Najib eyes election, vote doubts
rise By Anil Netto
PENANG - Is Malaysia headed for an orderly
or tumultuous political transition? Despite
widespread popular concerns about the potential
for electoral fraud and irregularities, political
analysts believe Prime Minister Najib Razak is
poised to call snap polls in the coming months
while his approval ratings are high.
Last
month, a member of a Parliamentary Select
Committee on Electoral Reform disclosed that an
audit of the electoral rolls revealed some 200,000
dubious registered voters. The audit, undertaken
by Mimos Bhd, a government-owned technology
company, found more than 10,000 cases where more
than a dozen individual voters resided at the same
listed address.
Political analysts suggest
those phantom voters could be enough to swing what
are expected to be tightly contested polls. At the
last general election in 2008, the ruling Barisan
Nasional (BN) coalition retained power with 52.2%
of the popular vote. With voter turnout of 8.7
million, some have suggested that bogus electoral
rolls helped BN notch
its simple majority win over the Anwar Ibrahim-led
Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition.
At
the last polls, the BN retained federal power by
winning 140 of parliament's 222 seats. The civil
society Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections,
known locally as "Bersih", notes that the popular
result was much closer, with BN winning 30 of its
seats by a total margin of just 27,222 votes.
"This means some 27,000 voters were the ones who
delivered to BN a simple majority government,"
Bersih said in a statement.
A sudden surge
in the number of voters in some areas of central
Selangor state, where the number of voters
inexplicably increased by 25%-35% in certain
areas, raised the eyebrows of independent
monitors. Bersih claimed the state's higher voter
numbers came from transfers from other
constituencies.
Nonetheless, opposition
parties unexpectedly captured power in five of the
country's 13 federal states (though it later lost
one state in a power grab following defections of
its state lawmakers) and denied the ruling
coalition its coveted two-thirds parliamentary
majority. This time the stakes are higher, and
some observers believe the Pakatan Rakyat has an
outside chance of capturing power if the electoral
playing field is less lopsided.
Najib and
his United Malays Nasional Organization (UMNO),
meanwhile, have ramped up pre-election spending.
His government has made cash handouts to
low-income families and implemented pay-hikes for
civil servants. The Merdeka Center, a polling
agency, found that the premier's approval rating
has soared to 69% this month from 59% in August
2011, with 78% of his support coming from
low-income earners.
Whether those high
ratings will translate into electoral success,
however, is still uncertain. In the fourth quarter
of 2007, months ahead of the March 2008 general
election, Najib's UMNO predecessor, Abdullah
Badawi, scored a 61% approval rating but scored a
poor electoral showing by ruling coalition
standards.
Worryingly for the BN coalition
government, only 48% of respondents polled this
month said they were "happy with the government",
down from 51% in December. In contrast, in the
fourth quarter of 2007, 63% of respondents said
they were very satisfied or somewhat satisfied
"with the way things are going in the country at
present".
Bersih has so far staged two
large protest rallies against what the group views
as an election system rigged in BN's favor. The
first, held in 2007 a few months before the 2008
general election, drew tens of thousands of people
on to the streets of the capital Kuala Lumpur.
Some 50,000 turned up for last July's second
rally, dubbed "Bersih 2.0", despite police
preemptively declaring the rally illegal and
imposing a security lockdown on the capital.
Dozens were arrested before the rally was held.
During that rally, Bersih put forward a
list of demands, including calls on the Election
Commission to clean up electoral rolls, reform the
controversial postal ballot system (used by
security personnel and Commission workers) and use
indelible ink to prevent multiple voting. It has
also called for a minimum 21-day campaign period,
free and fair access to the mainstream media,
stronger public institutions and, more broadly, an
end to corruption and "dirty politics."
Complaints and grievances In
response, the government established a
Parliamentary Select Committee on Electoral
Reforms last October to come up with electoral
reform recommendations within six months. The
committee subsequently traveled to cities and
towns across the country to collect feedback from
the public. A couple of months later, they
submitted a preliminary report listing
recommendations to improve the electoral system.
Bersih has complained that only four of
its 41 recommendations - an audit of the electoral
rolls, the use of indelible ink, overseas voters
to be allowed to vote, and advance voting for
service voters - had been fully adopted by the
Select Committee. Another four recommendations had
only been partially adopted. In particular, it
remains to be seen if the Election Commission will
grant Malaysians based overseas the right to vote.
Last week, the Select Committee visited
the United Kingdom, Germany and Denmark to observe
their electoral systems. Its final report of
recommendations for electoral reform is expected
to be tabled in Parliament on April 2. Activists
have demanded that Najib implement all of Bersih's
demands as well as the proposed recommendations by
the Select Committee before holding the next
general election.
Civil society groups are
not alone in their critical assessment of the
electoral system. Lim Teck Ghee, director of the
independent Center for Policy Initiatives, notes
that many Malaysians are unaware of "the
considerable research work by social scientists -
both local and foreign - that have unequivocally
concluded that the country's record on free and
fair elections has been abysmal".
Foreign
researcher Bridget Welsh and Malaysian researchers Ibrahim Suffian and
Andrew Aeria have noted that "On average in
11 general elections in Malaysia, the opposition
wins 45% of the votes, but, due to the limits on
the opposition within the electoral system,
through gerrymandering, malapportionment and the
impact of a first-past-the post system, and
constraints on political organization for the
opposition, holds less than 15% of the seats in
parliament. In the 2004 election the BN won 63.4%
of the popular vote, but won 91% of the overall
seats ... "
The BN establishment is
clearly edgy about how far Bersih may go to push
its demands. The group's campaigning has ruffled
feathers, especially in the north Borneo state of
Sarawak, which has been ruled by BN-affiliated
Chief Minister Taib Mahmud consecutively since
1981. Over his lengthy tenure, Taib has been
dogged by opposition and media accusations of
corruption, nepotism and money politics -
allegations he has consistently denied.
On
March 10, Bersih steering committee member Maria
Chin Abdullah became the fourth such member to be
turned away by authorities at Sarawak's Kuching
airport. She had intended to prepare for the
Sarawak launch of "Jom 100 (Let's get 100)", a
nationwide Bersih campaign to encourage 100% voter
turnout at the next polls.
The hope among
activists is that a higher turnout will overcome
any attempt at fraud and manipulation of
constituency delineations while showing that the
public supports its calls for electoral reform. In
earlier weeks, pro-UMNO goons have disrupted a few
small opposition events, though such disruptions
appear to have more recently tapered off.
Yet it remains to be seen if the
parliamentary committee's recommendations will
satisfy Bersih's demands and if the BN government
will choose to implement those reform
recommendations before holding new polls. But if
Malaysia's next general elections are held under
the prevailing electoral system, widespread
popular protests against any declared BN win
cannot be ruled out.
Anil Netto
is a Penang-based writer.
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