The Malaysian Insider

Umno’s Utusan Malaysia is fomenting racial sentiments to cover up alleged vote rigging in Election 2013, PKR de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said today.

The Malay broadsheet front-paged the question “Apa lagi Cina mahu (What else do the Chinese want?) in what appeared to be an attempt to shape the results of the 13th general election, which saw Barisan Nasional’s (BN) worst-ever performance, by pitting Chinese votes vs Malay ones.

“The big mistake that an illegitimate government makes is to deceive people in the election and to whip up racial sentiments to cover up their misdeeds,” said Anwar (picture) at a packed press conference at the PKR headquarters here.

“When Datuk Seri Najib spoke of reconciliation, that I accept, but when he talked about a ‘Chinese tsunami’, that I reject,” he added, referring to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

Analysts have said data from voting trends showed that the outcome of Election 2013 was not simply the result of a “Chinese tsunami” as Najib has claimed, but a major swing in the urban and middle-class electorate that saw a widening of the urban-rural gap.

But Utusan Malaysia, a newspaper that has represented the right-wing forces aligned largely with former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, published several stories today blaming the Chinese for dividing Malaysia.

In the wrap-around front page today, Utusan Malaysia published a number of photographs which allegedly showed Chinese-looking youths wearing black to protest the results of the election.

The photographs are believed to have been lifted from the Internet and were also used by many right-wing bloggers aligned with Dr Mahathir.

Anwar accused Umno today of playing a “sentiment game”, pointing out thatUtusan Malaysia’s front page was approved by the BN lynchpin.

DAP publicity chief Tony Pua said yesterday that Pakatan Rakyat’s (PR) improved performance in Selangor was due to the “massive increase in Malay support”, particularly in the semi-rural belt of the country’s most industrialised state.

DAP stalwart Lim Kit Siang has also noted that PR won several Malay-majority federal seats like Kuala Terengganu, Alor Star, Lumut and Sepang.

BN won Election 2013 with a smaller majority than the previous election and failed to retake Selangor and Penang, the two most developed states in the country.

The Malaysian Insider

Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said today his rally tomorrow would be the beginning of a “fierce movement” to fight for free and fair elections amid reports of vote-rigging in Election 2013.

The PKR de facto leader, who had led thousands in the “Reformasi” street demonstrations in 1998, also called on Malaysians to wear black or use black insignia to protest alleged electoral fraud in Election 2013.

“This shall be a beginning for a fierce movement to clean this country from election malpractices and fraud, for there is no opportunity for renewal without a clean and fair election,” said Anwar at a packed press conference at the PKR headquarters here.

“I shall address fellow Malaysians tomorrow at Kelana Jaya Stadium at 8.30pm fully dressed in black,” he added.

Anwar noted that the results in some 30 federal constituencies were in doubt, thus affecting the legitimacy of the Barisan Nasional (BN) government that was formed with just 133 seats, 21 seats more than the 112 seats required to win a simple majority.

Anwar said a taskforce headed by PKR strategy director Rafizi Ramli was gathering evidence on electoral fraud.

“His team will match the proof against an empirical analysis of the specific constituency result to highlight the constituencies whose result is in dispute,” he said.

BN won Election 2013 with a smaller majority than the previous election, ceding an additional seven federal seats to Pakatan Rakyat (PR) that took home 89 seats in total.

Black profile pictures have popped up on Facebook in the wake of Sunday’s polls as Malaysians took to the social networking site to protest reports of vote-buying, phantom voters and washable indelible ink in the 13th general election.

Some Facebook users have also sported profile pictures with the words “Democracy is dead”, while others have flooded US President Barack Obama’s Facebook page with requests to intervene following the disputed results of Election 2013.

When asked if he could guarantee that there would be no street protests, Anwar said: “Talk to the people, ask them to guarantee.”

Anwar said the people’s sentiments about being “robbed” of the country’s legitimate government were growing stronger.

He also pointed out that the Election Commission (EC) has failed to implement polls watchdog Bersih’s eight demands for a free and fair election.

“In fact, the EC could not even implement a simple use of indelible ink and the chairman fumbled miserably to provide a logical explanation for the failure,” said Anwar.

“It is therefore a dictate of our conscience to reject the election result until it is rectified and a reasonable justification is provided by the EC,” he added.

Bersih has similarly refused to recognise the BN government until it verified reports of vote-rigging.

Malaysiakini

PKR supremo Anwar Ibrahim today announced that newly-minted Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli will head a team to investigate electoral fraud as Pakatan Rakyat refuses to accept the 13th general election results.

“It is a dictate of our conscience to reject the election results until a reasonable justification is provided by the Election Commission,” he said in a press statement today.

Anwar (right) said the team has already begun work to gather all information and proof of fraud and irregularities across the country.

“His team will match the proof against an empirical analysis of the specific constituency’s result to highlight the constituencies whose result is in dispute,” he said.

Anwar adds that the team, along with similar teams from DAP and PAS, will work closely with electoral reform group Bersih’s people’s tribunal to address this matter.

“In the next few weeks, we will present to the public proof that (Prime Minister) Najib Abdul Razak won this election through frauds and irregularities,” he said.

‘Electoral reforms not implemented’

The PKR de facto leader also pointed out that the EC had failed to implement Bersih’s eight-point demand for electoral reforms.

“In fact, the EC could not even implement a simple use of indelible ink and the chairman fumbled miserably to provide a logical explanation for the failure.

“As of today, we continue to receive information that hundreds of police reports had been lodged around the country for the failure,” he said.

There had been widespread reports that the indelible ink could be removed with soap or bleach despite the EC claiming that it non-removable for up to five days.

Anwar also called on Malaysians to wear black as a sign of protest against the alleged fraud in the 13th general election.

“I shall address fellow Malaysians tomorrow at the Kelana Jaya stadium at 8.30pm fully dressed in black.

“This shall be a beginning for a fierce movement to clean this country from election malpractices and fraud, for there is no opportunity for renewal without a clean and fair election,” he said.

The Malaysian Insider

The DAP is endorsing Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim as Opposition Leader despite winning more seats than PKR in Election 2013, party advisor Lim Kit Siang said today.

The DAP won 38 federal seats in the country’s tightest election in history, making it the second-largest party in Parliament; PKR and PAS took 30 and 21 seats respectively.

“We supported him as prime minister for a Pakatan Rakyat (PR) government, which was supposed to be formed on the fifth of May,” Lim told reporters at the DAP headquarters here today.

“But since this didn’t come about, the preparation and commitment for Pakatan Rakyat remains. That’s why we propose that Anwar continues as parliamentary opposition leader and shadow prime minister,” added the DAP advisor.

Lim also said the results in some constituencies could be challenged due to alleged electoral fraud.

“Pakatan Rakyat will look into these constituencies where fraudulent practices were committed and take the necessary steps to uphold the integrity of the electoral process,” said the newly-elected Gelang Patah MP.

DAP national organising secretary Anthony Loke pointed out that the DAP lost the Bentong, Cameron Highlands and Labis federal seats by fewer than 400 votes each.

“Many of these seats didn’t provide ‘Borang 14,’” said Loke, who was also at the press conference, referring to the form recording the total number of votes at each polling stream that must be provided to counting agents.

Anwar said earlier today that he would gather mass support to question the legitimacy of the newly-elected BN government, stressing that the “worst electoral fraud in history” had kept the coalition in federal government.

Election watchdog Bersih also said it would not recognise the BN government until it verified reports of vote-rigging.

BN won the 13th general election with a smaller majority, losing an additional seven federal seats to PR, besides failing to retake Selangor and Penang, the two most industrialised states in Malaysia.

BN and PR took 133 and 89 federal seats respectively, while the latter also significantly increased its number of state seats from 197 in Election 2008 to 230 in yesterday’s polls.

Lim pointed out today that PR won the popular vote as well.

“It was a ‘Malaysian tsunami’ and not a ‘Chinese tsunami’,” said Lim, dismissing Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s statement yesterday that attributed BN’s losses to a Chinese swing.

“In many parts of the country, Pakatan won seats in areas that were previously considered as BN strongholds and took down many big BN guns in Malay-majority areas,” he added, highlighting the Kuala Terengganu, Alor Setar, Lumut and Sepang federal constituencies.

BN’s losses in major cities and towns from George Town to Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur, Seremban, Malacca and big towns in Johor show a rising discontent among the middle-class and urban working-class, who are concerned with issues like corruption, increasing cost of living and crime.

DAP publicity chief Tony Pua, who was also at the press conference, similarly pointed out that PR’s improved performance in Selangor, particularly the semi-rural areas, were won with a “massive increase in Malay support”.

The Malaysian Insider

Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim vowed today to amass support from Malaysians indignant at last night’s polls results and move for “national consensus” to question the legitimacy of the newly-elected Barisan Nasional (BN) government.

He reiterated claims that the “worst electoral fraud in history” kept BN in federal power and issued a stern reminder to his foes that the push for change is “unstoppable”. Anwar also insisted the demand for clean and fair elections would persist beyond Election 2013. “Our conscience cannot allow us to accept election results conjured through frauds and cheating,” he said in a statement here.

“My heart is with every Malaysian who does not accept the results. I will work towards a national consensus to question the legitimacy of the BN’s government achieved through such electoral frauds,” he added.

Anwar also vowed to devote all his time and energy to work with polls reform group Bersih to remove the current crop of leaders in the Election Commission (EC), saying they should be held responsible to all proven acts of electoral fraud.

“The fact that Pakatan Rakyat won the popular votes by a large margin (50.3 per cent, compared to BN’s 46.8 per cent) confirms the mandate given to us and highlights that electoral frauds won the 13th General Election for Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak,” he said.

Anwar’s Pakatan Rakyat (PR) pact lost its bid for Putrajaya in a hard-fought election last night, picking up 89 seats to the 133 secured by Barisan Nasional (BN), despite increasing its seat numbers in Parliament and many state legislative assemblies.

As the results streamed in, the senior politician, who has vowed to stay out of the forefront of politics after this, said he would not accept the polls outcome due to widespread reports of vote-rigging and electoral discrepancies.

In a press conference late last night, Anwar noted claims that several hotly-contested seats were marred by allegations of widespread fraud.

“As of now we are not accepting the results,” the visibly upset Anwar told the press conference packed with supporters, local and international pressmen.

“Many of the seats they have announced we are contesting (the results) and they have not responded to our allegations,” he said.

The opposition leader added that PR would only accept yesterday’s results if the EC gives a satisfactory explanation to the complaints.

“They were complicit to the crime,” he said.

Anwar added today that a mass gathering will be held at the Kelana Jaya Stadium this Wednesday where he will address Malaysians for the first time after the polls.

“I call upon as many Malaysians to join hands and express our rejection and disgust at the unprecedented electoral frauds committed by Najib and the EC,” he said.

The Age

As voters go viral with their protests, the opposition warns it will challenge the result.

Malaysia’s opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has declared Sunday’s knife-edge election was stolen and announced a legal challenge to the victory claimed by the ruling coalition.

“We won the elections,” he said. “The Election Commission is complicit in the crime of stealing the election from Malaysians. The government has lost its legitimacy.”

The announcement came as protests against the result went viral on the internet and prime minister Najib Razak blamed a swing against his government on what he called a dangerous “Chinese tsunami”.

“The polarisation in this voting trend worries the government,” Mr Najib said. “We are afraid that if this is allowed to continue, it will create tensions.”

He welcomed a court challenge. “We have a very transparent system whereby we can refer to the courts,” he said. “But in the interest of the country, we hope all parties, especially the opposition, will accept the results with an open heart and allow our democratic process to run smoothly.”

Mr Najib emerged victorious with a simple majority after the most gruelling election in his country’s history that left his opposition rivals claiming widespread fraud influenced the result.

Ethnic Chinese, who make up a quarter of Malaysia’s population, deserted Mr Najib’s Barisan Nasional coalition in droves, continuing a trend from the 2008 elections.

They turned to the opposition, attracted by its pledge to tackle corruption and end race-based policies favouring the majority Malays in business, education and housing.

Voters swung from Barisan’s race-based policies in the cities, with the ruling coalition winning about 60 per cent of seats with less than half the popular vote. It lost ? by bigger margins in more seats than it won by big margins and tended to win in districts with smaller populations.

The government’s core voters are rural Malay Muslims and rural indigenous people in Borneo, which translates into large numbers of seats because of the way district boundaries are drawn.

Barisan won 133 seats and the opposition 89 in the 222-seat parliament, short of its customary two thirds majority.

Enthusiasm for change was so great in urban areas, where 70 per cent of the population live that more than 90 per cent of registered voters turned out in some areas despite voting not being compulsory. Many of them were educated middle-class Malaysians.

The three-party Pakatan Rakyat opposition alliance maintained its momentum at the election, showing it can be a real challenge to one of the world’s longest-ruling governments, despite infighting and diverse ideological views. Pakatan for the first time presented a credible alternative budget and vision for the country.

As well as winning the cities the opposition made inroads into the government’s traditional strongholds in Johor, Sabah and Sarawak.

But the result shattered opposition leaders, including former student firebrand Anwar Ibrahim who believed they had a good chance of winning after being swamped at huge rallies and a surge of support in the cities.

The opposition has accused the government of bringing “phantom” foreign voters to hotly contested seats, using indelible ink that washed off and blatant vote buying, violence and intimidation. ?

Opposition supporters are venting their anger. An internet petition (change.org) protesting electoral fraud has gone viral with people signing at a rate of 1100 a minute.

Videos, pictures and first-hand accounts of purportedly foreign “voters” being confronted at polling centres has also gone viral online.

Mr Anwar, who said before the election he would quit politics if the opposition lost, said: “It is unfair for us to form a decision based primarily on an election that we consider fraudulent.”

Mr Najib accused the opposition of stirring up hatred, anger and racial issues.

One of the first declared winners was 32-year-old Nurul Izzah Anwar, the daughter of Mr Anwar, who is seen as a potential future leader of the country.

She retained the Kuala Lumpur seat she won in 2008 despite a strong challenge from Raja Nong Chick Paintai Abidan, a senior minister and powerbroker in the United Malays National Organisation, the main ruling party.

Police dispersed an angry crowd of government supporters where the votes were counted.

The Chinese-backed Democratic Action Party had a landslide win in the northern state of Penang, securing more than three quarters of the vote.

In Kelantan, voters chose an opposition candidate over the Malay chauvinist Ibrahim Ali, head of the extremist Perkasa organisation who had the backing of former prime minister Mahthir Mohamad.

Mr Najib, a 59-year-old British-educated aristocrat who campaigned on a “stay the course” argument, now has a mandate to push through an ambitious $US444 billion economic program aimed at lifting Malaysia to the ranks of wealthier neighbour Singapore by 2020.

Shareholders of the Australian-owned Lynas rare earths processing facility in the eastern state of Pahang will breath a sign of relief over the result. Its stocks jumped 16 percent Monday.

Mr Anwar had said he would close the plant pending an inquiry into its safety if he won office.

Sarawak Report

CAUGHT ON CAMERA – BN’S HATCHET FACED VOTE BUYERS!

Election foul! – This hatchet faced BN organiser was filmed paying for votes at a car parked up by this polling station in Perak

We warned the vote buyers of BN that they were in danger of exposure this year like never before.

We said that an army of young Malaysians holding cameras, mobile phones and recorders as their weapons would be patrolling the streets ready to catch them in the act and post it on the Worldwide Web.

But, it seems they took no notice and carried out the instructions of their BN masters to try and cheat and buy up this election.

What greater crime can there be than to attempt to steal the liberty of your own people?  This crime is treachery.

Sarawak Report, like so many of the internet eyes on this election, has been watching and we present a round up of the cheating captured by the busy eyes of our team of supporters.  We will be updating it during the next hours.

RM50 ringgit – cheap for your liberty mate!

The woman at this polling station in Perak was then clearly filmed walking back to the BN polling centre with the bought ballot form to join her flag-waving party colleagues.

Handily, the camera was able to catch the number plate of the car she walked past as well… it was the car from which the money in the transaction was handed from.

The car, the woman and the BN flags…. time to call the police?

There have been numerous incidents caught on camera of BN agents up to untoward activities in this election.  This is how they have always won in the past.  Take a look at our vote buyer as she returns to base.

Back to her BN base…. the toad in her hole

Meanwhile, the citizen camera people were also picking up and posting evidence of other untoward activity in Perak, with helicopters dropping out bags marked for the Election Commission into the middle of a football field during the course of the day!

Marked for the election commission!

A horrified onlooker posted the shot on Facebook and said this:

‘”THIS is really going OVERBOARD…I hope we could get an EXPLANATION for this???  Time 3.50pm. Location Sungai siput (u), perak. Sungai buloh football field. A helicopter dropped 2 packages the SPR believed to contain ballot boxes in them. ANYBODY else saw this please CONFIRM here in CCWM Group on the thread…Thank You!”

Soon enough some relevant video footage arrived on the matter.  BN will try to front out this evidence when it comes out in court, hoping they can bludgeon through to yet another ‘victory’ and continue their gangster rule of Malaysia for another 5 years, helped no doubt by a ‘crack down’ on freedom of information about activities like this.

Washed off in a trice with soap and water!

As for indelible ink?  The whole of Malaysia is laughing about that one… and the excuse that has just come out, that the reason was it had to be ‘Halal’!  This on the basis it is ‘Hudud’ for BN not to be allowed to break the law to win?

BN’s foreign voters

The voters many who can’t sing the national anthem or speak Malay have been filmed arriving at the stations…..

And then there were of course the imported voters. The buses duly drew up at polling stations around the country, protected by obliging police…. but filmed by outraged local people.

These matters will all be filed as reports, but what would a returning BN government, staffed with proven money grabbers do about it?

More dubious bus loads of voters arriving….

Then of course there was the foreign voter who made the mistake of presenting himself to PKR’s chief crook buster Rafizi Ramli, looking for money to pay for his vote!

The chap was questioned and could not sing the anthem or give a convincing account of why he had come from Sabah to vote in the Peninsular!

His suspicious IC is now up on the internet for all to see.  Maybe he was just trying it on.

With the culture of corruption engendered by BN’s vote buyers you can hardly blame the poorer classes from trying to get rice money out of a process that has been netting ministers billions.

But, they were being identified and caught on camera all over the place.  BN should hang its head in shame for exploiting the people they have kept poor in this way.  But, it seems these vote riggers have no shame, just a sense of entitlement that allows a bunch of 3rd generation under-achievers to think they should continue to run the country.

Can you pay me for my vote please? I came over from Sabah!

Sarawak

And of course over in Sarawak, Taib’s money bags (and those of his side-kick Sgn Chee Hwa of the spurious Sarawak Workers Party) started arriving at the longhouses at midnight last night.

Poor rural voters were shown by helicoptered big wigs “who was boss” with piles of money such as they had never imagined could exist.  RM500 to each of them.

If only those people could actually see the money piled up in the bank accounts of Taib Mahmud and his henchmen, then they would realise what a small amount they have received and how short a distance it will go towards repaying the vast natural resources they have thereby allowed Taib’s men to keep their hands on.

This evening opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim expressed his fears that the cheats would stop at nothing…

They are hijacking results….

And then of course, when BN really needed to force through a ‘victory’ they had to turn off the lights and shut down the comms!

Anwar’s latest tweet

Attempt to steal Nurul’s victory

Perhaps the most brazen attempted rigging at this election was the onslaught on Nurul Izzah’s Lembah Pantai seat.  Not only was the bribery rampant, but as the count was being finalised in her favour this evening the Election Commission officials came up with an extraordinary request.

They needed everyone to clear the count, so that they could take a ‘rest’!

The 15 PKR observers refused to accept the proposal and stayed on.  Shortly after a car drew up outside the count stuffed with ballot boxes inside!  The Election Commission officials attempted to force this late entry of extra mystery votes into the count!

The car full of ballot boxes is stopped by the crowd

A human barricade prevented the ballot boxes from being illegally introduced at this late stage, which Federal Reserve Unit officers attempted to disperse.  The people refused to leave and the ballot boxes are still the in car and were not were not allowed into the count.

Ballot boxes marked 120 found in EC car boot trying to enter 121 Lembah Pantai polling station. Blocked by public.

Nurul has been officially declared the winner thanks to the actions of the people who refused to allow their rights to be violated.

If you want to win an election against BN in Malaysia you have to stay put at the counting station!

How they tricked Wong Tack

The counts were all going the way of DAP through the evening, until suddenly last minute turnarounds went in favour of BN.

Listent to what happened to Wong Tack, who has lead the Lynas protest Bentong.  He was leading by 3,000 towards the end of the count.  When suddenly the lights went out!

During this dark period a new ballot box of ‘postal ballots’ was introduced, which were then counted.  This is against election law for votes to be introduced at the last moment. After these were counted Wong Tack’s majority of 3,000 was turned around to a minority of 300.

Apparently all the postal voters were unanimous for BN, whereas the non- postal votes had been fiercely in favour of Wong Tack.  Where did these postal votes come from ?

Keeping out ‘prying eyes and public scrutiny’ at the count in Johor

Meanwwhile, the BN controlled TV stations kept up a night of saying that their party had won.  By 1230am they were claiming a win and getting ready to swear themselves in and the TV was reporting the ‘fact’!

Cheating -

Ballot box mania

Observers of the election started to wonder why the delay on declaring so many counts where PR was leading by thousands?  It soon became clear.  At count after count illegal late arrivals of ballots boxes started being sneaked in under police escort.

Take a look at what happened in Johor.

Ballot ‘re-enforcements’ to help out flagging BN in Johor

The strategy had become clear.  The media held off announcing the PR wins, while promoting the BN  wins all evening until the seat where PR had been leading had been ‘sorted’ by the late ballot box arrivals.

Anwar Ibrahim who had announced an earlier victory was forced to announce there had been massive fraud.  As dawn breaks tomorrow Malaysian will have to make up their minds if they are prepared to be fed up another pretend election charade at all this fuss and expense.

More vote buying

“SK Sri pandan this afternoon around 1.45pm” – more BN workers with no shame, handing out vouchers to voters.

The evening ended with seats bullied and wrested away by a stone faced Najib who could clearly not revel in a victory he clearly had not really won.

Next to him sat Muhyiddin Yassin, who is now wondering in how many days he can take over his job.  The PR coalition parties have not accepted this bludgeoning.  They are collecting their information from an evening of black outs and stray ballots and last minute bus loads of ‘voters’ escorted by police and they will contest Najib’s sour tasting ‘victory’.

Malays are registering their disgust at the UN…

Plenty more to come….

Malaysiakini

It is widely believed that a happy and contented Singaporean is one who has achieved the 5Cs – cash, credit card, car, condominium and country club.

In neighbouring Malaysia, the victorious Umno Baru leader is defined by the 6Cs; corruption, chaos, cheating, cronyism, cowardice and concubine.

BN head Najib Abdul Razak injected many millions of ringgit into the country to secure a victory, and unleashed a violent campaign of ‘blood, sweat and tears’ to defend Putrajaya. In the end, he only managed a ‘win’ by a handful of seats.

For many Umno Baru leaders, the effort has been worthwhile because the alternative is a long spell behind bars.

Ironically, the worst damage inflicted on Najib and BN, was Najib’s own ‘1Malaysia’ slogan.

Malaysians are fairly reticent people and not known for outward displays of public-spiritedness, but yesterday, in the true spirit of ‘1Malaysia’, Malaysians of all races were united in defending their polling stations against foreign ‘phantom’ voters.

Members of the rakyat blocked the path of buses suspected of carrying Bangladesh and Myanmar nationals to polling stations. Elsewhere, foreign-looking individuals at the polling centres had their identification papers scrutinised.

Outsiders are wrong to think that Malaysians are xenophobic. Malaysians were not targeting these foreigners as individuals; rather they were stopping an abuse of the voting system.

The rakyat’s apparent xenophobia must be blamed on Najib and the Election Commission (EC). The EC chairperson and deputy have obstinately refused to acknowledge voting irregularities and to complicate matters, Najib has allegedly bribed voters to secure a win.

He cannot be trusted to run his own bath but, in the last week, ran a rash of reforms, most of which were hurriedly plucked from Pakatan Rakyat’s manifesto. It is Najib’s self-inflicted wound which has given rise to our deep mistrust of institutions.

Despite the cries of fraud, the rakyat watched with incredulity when the EC went ahead with the announcement that BN had won.

What hope have Malaysians of a free and fair election if the leaders of the EC are biased and in denial? Shouldn’t they at least investigate the allegations of voting irregularities?  BN stole the votes of the rakyat and the future of the country.

Najib’s report card

Najib’s tenure was an unremarkable one. He was out of touch with the electorate and did not know how to engage with the rakyat. For someone who has not known real hardship in his life, he has yet to discover that money is not what consumes most people’s minds.

He is unable to understand that people are concerned about their families’ well-being; security, education, governance, justice and fair-mindedness.

Najib’s rule was fraught with disaster and U-turns. He failed to act to control extremist views within his own party and he firmly believed that churning out acronyms like ETP, BR1M and KR1M would resonate with the rakyat.

He refused to deal with corruption, injustice and racial intolerance. He chose to alienate the rakyat by underestimating their needs and by declining to engage with them.

Najib and Umno Baru should see if they can retain their popularity without flashing any money. When Umno Baru arranges a ceramah, it is alleged that the participants receive money, buses are used to transport them and food is provided.

Kelab Umno Baru meetings at overseas locations, operate with the same modus operandi. If Umno Baru stopped the food, transport and money handouts, would attendance at these events diminish?

Anyone who has attended a Pakatan event is aware that coaches are not laid on, no food is distributed and when the donation box is passed around, people give freely and generously. Money goes from the rakyat to its machinery, and not the other way round, as with Umno Baru events.

In the final days of campaigning, we looked on in bewilderment when Najib claimed that reducing petrol prices would only benefit the rich. Is he out of his mind? The poor cannot get by without a car; even a decrepit Proton held together with duct tape is better than nothing.

The greatest manipulator of all, Dr Mahathir Mohamad wanted funds for his pet project, Proton, and billions of ringgit have been pumped into the Proton car industry, while he neglected the development of an efficient public transport system.

Today, car prices are artificially inflated and we waste our money on the Proton. Our suffering does not end there. We waste more money feeding Mahathir’s cronies, the toll operators.

If you talk to the graduates who went overseas to study, they will tell you that, when they were abroad, they moved around easily on public transport,;but when they returned home to work, a car is needed for mobility.

Again Najib’s stupidity astounds us. When in Kuantan he said the public transport system was marvellous.

But has Najib tried to emulate the daily journey of a worker who lives in one part of KL but works across the city? The majority of Umno Baru leaders have the roads cleared by outriders and know nothing of our suffering.

Dubious victory

When Malaysians voted yesterday, they wanted a change for themselves, but more so for their children and future generations. They despise corrupt politicians, but they are also weary of the inappropriate behaviour of the children of these politicians.

Abdul Taib Mahmud’s daughter gave editors at a Sarawak newspaper a dressing down, making them sit for several hours until while she raged on about a report which portrayed the chief minister in a negative light.

Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz’s son impersonated a member of royalty and then beat up a security guard who dared challenge his authority. Other ministers’ children get preferential treatment at school and their exam papers are isolated for lenient marking. Malaysians have no faith in the BN leadership, particularly, Umno Baru leaders.

By condoning cheating and promoting violence, Najib, Umno Baru and the EC chairperson and his deputy, have disgusted and humiliated the Malays, and betrayed all Malaysians.  Umno Baru must not be allowed to get away with cheating, not this time, nor ever.

Our votes have been stolen and if we sit by and do nothing about this, Umno Baru will have us in their evil clutches forever. Cheating is the last straw and we must not sit idly by and give up.

We must demand that the wishes of the electorate be respected and the result of the electoral fraud be reversed, so that DAP, PAS and PKR can form the government that the people of Malaysia voted for.

If Najib is allowed to form a government despite ‘winning’ by fraudulent means, Umno Baru will stay in power by cheating for another 56 years.

Umno Baru would not have organised and perpetrated fraud on a massive scale if they had known that they would have the support of the rakyat to win GE13.

Malaysiakini

“Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.” 

- John Steinbeck (The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights)

COMMENT “Mohd Najib terkejut dengan keputusan itu dan menjanjikan perubahan kepada partinya Umno. Tetapi prestasi BN yang lebih buruk daripada 2008 menjadikan kedudukan beliau goyah.

Juga, apakah keputusan PRU kali ini berupa ‘Chinese tsunami’ seperti yang Mohd Najib ungkapkan atau ia adalah sesuatu yang lebih besar dan menyeluruh iaitu ramai pengundi tidak lagi menerima BN dan kerajaan BN seperti yang wujud sekarang?

Adakah tidak mungkin bahawa ini bukan tsunami Cina atau cauvinisme kaum, tetapi tsunami Malaysia yang berpaksikan aspirasi dan realiti baru, khasnya di kalangan pengundi muda?

Walaupun BN berjaya merampas semula Kedah, tetapi kekuatannya dalam semua DUN merosot. Ia hampir-hampir kehilangan Terengganu dan menyerahkan banyak kerusi kepada Pakatan di semua negeri.

Di pihaknya pula, Pakatan hendaklah menerima keputusan pemilih dan sebarang ketidakpuasan dan pertikaian hendaklah diselesaikan mengikut peraturan dan undang-undang dan bukan dengan protes jalanan.”

The above is the last few paragraphs of A Kadir Jasin’s blog post on the results of the concluded general election and on the issue of the so-called ‘Chinese tsunami’ that seem to have engulfed Umno thinking in Putrajaya.

The narrative in most pro-establishment blogs is one of retribution to the Chinese community for abandoning the social contract of racial give-and-take of Umno. I am neither shocked nor perturbed by this because seeing the way how pro-opposition partisan operate in cyberspace, especially some DAP supporters (apparatchiks) who engage in the politics of hate, all the while decrying that of Umno’s and the vitriol they heap on pro-establishment partisans, all this is to be expected.

MCA’s Chua Soi Lek’s threat to the Chinese community that the MCA will not participate in the new BN federal government remains to be seen but what the MCA is doing is merely fuelling the retribution narrative of pro-establishment forces.

In other words, there will be no real reconciliation but merely an extension of Umno benefice to Chinese plutocratic interests to maintain the multiracial facade which is important for various economic and propaganda reasons.

Umno can rule alone

While I have never been in the habit of quoting Kadir to bolster any of my arguments, the themes of this particular post of his is something I can get behind. Anyone who had any real knowledge of the mood on the ground would have paid attention to William Case’sperceptive article on the chances of Pakatan Rakyat claiming the throne in Putrajaya. Optimism usually gets the better of us.

The Chinese/Malay dialectic although it plays well in the race discourse is really a minor narrative in the goal of ‘ubahing’ Malaysia. The greater story is the class divisions in the Malay community that translates to the rural/urban divide of the voting patterns in the Malay polity.

The one thing Umno has proved with this election is that it can retain the federal government without the aid of the ‘others’. Until the others lose the demographic game, the best we can hope for is that urban areas will always be the base for a supposed multiracial alliance.

It is pointless to warn against “racialising” Malaysian politics as long as a greater minority group is aligning itself with a faction of the Malay polity whose aspirations are at odds with the racial dogma of the current ruling Malay elite that holds sway with the rural Malay population.

The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of 1Malaysia and Bangsa Malaysia demagoguery is demonstrated with the reality that people have always voted across racial lines when supporting the alliance of their choice and of course the agendas of opposition political parties and their targeted racial demographics.

However, the reality is that the aspirations of a sizeable section of a multiracial urban population are in conflict with a dominant Malay rural electorate. Therefore, it is a racial game played on many levels but which always revolve around the Malay community. In fact I would argue that barring the possible retributive design of the federal government on the Chinese community, what this election has done is once and for all define the conflict in the context of the Malay community.

Simmering class tensions 

Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad knows his audience well. This is why he was screaming his head off stirring the racial and religious pot and throwing his support behind racist candidates like Ibrahim Ali and Zulkifli Noordin.

The fact that these two lost, is something any right-thinking Malaysian can take comfort in but I do wonder if Zulkifli had stuck to his Kulim-Bandar Baru seat, would he have delivered it to BN since BN did win this seat? I hope that even if he stood there, voters there would have rejected him as they did Ibrahim Ali in Pasir Mas for whatever reasons.

However, it all goes back to the simmering class tensions within the Malay community that Umno has managed to keep a lid on by its use of gerrymandering, creation of instant citizens, racial/religious fear-mongering and of course the handout culture. Ironically, these are the very measures that would break the camel’s back in the eventual class struggle that would spill onto the streets in the near future.

It is pointless for Umno to attempt reconciliation with not only the Chinese community but also anyone who voted for Pakatan merely because the aspirations that divide the various Malaysian communities are the very ones that Umno seeks to propagate.

Unless Umno manages to reconcile the aspirations of those Malays who have rejected Umno and those who believe in the system Umno continues to propagate, eventually Umno will face a Malay tsunami.

Malaysiakini

Malaysians vote on Sunday in an election that could weaken or even end the rule of one of the world’s longest-lived coalitions, which faces a stiff challenge from an opposition pledging to clean up politics and end race-based policies.

Led by former finance minister Anwar Ibrahim, the opposition is aiming to build on startling electoral gains in 2008, when the Barisan Nasional (BN) ruling coalition lost its customary two-thirds parliamentary majority.

The historic result signalled a breakdown in traditional politics as minority ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indians, as well as many majority Malays, rejected the National Front’s brand of race-based patronage that has ensured stability in the Southeast Asian nation but led to corruption and widening inequality.

Under Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, the blue-blood son of a former leader, the coalition has tried to win over a growing middle class with social reforms and secure traditional voters with a $2.6 billion deluge of cash handouts to poor families.

He can point to robust growth of 5.6 percent last year as evidence that his Economic Transformation Program to double incomes by 2020 is bearing fruit, while warning that the untested three-party opposition would spark economic ruin.

Najib, who is personally more popular than his party, has had some success in steadying the ship since he was installed as head of the dominant United Malays National Organisation (Umno) in 2009. Formidable advantages such as the coalition’s control of mainstream media, its deep pockets and a skewed electoral system make it the clear favourite.

But opinion polls suggest a tightening race that could further reduce the coalition’s majority and lead the opposition to dispute the result over claims of election fraud.

The opposition alliance has been buoyed by unusually large, enthusiastic turnouts at campaign rallies in recent days. It says its “X factor” may be a surge in young, first-time voters who are more likely to be attracted to its call for change after 56 years of rule by the BN coalition.

“The momentum is far greater in 2013,” Nurul Izzah, Anwar’s daughter and an opposition member of parliament, said at a meeting with journalists and foreign diplomats on Friday.

“I’ve never enjoyed so much support everywhere. That’s our only hope, to ensure a good turnout.”

A failure to improve on 2008′s performance, when the BN won 140 seats in the 222-seat parliament, could threaten Najib’s position and his reform programme. Conservative forces in Umno, unhappy with his tentative efforts to roll back affirmative action policies favouring ethnic Malays, are waiting in the wings to challenge his leadership.

Anwar’s last stand?

The election represents possibly the last chance to lead Malaysia for Anwar, a former rising UMNO star who was sacked and jailed for six years in 1998 following a feud with then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who remains an influential figure.

The 65-year-old former deputy prime minister says his corruption and sodomy conviction was trumped up. He received a new lease on political life last year when a court acquitted him of a second sodomy charge.

His alliance, which includes an awkward partnership between a secular ethnic Chinese party with an Islamist party, is riding a growing trend of civil-society activism, which has been most evident in a series of big street protests in recent years calling for reform of the electoral system.

A clumsy police response to a rally in 2011 led Najib to roll back draconian colonial-era security laws, though critics say he did not go far enough and demands for electoral reform have not been fully addressed.

A narrow victory for the ruling coalition on Sunday would almost certainly spark opposition complaints of voter fraud, which could spill over in street protests. Anwar has accused the coalition of flying up to 40,000 “dubious” voters across the country to vote in close races.

The opposition, which can present a viable alternative from its record of governing in four states it took over in 2008, is running on a platform of transparency and integrity, saying it will break down an entrenched network of patronage that has grown up between UMNO and favoured business tycoons.

It pledges to replace policies favouring ethnic Malays in housing, business and education with needs-based assistance.

It can bank on ethnic Chinese voters, who make up about 25 percent of Malaysians and who abandoned the ruling BN coalition in 2008. Maintaining its momentum among ethnic Malay voters may be more difficult amid warnings from the BN that they would be at risk from Chinese economic domination if the opposition won.

“We’ve seen a consolidation of Chinese support. I think the question for us to a large extent is how the silent majority of Malay voters will go,” said Ong Kian Ming, who is running for a seat in an ethnically diverse constituency near Kuala Lumpur.

- Reuters

Malaysiakini

A dubious voter in Pandan, Selangor, was turned away from the polling station after PKR polling agents objected, PKR Pandan candidate Rafizi Ramli (below) said.

He said Pandan voter Seok Leong Yew alerted his team to the dubious voter, whose registered address was the same as Seok’s.

“We have circulated all the suspicious IC numbers to our polling agents. So as soon as the polling clerk read out his IC number, our polling agent objected.

“Since our agents objected (to the dubious voter), he left without voting. We could not to stop him,” Rafizi told a press conference outside the Ampang district police headquarters before going inside to lodge a police report over the matter.

The incident was reported taking place at the polling centre at a Taman Dagang religious school.

Accompanying him to lodge the report is Seok and another Pandan voter Sivaprakasam Kuruppiah, who also found out today that there are unknown voters registered at his residential address.

Letters addressed to ‘phantoms’

Seok told reporters that he found six hand-delivered slips in his mailbox at 9am today when he returned home from voting, which instructs each Pandan voter in the household which polling station and polling stream to go to.

However he did not recognise four of the six addressees, and claims he has lived at the address since the house’s completion 25 years ago and had never rented it out or sold it.

Meanwhile, Sivaprakasam said he had received three of the instruction slips, but did not recognise two of them, which were Chinese names.

He and his family, all Indians, have similarly occupied the house continuously for 14 years since it was completed.

While not ruling out the possibility of clerical error on the Election Commission’s (EC) part, Rafizi expressed concern that they could also be phantom voters, especially in view of fresh complaints that the indelible ink meant to deter such fraud have been widely reported by voters to be completely washable.

“Let’s see what the EC has to say. What is important is that we are making a police report so that the police can summon these people and the EC can do the rest of the work.

“I am sure the EC will have a good reason for this,” he said.

Not detaining phantoms

Rafizi added that although the instruction slips had BN’s logo on them, the information is identical with that on the EC’s database that PKR also uses.

Rafizi added that to avoid any untoward incidents, he has instructed his election workers not to detain the alleged dubious voters, but only to take photographs of the voter and their IC to facilitate investigations later.

“I am concerned that if we detain them for long, the issue of phantom voters would be buried if it escalates into violence, since our workers have no legal standing to detain them.

“The important issue now is about phantom voters, and I don’t want to risk a confrontation,” he said.

In Cheras, DAP incumbent Tan Kok Wai said voters at Sekolah Kebangsaan Taman Segar caught a suspicious foreign-looking man who tried to vote at 9am.

Tan said the suspect produced his MyKad to prove that he is a Malaysian, but a member of the public said he does not believe him and handed the man to the police.

“However, a few men tried to intervene and insisted that the suspect be allowed to vote. I arrived at the scene and saw the suspect being taken to the polling centre to vote,” Tan said.

“However, the hundreds of voters there shouted “hantu, hantu” (phantom, phantom) and the suspect felt overwhelmed by the angry voters and left the centre without casting his vote,” Tan said.

His party workers, he added, were monitoring the situation. Video clips and pictures of the incident have gone viral on the Internet.

Malaysiakini

That Anwar Ibrahim would be adjudged the most consequential political leader of the second half century of the Malaysian nation’s existence is not in doubt.

This would be true even if by midnight tomorrow he is not endorsed as prime minister of the country as a result of the outcome of the country’s 13th general election.

His achievements will be deemed to be weighty even if the coalition he leads, Pakatan Rakyat, does not win a majority of the seats in Parliament at tomorrow’s polls, the most pivotal in the nation’s history and, by reason of it being the 13th in the series, the most unnervingly resonant.

This is because the race riots of May 13, 1969, continue to rattle in the attic of the nation’s memory like cargo come loose in the hold of a freighter.

The ghosts of that incident and the aftermath it unveiled, in an initially good and, then, gone badly wrong social engineering scheme, desperately need to be exorcised from the nation’s collective memory.

Otherwise this country will forever be pinned down by the twin obsessions of race and religion, with its society teetering permanently on the brink of multiple schisms.

Reinventing Malaysia

No Malaysian leader has demonstrated more capability at possible attainment of that release than Anwar because of his skill at challenging and re-shaping the assumptions of the people he proposes to lead.

When he re-emerged on the national scene in 2007 to lead the opposition to continued rule by BN, after the shipwreck of a six-year stay in prison on trumped-on charges and a brief spell in the grooves of academe, Malaysian politics was firmly stuck in the quagmire of race and religion, a bog 50 years in the making and seemingly unyielding to nostrums.

By dint of being the principal adhesive in an ideologically disparate opposition that grouped a theocratic PAS and a secular DAP, with his own PKR holding the balance, he was able to lead the coalition – with an assist from the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) – to a historic denial to the ruling BN of its vaunted two-thirds parliamentary majority in the general election of March 2008.

That in itself was a tremendous achievement.

Given that previous electoral pacts between the exclusively Muslim PAS and the Chinese-dominant DAP did not amount to government-buffeting proportions or had unravelled soon after the polls, the fact that the Pakatan has endured now for five years makes his welding together of it a tour de force.

These are stupendous achievements, ones that eluded past protagonists of anti-Umno/BN coalitions, Onn Jaafar and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, who dented but could not dislodge the ruling powers, now over a half-century in harness, a span that’s formidably difficult to end because of the enormous advantages conferred by incumbency.

That Anwar has been able to lead and sustain a coalition while simultaneously fending off a campaign, partly played out in the courts, of sustained vilification of his moral character was evidence of admirable reserves of moral fibre and resilience.

Massive crowds

The huge crowds that have turned out to hear him since Parliament dissolved on April 3 have been bigger and more responsive than the ones that showed up at his campaign appearances in the lead-up to GE12 in 2008.

Those crowds had paved the way for an unprecedented denial to BN of its traditional two-thirds majority in Parliament.

These days the crowds’ magnitude presages the downfall of the BN government, the reason for caretaker Prime Minister and BN chief Najib Abdul Razak’s vacuous optimism that his coalition would regain its two-thirds majority being interpreted as cover for electoral fraud on a massive scale.

That move would be foolish, given the size and mood of the crowds that have turned up at Pakatan rallies in several cities and towns in the residential hubs of the country.

Mainly, the people have come to hear and see the Pied Piper of Malaysian political reform, to look at how he has held up under the barrage of vituperation and character assassination.

No leader in modern times, in this and other countries, has been subjected to such a sustained and intense bout of personal vilification.

Throughout it all, Anwar composed himself before countless audiences in such manner as to steadily stay on the issues of national concern, telling his listeners how these have been grossly mishandled by Umno-BN.

Aided by a potentially disastrous decision by Najib to defer the polls on the assumption that a new-broom PM would recover lost ground through handouts and cosmetic changes to policies, Anwar used the time thereby extended him and the Pakatan leadership cohort to hammer away at the massive corruption and colossal waste of the country’s resources by over a half-century of BN rule.

Revelations from a serial run of scandals affecting the government was of great help to making the point that Umno-BN was diseased beyond redemption.

Alternative media

The Pakatan message would not have gotten through widely enough without the connectivity of the alternative media, the mainstream one having been rendered a joke by its sickeningly supine attitude to its masters and owners.

The consequence of this widely disseminated message is the spectacle of the return in droves from such places as Singapore and nearby countries of otherwise indifferent Malaysian voters resident in those places who are keen to give the Pakatan plea for urgent reform of a decayed and dysfunctional system a chance to be realised.

These returnees and their local counterparts should help make the voter turnout at GE13 a peak – far more than the previous highest of 72 percent of the electorate – unmatched before.

Needless to say, a huge turnout would be a big fillip to Anwar’s anticipated arrival at a personal summit: the fulfillment of a youthful ambition to be prime minister.

If the good life is a dream of youth realised in maturity, the great one must be the confluence between the fulfillment of a personal goal with the attainment of a national purpose which, in Anwar’s view, is the salvation of Malaysia from Umno-BN’s depredations.

Even without this fusion, his career has been a consequential one. With it, it would be a great one.