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Malaysia: Vision School Enrages Chinese Voters In The Wake Of By-Election
by Kazi Mahmood
JAKARTA (IslamOnline) - A small town by-election has turned into a national battle for survival by both the opposition and government alliances contesting the seat left vacant in Lunas, Kedah, after the murder of an assemblyman a month ago.
The Malaysian Premier, Mahathir Mohamad, did not spare any rage at the Islamic opposition whom he said would be the only party that will make gains if his coalition, the National Front (NF), loses the by-election.
The seat in the constituency was left vacant after Malaysia Indian Congress (MIC) member Joseph Fernandez was shot dead in a case that remains unsettled by the police. The member of the assembly was shot while he was talking on his mobile phone, waiting in his car, stuck in a traffic jam.
A quick local campaign to elect another MP was decided upon, but it swiftly turned into a national issue when it was alleged the government was spending millions of Malaysian Ringgit in the constituency in an attempt to win votes.
An opposition win in this election will prevent an NF-run Kedah assembly from having a two-thirds majority. The Party Islam Se Malaysia (PAS) won 12 seats in the state election in 1999, while the NF won 24 seats.
Mahathir on Sunday hit out at the opposition for declaring that constituencies will only be developed after their elected representatives die.
He said this was an example of how dirty the opposition could get when they campaigned to win elections.
"I am not dead yet. But see whether there is development in my constituency or not,'' he said after visiting flood-hit areas in the district.
Mahathir said many opposition assemblymen or parliamentarians were not dead yet but their constituencies remained undeveloped.
The issue of the Vision School dominated the campaign for these elections, which the NF would have won with ease. However, Chinese voters in the region are said to be angered by the government’s proposal to cater for English and Malay languages under the Vision School, an information technology (IT) project that is deemed to put Malaysia into the Knowledge Economy.
Mahathir said that the government had helped the Chinese business community tremedously by implementing economic recovery programs so that they would not go bankrupt during the 1997 financial collapse.
The Prime Minister believed that many Chinese businessmen would have gone bankrupt if the government had not helped them by taking certain measures. However, he was disappointed with the way certain groups, like the Chinese education movement, had acted despite the government's gesture to help the Chinese.
"Before the [last] general election, we helped the Chinese a lot. If not, they would have become bankrupt. But this is what we get in return," he told reporters.
He accused the opposition of playing on racial grounds and warned them that this might disrupt harmony in Malaysia.
"They tell the Chinese that they will fight for their language but at the same time tell the Malays the same thing too,'' he added.
He said the opposition only considered racial sentiment and loyalty to the Malays as a priority and this was why it did not nominate an Indian for the Lunas seat.
Mahathir also took to task some Chinese education groups for rallying behind the opposition cause in the Lunas by-election.
He said they were ungrateful to the government, which had gone to their aid on many occasions.
"Now they want to go to the opposition. They can ask what they want from the opposition now. No need to ask from us anymore,'' he added.
Lunas has also divided the opposition alliance of four parties. The Democratic Action Party (DAP) is angered by the choice of a Malay candidate from the National Justice Party (NJP) to contest the vacant seat.
The Alternative Front (AF) rejected the party’s first choice candidate, an Indian, after considering the fact that Malays and Chinese forms a larger chunk of the electorate.
Malays consist 43% of the 27,000 electorate of Lunas, that has 32% Chinese and only 20% Indians.
If the Opposition wins the Lunas seat, it will be a sign that there might be a wind of change in Malaysia and the next general elections, expected in 2004, might not be a one-way battle.
The vote of the Chinese community will be crucial in an opposition victory, observers said, and if they vote the opposition candidate, they might have signaled their intention to shift their votes in the future.
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