with the lopsided pro-BN media coverage, the average
Malaysian could be forgiven for thinking this is an
election without any major issues. And that is exactly
what the BN and the mainstream media under their spell
want the voters to believe.
The mainstream media
have contributed to the BN campaign by telling voters
that the only real choice they face is a country under
BN rule or "extremism". This plays into the fears
largely prevalent among the non-Malay segments of the
population - that the only real choice is between the
"liberal" BN and the conservative brand of Islam
espoused by Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS).
One
full-page ad in The Star, the country's top-selling
newspaper, carries the message: "No other party can keep
Malaysia peaceful, united and secure. Especially against
threats of terrorism. Let's continue to enjoy security,
peace and unity."
The advertising blitz is not
just from the BN. Even government-linked firms such as
Malaysia Airlines and Tenaga Nasional Bhd, the
electricity utility company, have jumped into the fray,
carrying thinly disguised messages that coincide with
the BN advertising themes.
Tenaga Nasional has a
new corny commercial about a boy going to sleep at night
as the lights go out. The ad was slipped in a few times
during popular programs such as Late Show with David
Letterman. As the boy falls asleep, the narrator
comes on with these pearls of wisdom: "Goodnight, son
... Hmm, looks like another night in quiet ol' Malaysia
- and thank goodness for that. Because we are a country
with peace and special harmony that lets us sleep
soundly at night. Now isn't that worth celebrating?"
The other main parties contesting the polls -
PAS, the Democratic Action Party (DAP) and Keadilan -
have been struggling to get their message across with
hardly any meaningful access to the media. The only
avenues left for them are the ceramahs and the
Internet. Because of the limited reach of these avenues,
few Malaysians are aware of the larger issues
confronting their country.
The opposition is
handicapped because the issues they - especially the DAP
and Keadilan - are advocating are intangible issues such
as the lack of independence of the judiciary, the
unlevel electoral playing field and the curbs on
democracy.
And that suits the BN fine. It
projects itself as the only party capable of bringing
about "development". Voters buy into this argument
without realizing that the only reason the BN can bring
about development is that it has access to the country's
resources and government machinery. The BN has
successfully ingrained into the population that the BN =
government and the "opposition" parties are only good at
making noise.
The BN's main selling point is new
Premier Abdullah Badawi, whose picture appears on
posters across the country. On a single bus stop, it is
not uncommon to find half a dozen large portraits of
Abdullah dangling around. The sheer amount of resources
spent on the BN poster, billboard and glossy-pamphlet
campaign ensures that the opposition campaign is
dwarfed. For some reason, many of the BN campaign
materials were printed and produced in China and shipped
back to Malaysia.
To be sure, Abdullah's softer
image is a marked contrast to former premier Mahathir
Mohamad's often caustic style. And Abdullah's
anti-corruption drive has also caught the imagination of
many Malaysians, probably due to the hype in the
mainstream media.
But many Malaysians fail to
realize that all the anti-corruption drive has to show
so far are the arrests of a prominent has-been tycoon
and a virtually unknown cabinet minister. They do not
see that Abdullah's "Mr Nice" image has been tarnished
by the fact that as home minister, he is responsible for
the arrests under the harsh Internal Security Act, which
permits detention without trial. More than 90 people are
still in detention, a group of whom are on hunger
strike, including two who have been hospitalized.
PAS has also accused BN's dominant United Malays
National Organization of offering bribes to persuade PAS
candidates to withdraw from the general election, a
charge UMNO denies. The party reportedly claimed that
two men offered RM100,000 (US$26,300) to PAS's Pasir
Raja candidate, Sanip Ithnin, to withdraw his candidacy.
In the face of a hopeless situation for the
other parties, it is understandable that there should be
a distinct lack of campaign excitement. The most the
other parties can hope for is to hold on to the gains
achieved during the reformasi-charged polls of
1999. Apart from this, the opposition parties are also
hoping to score upset wins in specific constituencies
against high-ranking BN officials including those in the
cabinet, while PAS is hoping to add to the two states it
controls.
Among the constituencies that
Malaysians are closely watching are the contest in Pekan
in the central state of Pahang where Najib Razak, the
caretaker deputy premier, is facing a PAS contender, and
the Sungai Siput seat, where the caretaker works
minister, Samy Vellu, is up against Keadilan's Jeyakumar
Devaraj, a respiratory physician turned political
activist.
All eyes will also be on how PAS
performs - whether it will make any further inroads or
be thwarted. Keadilan also faces a do-or-die battle to
make sure it can hang on to the five seats it captured
in the last election.
All said, and given the
unlevel playing field, the outcome is predictable, with
the only uncertainty being to what extent, if any, the
opposition can make further inroads. In 1999, the BN won
56 percent of the popular vote yet maintained its
two-thirds majority in parliament due to Malaysia's
first-past-the-post (simple majority) electoral system.
This time around, the BN's share of the popular vote is
likely to reach 60 percent or more, though it is
unlikely to reach as high as the 65 percent it achieved
in 1995.
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