KUALA LUMPUR (Islam Online) - The ruling coalition won Malaysia's general election by taking another two-thirds majority of the 193 parliamentary seats. The results were expected, but Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed failed to stop a strong push by the Party Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), which made history by winning two states.
Mahathir won these elections with a reduced majority from that of 1995, in terms of votes and seats. In 1996 his party controlled 166 seats in the parliament and bagged 80 percent of states seats. This time around his win was tainted with a severe reduction in state seats and a strong push by the Islamic party in the National Parliament.
PAS won more than 30 seats alone in parliament this time. It controlled eight seats in the last parliament. The Barisan National will control over 45 seats from 30 in the last elections.
The Reformasi movement also received a boost with the victory of Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, leader of the National Justice Party and wife of deposed deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim.
The opposition, barred from appearing on TV and the local newspapers, suggested that the defeat was due to the "dirty and unfair" campaign. The ruling party had advertised in the local press against the opposition, touting them as being riot-prone. The ruling party also raised fears that the opposition Islamic party will impose an Islamic state in Malaysia to the detriment of the Chinese and other non-Muslims.
Mahathir's big win came mostly from Sabah and Sarawak, where the ruling national party makes an almost clean sweep. The ruling coalition successfully won the votes of the Chinese and Indians, who represent almost 40 percent of voters. The majority of Malays turned their back to the ruling coalition.
Mahathir lost big in peninsular Malaysia, where the Anwar issue had a major impact. The two states that slipped from the hands of the ruling party are Kelantan and Terengganu, which were both expected to fall into the hands of PAS.
Other states where the opposition parties were expecting big wins did not materialize but the Islamic party made serious in-roads in these states and lost after tough and close fights.
Mahathir said he conceded defeat in these two states and added he is ready to work with opposition parties on certain issues. He offered an olive branch to the opposition, saying that he is ready to look into some of their proposals. But he insisted that the PAS party will never work with the government and will never allow their supporters to be close to the ruling coalition.
About the claims by PAS that some seats were lost unfairly, Mahathir said the electoral commission should look into it closely. He said the voters were found to have voted PAS but their ballots flooded onto the Barisan National box, which rendered the votes invalid.
He also said that Kelantan and Terengganu are not the whole of the Malay heartland, and that the rural Malays did not appreciate all the efforts the government puts in satisfying them, contrary to the Chinese and Indians who supported his party fully.
Reports indicated that Mahathir would have given the Malays a hard time after the elections if he had won bigger still. But his lost in the Malay heartland is another indication that he might revise his plans.
"In terms of votes, the ruling coalition finds itself with a tally of less than 55%. It won 65% of votes in the 1995 elections. The push by the opposition in the circumstances that surrounded the nine days of electioneering is an indication of growing dissent in Malaysia," an expert in Malaysian elections said.
Veteran opposition party leader Lim Kit Siang, head of the Democratic Action Party (DAP), conceded defeat in his seat. Lim, who became an MP in 1969 and is parliamentary opposition leader, conceded defeat in the parliamentary and state seats he contested in northern Penang state, Bernama said early Tuesday.
Lim blamed a distorted campaign by two parties in the ruling National Front for bringing him down. He was quoted as saying that the Malaysian Chinese Association and Gerakan had put up banners alleging that the Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) intended to form an Islamic state in the country, and that hurt him.
Three ministers were defeated - Consumer Affairs Minister Megat Junid who was cited in Anwar's court case, Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Abdul Hamid Othman, and Mustapha Mohamed, deputy finance minister.
Chief Minister Wan Mohktar Ahmad, who had been at the helm of the oil-rich state for the last 25 years, said he accepted the decision of the voters. "Man proposes and God disposes," a dejected Wan Mohktar told state television after the results were announced. "As a democracy, we accept the verdict of the people with an open heart," he said.
The only state in peninsula Malaysia which remained fully behind the ruling coalition is Johor, which saw a clean sweep for Mahathir.
The government's overall victory is however tainted with claims of illegalities and irregularities in the electoral roll. An election watch-dog says it detected as much as 200,000 voters without addresses and some voters had funny names with a digit before and after (eg, 09zuraida2 bt mamat).
"But these claims will be doused and left unheard for another 5 years, when there should be another election in Malaysia," said a voter, disappointed with the performance of the National Justice Party of Wan Azizah in Selangor, the birthplace of the Reformasi movement.
"We lost mostly because of the Chinese and Indians! They fell into Mahathir's trap. We lost!" he added, not smiling.
