Najib eyes election, fair vote doubts rise

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 researchers Bridget Welsh, Ibrahim Suffian and Andrew Aeria noted in research 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.

- Asia Times