BATTLE FOR THE HEARTS & MINDS OF MALAYSIANS, MAHATHIR HAS ALREADY WON – BUT WILL SUPPORT, EVEN ADULATION FOR HIM, TRANSLATE INTO VOTES AT THE BALLOT BOX

KUALA LUMPUR: Parliament’s dissolution announced today paves the way for what is widely expected to be Malaysia’s most closely-fought general election, after almost three years of political mudslinging dominated by the 1MDB controversy.

The Umno-led Barisan Nasional (BN) now faces an opposition coalition buoyed by the entry of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, 92, as he eyes a second crack at the post he held for 22 years.

With Mahathir are other prominent personalities once at the forefront of BN’s charge, including Muhyiddin Yassin and Mukhriz Mahathir, both of whom fell out with Najib Razak in the wake of allegations that the Umno president had received hundreds of millions of dollars linked to 1MDB. Najib has maintained that the money was a donation from Saudi Arabia to help Umno’s last general election campaign.

The election will also show whether the opposition can make much of a dent in BN, with Mahathir having made peace with his one-time nemesis and rival Anwar Ibrahim. Anwar will be released from prison in June, and has been promised the prime ministerial post in the event of a victory by the Pakatan Harapan (PH) opposition alliance.

The opposition has not been short of problems, even while Umno suffered a major split.

The Mahathir-Anwar combination, for example, did not sit well with opposition supporters, many of whom question Mahathir’s involvement as someone who did not flinch from taking tough action, including arrests under security laws, against the same opposition leaders now by his side.

Parliament’s dissolution also comes on the heels of another “dissolution”, a one-month suspension of Mahathir’s PPBM by the Registrar of Societies, effectively barring it from using its logo at the general election.

BN will also have to face PAS, despite attempts at reconciling the Islamist party with Umno, its traditional foe, thus forcing three-way contests that are likely to cause divisions in the Malay heartland, with four main Malay and Muslim-based parties in the fray.

In Sabah, a major vote bank for BN, there have also been major political realignments: Parti Warisan Sabah led by former Umno vice-president Mohd Shafie Apdal offers a local flavour in an opposition line-up that has for some time been dominated by peninsula-based DAP and PKR.

The coming general election is Najib’s second attempt at regaining votes lost under his predecessor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, whose landslide victory in 2004 was cut to shreds in 2008, leaving the ruling coalition without its usual two-third majority in Parliament.

At the same time, BN wants to recapture the prized state of Selangor, while trying to loosen DAP’s 10-year grip on Penang.

The ruling coalition is confident of ending three decades of PAS rule in Kelantan: political observers expect BN to gain from a split in opposition votes from Amanah’s presence, causing three-way contests in the state.

The 2018 election will also show whether there has been much success in milking social media and the internet for political propaganda, and how much influence traditional media still holds among voters.

A total of 222 parliamentary seats and 505 state seats are at stake.

The battle for the hearts and minds, which began five years ago after the 2013 election, is almost over. The coming weeks will be a battle for the ballot.

– FMT