Malaysia Votes

By Shanon Shah

A wonderful story can now be told. Last Saturday (March 8), Malaysians emerged in droves to make their voices heard, to make their decisions count at the ballot box. The Barisan Nasional (BN) government was ultimately returned to power, but with a shocking failure to retain its two-thirds majority – shocking because, even though armed with an array of repressive legislation, ownership of various mainstream media outlets and finances, they still could not convince a sizeable number of Malaysians to sign the BN a blank cheque.

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By Beth Yahp

IT’s March 7, eve of the elections. I’m at my usual morning teh tarik corner shop in Bangsar, the New Straits Times [NST] under my arm, making my way to a table out back where I can eat with elbow room, watch people and catch up on the news. It’s my favourite morning activity, neighbourhood workers bustling in for breakfast or old Uncles coming in for a kopi and chat, sleepy-looking students thumbing through the papers like me. A typical Malaysian scene. My teh arrives hot and beautifully frothy.

I unfold my NST, looking for the day’s big news. I involuntarily jump back from the front page: has a Korean hantu [ghost] like Ju-On suddenly been bussed in to Malaysia? Or a spectre from the Twilight Zone? The front page blazes a doctored photo to people my nightmares, and today it’s headline “news”. I know that by now I shouldn’t be, but I’m too shocked to finish my tea. Without having noticed, I’ve mechanically stuffed most of my tosai into my mouth, no recollection of chewing or tasting.

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By Tony Savarimuthu

The best spin-doctors I’ve seen throughout this election season are probably the guys who were earnestly fresh-tarring the perfectly good road in front of my house. While there are serious issues being debated on whether or not the soul of the country is being usurped by corruption, crime bosses or constitutional misdemeanours, the “longkang” politician’s capacity to influence voters by implementing some well-timed brand activation programmes cannot be underrated.

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[Updated at 12.15pm, March 9, 2008]

AFTER 13 days of heated campaigning, ceramahs running late into the night and plenty of promises from the candidates, Malaysians cast their ballots on March 8. The results that have come in indicate a milestone in the history of Malaysian elections. MalaysiaVotes.com talks to several political observers to try to make sense of the 2008 general election results.

The Barisan Nasional (BN) returned to power with a simple majority of the parliamentary seats to form the federal government, but has lost its two-thirds majority for the first time in history since 1969, a Bernama report said. At 5am on March 9 and with only three of the 222 seats in Parliament yet to be declared, the Election Commission announced that the BN has won 137 seats, including eight won unopposed on nomination day on Feb 24, while the opposition has won an unprecedented 82 seats.

PAS has retained Kelantan. The opposition, comprising PAS, Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) and the DAP, has won Penang, Kedah, Perak and Selangor. The BN retained Terengganu, Perlis and Malacca with a simple majority. For the updated results, go to Malaysiakini.com.

BN chairman and caretaker prime minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, in a 2.20am press conference at the BN operations room in Kuala Lumpur, accepted the results and said it was proof of democracy in the country. He was asked if the election results showed that the people had lost confidence in his leadership. “No… this is the people’s stand, to show their stand not to give us a two-thirds majority,” he was quoted as saying by Bernama.

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MALAYSIANS go to the polls today (March 8). They will elect their representatives and determine who they want to form the government in the next five years, at the state as well as federal levels. The ballots they cast also represent their views on how the nation has been governed since the last general election in 2004, and what they want to see going forward.

Among the hot seats/states is Penang, where the Barisan Nasional (BN) is facing an onslaught from the Opposition, which includes the DAP, Parti Keadilan Rakyat and PAS. In Kelantan, the BN led by Umno is all out to end PAS’s 18-year rule in the state.

Bernama reports that in this 12th general election, a total of 10.9 million registered voters are eligible to elect representatives for 214 of the 222 parliamentary seats and 501 of the 505 State Legislative Assembly seats nationwide, except for Sarawak which is only involved in the election for parliamentary seats.

It said the Election Commission (EC) opened 7,950 polling centres throughout the country, with 21,822 polling streams, which mostly involve schools, multipurpose halls and longhouses from 8am until 5pm.

On the ground in Kelantan
Danny Lim reports that the battle for Kelantan has been a keen fight throughout the campaign period, with the odds shifting overnight from one side to another.

The readings from the ground have been constantly changing, swayed by the information put out by the different parties and the volatile nature of voter sentiment, which was in turn influenced by the promises, accusations and other comments made during the campaign period, officially from nomination day on Feb 24 to midnight on March 7.

On Thursday (March 6), sources within PAS were confident of taking Kelantan and thought the party was slightly ahead in the parliamentary seat race. They assured the information announced by PAS vice-president Datuk Husam Musa that morning, that PAS was ahead in 26 state seats, was solid.

By Friday night (March 7), the scenario had changed. Journalists shared information that still put PAS ahead but by a closer margin of 24 state seats to the BN at 21.

Information from Kelantan Umno sources varied: one matched the 24-21 count in favour of PAS, another put the BN marginally ahead.

The PAS insider was flummoxed by how the reading of voter sentiment had changed within 24 hours, and conceded the party was, as of early Saturday morning (March 8), the underdog.

[To be updated later]