Wall Street Journal

Malaysia’s opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has found something new to fight over with the country’s government: U.S. President Barack Obama’s message of congratulations to Prime Minister Najib Razak.

Mr. Obama called Mr. Najib on May 13 after his win in Malaysia’s parliamentary elections. Mr. Najib’s National Front coalition won 60% of the seats in the national parliament, although Mr. Anwar’s opposition alliance secured 51% of the popular vote on May 5 and is claiming that vote fraud tipped the balance in the government’s favor.

According to the White House, Mr. Obama “noted that Malaysians had turned out in record numbers to vote and welcomed the Prime Minister’s efforts to address concerns about election irregularities.” He also discussed trade issues and other matters.

The Malaysian government late on Tuesday issued a statement saying that the U.S. President “expressed his understanding and acceptance of the process and results” of the May 5 polls.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, though, Mr. Anwar questioned whether the U.S. was fully aware of the vote-fraud allegations, and also pointed out that Malaysian government statements on calls between Mr. Najib and Mr. Obama sometimes differ from the accounts provided by the White House.

Referring to Mr. Obama, Mr. Anwar said, “I don’t think he is privy to the fact that there is this huge feeling and expression of anger and outrage against this mass rigging and fraud.” Mr. Anwar went on to say that the U.S. had recognized elections under late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and under Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.

“So I think it is also important that the Americans be given the facts to objectively evaluate people,” Mr. Anwar said. “Do you accept the process when the media is not free? Do you accept the process when you cannot monitor the votes, where it went to? Do you accept the process when clearly the electoral list is compromised.”

A Malaysian government spokesman said the government’s account of Mr. Najib’s conversation with Mr. Obama was accurate. Mr. Najib previously has denied the opposition’s allegations of electoral fraud, as has Malaysia’s Election Commission. Some political analysts have also noted that decades of gerrymandering have given a strong voice to rural electoral districts that tend to favor government parties.

But the closeness of the election race and the vote-fraud allegations are raising temperatures across this influential, predominantly Muslim country of 28 million people. Tens of thousands of people packed into a sports stadium last Wednesday to hear Mr. Anwar detail his fraud allegations, many wearing black T-shirts bearing the date of the May 5 elections. Subsequent rallies have been held in other areas, including Penang and Perak states.

In an interview last week, Mr. Anwar said the opposition is gathering what he described as further evidence of election fraud that he intends to submit to the country’s Election Commission and local courts to try to force a re-run of the election in dozens of electoral districts.

This was not telecast in Malaysia. Click this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KouzWrakky4

Bangkok Post

BN under pressure to dismantle race-based policies as opposition draws more support from all sides, lifting popular vote above 50%.

History was supposed to have been made on May 5, the day Malaysians came out in record numbers to vote for a new government.

Some pundits predicted the country’s 13th general election — GE13 in the local shorthand — would be a defining moment that ended the grip on power by the Barisan Nasional (BN). Many were preparing for opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to be ushered in as prime minister the next day.

The huge interest in the contest for 222 Parliamentary seats and 505 state seats was reflected in the record turnout — 84.84% or 11.25 million of the 13.2 million registered voters. Of the total, 2.3 million were new voters.

Since independence from Britain in 1957, Malaysians have known no other government than BN, a coalition of the United Malays National Organisation (Umno), MCA and Gerakan representing the Chinese, and MIC representing Indians.

The opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) comprises the new and predominantly Chinese Democratic Action Party (DAP), PAS (Parti Islam Se-Malaysia) and PKR (Parti Keadilan Rakyat) led by Anwar.

Anwar was quick to declare victory via Twitter early on election night, five hours before the official announcement at midnight by the Election Commission. The results showed the BN returning to power, but not without bleeding more seats at both the federal and state levels compared to 2008. As well, its share of the popular vote fell to 48.7% against 51.3% for the PR.

But in Malaysia, where the government for years has been accused of skewing electoral boundaries to favour candidates in its rural heartland, losing the popular vote is no bar to winning the House.

BN won 133 federal seats, just one less than in 2008, and 274 out of the 505 state seats. PR won 89 parliamentary seats, six more than in 2008. The opposition retained control of Malaysia’s two wealthiest states — Penang and Selangor. PAS held on in Kelantan but lost Kedah to BN. Anwar’s party also caused hairline cracks in BN’s once “fixed deposit” states — Johor and Sabah.

The opposition continues to insist that it was robbed of victory, that the polls were rigged and the process marred by fraud. The poll watchdog Bersih has also refused to recognise the BN government until it verifies reports of electoral fraud.

Reports from southern Thailand, to cite just one example, said that BN was paying 400 to 500 ringgit in “travel expenses” to each voter holding Malaysian nationality to travel south to cast ballots. International observers, however, said the polling process on the whole was fair and transparent.

A group of young voters in Sabah participated in a silent walk on Tuesday to express their disappointment over the results, which they felt did not reflect the nation’s desire for a change in government.

Addressing some 60,000 supporters at a rally last Wednesday night, Anwar vowed that PR would challenge the results in at least 30 seats.

Prime Minister Najib Razak, who was sworn in on Monday, conceded that his party had some work to do to regain voters’ trust.

The clear winner among the political parties that contested the election was the DAP, which engineered what Najib ruefully called “the Chinese tsunami” of votes that abandoned the BN. That left the BN’s Chinese-based parties including MCA and Gerakan as the biggest losers.

Chinese voters increasingly are expressing their disapproval of decades of race-based development policies that favour ethnic Malays. They claim the policies have not promoted equality but have simply entrenched corruption.

However, BN’s weaker showing points to a strong wave of rejection from all Malaysians and not just from the minority Chinese. A major swing in the urban and middle-class electorate shows that Malaysia’s urban-rural rift is widening.

Experts analysing the results say there has been a political awakening in the country, which in the longer term will be beneficial. The evolution will continue, with the restlessness of the younger generation wanting to have a say in their future ensuring that the politics of race will sooner rather than later be put out to pasture.

Rather than blaming the Chinese for voting for the opposition, the BN should admit that it has failed to heed the new political reality. MCA and MIC had failed to serve the community they were created to serve and they no longer appeal to the younger voters.

Though Najib has made a lot of changes since he came to power four years ago, he has to do more. His government must continue to dismantle bumiputera policies and also introduce the Goods and Services Tax (GST) to make Malaysia more competitive and lift it out of a middle-income trap.

As well, a total review of the education system can no longer be avoided, a social security system needs to be in place, and exorbitant higher education fees addressed. The rising crime rate is also a serious matter.

Now it is time for reconciliation, as unity is the key in diverse Malaysia. However, equality for all, regardless of gender, race or religion is a critical factor. For unity to work, Malaysians should not longer be judged based on their race.

The government has five years to undo past mistakes and bring change or else the next battle — GE14 — will be won by the party that can present a better united front.

Asia Times Online

On May 13, 1969, the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur was a living hell with vehicles, houses and the national consciousness set ablaze. Clashes between ethnic Malays and Chinese claimed 196 lives according to official police estimates. Independent foreign observers estimated the death toll as ten times higher.

Triggered by the outcome of the 1969 elections, that riot paved way for two years of emergency rule and a fundamental change in politics and society. The then ruling Alliance Party – a coalition of three communal parties representing Malays, Chinese and Indians and their regional allies in Sabah and Sarawak – found itself

Personified by the marching multi-ethnic youth clad in black, Malaysia has finally left behind the threat of ethnic riots after 44 years. Najib may believe that his party and coalition won the 2013 election, but anyone who has seen the recent rally crowds will conclude otherwise: they have lost a generation and the popular mandate to rule.

The New York Times

If there was a moment after the nail-biting national election on Sunday when Malaysians could envision a respite from five years of political turmoil, it did not last long.

Within hours of the election commission’s announcement early Monday that Prime Minister Najib Razak’s governing National Front coalition had won a majority in Parliament, Anwar Ibrahim, the opposition leader, declared that the voting was rigged, said he would contest the results and called for nationwide protests.

The prime minister’s office countered that Mr. Anwar was a poor loser stirring up unrest, while the police warned that the opposition leader and dozens of other people who spoke at a protest rally in a packed soccer stadium just outside the capital, Kuala Lumpur, on Wednesday night could be charged with sedition.

Such tit-for-tat exchanges between the government and the opposition were commonplace after the 2008 election and in the campaign for the vote last Sunday. But analysts say that the continuing political attacks and threats of protest this time are raising the specter of a potentially explosive showdown fueled by ethnic tensions laid bare again in the vote and longstanding animosity between Mr. Najib and Mr. Anwar.

“In a way, it’s escalated things,” said Simon Tay, the chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. “And with an escalation, you’re not sure of what the results will be.”

The election was itself something of a referendum on the ethnic-based politics that has prevailed under the National Front, which has led the country since its independence from Britain in 1957. Under that system, ethnic Malays have been given preferences in land purchases, bank loans and university admissions.

Voters were essentially given a choice between a semiauthoritarian government that has delivered economic development, albeit through ethnic-based political and economic policies, or a total change in leadership to a combative but untested opposition.

With a record 80 percent of registered voters turning out, the National Front won 133 of the 222 seats in the federal Parliament. But the tally represented a loss of seven seats compared with 2008 and, for the first time since 1969, the governing coalition took less than 50 percent of the popular vote.

While rural Malay Muslims tipped the balance to Mr. Najib, a higher-than-anticipated number of Chinese-Malaysians voted for the opposition.

Mr. Najib, 59, said at a nationally televised news conference early Monday that he was surprised by the voting pattern, which he called a “Chinese tsunami.” This was repeated in comments in Malay-language newspapers that implied that Chinese voters had betrayed Mr. Najib’s party, the United Malays National Organization, or UMNO, which many Chinese supported in the past.

Analysts said that Chinese voters were upset that the government had not made more progress in rolling back official preferences for ethnic Malays.

While Mr. Najib has urged national reconciliation and called ethnic-based campaign politics “unhealthy,” some analysts said his “tsunami” comment only magnified the ethnic debate in Malaysia and exacerbated post-election tensions.

“The political divide in Malaysia is poisonous,” said Karim Raslan, a Malaysian newspaper columnist and political observer.

The weeks before the election featured vociferous attacks in the strongly pro-government mainstream news media, in which Mr. Anwar, 65, was labeled a divisive, pro-American agent, while another senior opposition leader was rumored to be gay. (Spreading such rumors has become a not-uncommon political tactic in a country where homosexuality remains illegal.) A number of sex tapes purporting to be of opposition candidates, including Nurul Izzah Anwar, 32 — the opposition leader’s daughter, who successfully defended her seat in Parliament — were anonymously posted on the Internet.

The governing coalition “hasn’t learned anything from the voter backlash,” Ms. Nurul said. “I foresee the continuation of gutter, racist and hate politics.”

The opposition’s campaign platform included allegations that the governing coalition perpetuated widespread official corruption and would expand the state affirmative action programs that favor Malay Muslims, who account for 60 percent of Malaysia’s 29 million people. The government has rejected such claims.

The roots of the current dispute are also extremely personal and date back to 1998, when Mr. Anwar, who at the time was a senior UMNO leader and deputy prime minister, was ousted in an internal party struggle with Mahathir Mohamad, 87, the country’s prime minister at the time. Mr. Mahathir retains significant influence within the party.

Mr. Anwar was arrested and beaten while in custody and in 1999 was sentenced to more than five years in prison on corruption and sodomy charges, which he served. The charges were later dropped, but relations with Mr. Mahathir remained fraught.

“Certainly the level of dislike, disdain, of lack of respect for each other has gone up considerably in the last 10 years or so, especially since after 2008,” said Lim Teck Ghee, head of the Center for Policy Initiatives in Kuala Lumpur.

Last year, Mr. Anwar said he was “willing to forgive but not necessarily forget” his dismissal and imprisonment. Still, Mr. Lim said there remained widespread concern within UMNO that Mr. Anwar would open legal inquiries against Mr. Mahathir, Mr. Najib and other senior party officials should he ever become prime minister.

“It’s not simply concern about who is the next prime minister,” Mr. Lim said. “Mahathir’s very afraid that if Anwar and the opposition come to power, Mahathir’s place in history is going to be smeared, and I think he is fighting that very, very strongly, and this feeds into the politics of hate in the country.”

The Economist

The government scrapes home — allegedly aided by vote rigging

ON MAY 5th Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional coalition, led by the prime minister, Najib Razak (above), was re-elected for the 13th time in a row. Barisan won a majority of seats in parliament, 133 out of 222, against 89 for the opposition, a three-party coalition called Pakatan Rakyat and led by Anwar Ibrahim. The turnout was a record 85%. And so the same government which has ruled Malaysia since independence from Britain in 1957 is set for another five years in office.

Within Barisan, the overriding sense is of relief. It did slightly better in terms of seats than some had predicted. Scratch the surface, however, and in almost every respect this was a lamentable result for the ruling coalition, its worst ever. Not only did it lose a further seven seats to Pakatan, but it won with only 47% of the popular vote. It is further evidence of how the electoral system is skewed in Barisan’s favour, allowing it to stack up seats in the rural Malay heartlands with far fewer voters than Pakatan needs to win seats in more urban areas. In many places the opposition increased large majorities. For instance, in Penang in the north of the country the Barisan defeat was so humiliating that its candidate for governor, Teng Chang Yeow, resigned from all his party posts. Several government ministers lost their seats.

Most striking was that ethnic Chinese (about a quarter of the population) shifted their votes away from Barisan towards the opposition. The Chinese party of the Barisan coalition, the Malaysian Chinese Association, won just seven seats, down from 15, whereas the opposition’s mainly Chinese Democratic Action Party (DAP) picked up ten seats, for a final tally of 38.

Mr Najib, unwisely, spoke of a “Chinese tsunami” breaking over his Barisan coalition. He has only his party to blame. The United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) dominates the Barisan coalition and appeals mainly to ethnic Malays and other indigenous groups who make up two-thirds of the population. UMNO ran a nasty, divisive campaign in the heartlands. This shored up its base of rural Malay voters, known as the bumiputra (“sons of the soil”). But it also alienated Chinese and other voters, already tired of the cronyism and corruption associated with affirmative-action policies that favour Malays over other ethnicities in business, education and the civil service.

So, despite professing to promote a multi-ethnic Malaysia, Barisan’s election strategy has left the country more divided than ever, both along ethnic lines and between urban and rural areas. The Malay press has not helped, with headlines asking “What more do the Chinese want?”, as if ethnic Chinese acted ungratefully towards Barisan.

For their part, DAP leaders argue that the result was not so much the consequence of a Chinese tsunami as an urban one. The heartland of the party is in urban and semiurban seats, where it increased its share of the Malay as well as the Chinese vote.

Yet the result will not be the only dent in the government’s authority. So too will be the manner in which it was gained. Barisan starts all elections with incumbent advantages, including a slavish state media, tons of cash and constituency boundaries drawn in its favour. On top of that, allegations of dirty campaign tricks abound. “Phantom voters”, for example, appear to have been bussed into marginal constituencies to boost the Barisan vote. Nurul Izzah Anwar, Mr Anwar’s daughter, contested one such seat in Kuala Lumpur. She and her supporters met several Bangladeshi workers who had been brought into the constituency to vote. She won, but only just.

In Penang, where Barisan was desperate to unseat the DAP, its people took over cafés and restaurants for the campaign’s duration in order to give away free beer and food and hold lucky draws. Even Mr Teng, Barisan’s candidate for governor, called this “unacceptable”. In the state of Sabah, where Barisan stacked up crucial seats, many stories circulated of straightforward cash handouts to voters.

Independent domestic groups monitoring the elections are still gathering information about fraud, but their verdicts so far are damning enough. Ambiga Sreenevasan, the head of Bersih, campaigning for fair elections, calls them the “dirtiest yet”.

Mr Anwar claims that fraud cost him the election. On May 8th he and followers staged a big protest rally against the result. His claim is almost certainly an exaggeration. Still, the bitterness engendered by the vote will persist. “National reconciliation”, which Mr Najib sees as the way to heal the wounds, looks a way off.

A caricature mocking our electoral system published in The Global Edition Of The New York Times today.

Malaysiakini

Blind recognition of BN’s win in the 13th general election last Sunday would set a dangerous precedent in world governance, warned poll reform group Global Bersih.

In a statement issued today, it said a dangerous precedent would be set if world leaders welcome the results of the election without “explicitly stating grave concerns about how the poll was conducted.”

“Only the United States has thus far expressed concern over reported electoral irregularities and if other nations don’t follow Washington’s example, they will open the door to corrupt, dictatorial, and authoritarian regimes who seize and hold on to power by any means,” it said.

While congratulating Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak on the BN victory, the White House on Wednesday expressed concern over reported irregularities in the May 5 elections.

“We note concerns regarding reported irregularities in the conduct of the election, and believe it is important that Malaysian authorities address the concerns that have been raised. We look forward to the outcome of their investigations,” said acting White House deputy spokesperson Patrick Ventrell.

He pointed out that addressing these issues is important to strengthen confidence in the electoral process.

Meanwhile, Global Bersih said that it would join the Bersih steering committee in withholding recognition of the Najib administration until the Umno leader withdraws his statement alluding the election results to a “Chinese tsunami”.

“Global Bersih is most disturbed that Malays on the street are now openly confronting Chinese strangers as a direct result of Najib’s shocking statement,” it further said.

“Before Global Bersih reconsiders its position, Najib must also allow due course for an independent investigation into all reports of electoral irregularities,” it added.

Electoral gerrymandering

It said that failure to tackle electoral gerrymandering will contribute to suspicions and doubts being allayed on the results of the next 14th general election as well.

“All Malaysians should also desist from demonising any foreign nationals who may have been used to shore up BN votes in hotly contested seats,” it said.

It also said that themammoth rally in Kelana Jaya on May 8 protesting electoral irregularities is symbolic of a “new Malaysian diaspora.”

“The Malaysia that awoke on May 6 is a new country that has shaken off the yoke of racism and division in spite of efforts of politicians who tore at the very fabric of a newborn and united society,” it said.

Okezone.com

Perdana Menteri Malaysia Najib Razak kini berada dalam posisi terjepit. Dia tidak hanya diserang oleh kubu oposisi, namun juga oleh rekannya di pemerintahan.

Pemimpin oposisi Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim meminta pendukungnya turun ke jalan untuk memprotes hasil pemilu 5 Mei lalu. Anwar menuduh kubu penguasa melakukan banyak kecurangan dalam pemilu itu.

Aksi protes direncanakan digelar Rabu 15 Mei menadatang. Aksi itu diperkirakan akan didatangi oleh 100 ribu orang.

“Jika pihak oposisi bisa membuktikan kecurangan kubu penguasa, legitimasi Najib akan dipertanyakan,” ujar pengamat politik Malaysia Ibrahim Suffian, seperti dikutip AFP, Jumat (10/5/2013).

Tekanan tidak hanya diterima Najib dari pihak oposisi. Mantan Perdana Menteri Malaysia Mahathir Muhammad juga ikut mengkritik Najib. Mahathir kecewa dengan hasil yang didapatkan kubu penguasa dalam pemilu kemarin. Dia pun tidak menutup kemungkinan Najib bisa diturunkan dari posisi Perdana Menteri.

“Orang-orang akan mempertanyakan kemampuannya (Najib), Dia mungkin saja dijatuhkan seperti Abdullah (Badawi),” pungkas Mahathir.

Abdullah adalah perdana menteri pendahulu Najib. Dia diturunkan dari posisinya setelah kubu penguasa menerima hasil buruk dalam pemilu 2008 lalu.

Najib sebenarnya mendapatkan hasil pemilu yang lebih buruk daripada Abdullah. Saat itu Abdullah berhasil meraih 140 kursi dari 222 kursi yang diperebutkan. Sedangkan Najib hanya bisa mendapat 133 kursi.

“Rezim penguasa akan jatuh jika Najib diturunkan. Anwar sudah menunggu untuk melakukan serangan politik,” ujar pengamat politik Malaysia lainnya, Mustafa Ishak.

The Economist

AT FIRST sight, the general election in Malaysia on May 5th, the closest-fought since independence in 1957, looks encouraging. A lively campaign inspired a remarkable turnout of 85% of the country’s 13.3m voters. The government’s victory seems recognition of Malaysia’s solid economic performance and of the progressive reforms introduced by Najib Razak, the prime minister. He has repealed some oppressive, colonial-era laws. He has even begun to dismantle the affirmative-action policies favouring the ethnic-Malay majority over Chinese Malaysians (about a quarter of the population) and Indians (8%). Those policies are at the root of the corruption and cronyism poisoning Malaysian society.

Look again, however, and Malaysian politics seems near breakdown (see article). The opposition coalition led by Anwar Ibrahim alleges electoral fraud and has refused to accept the result. Whether that is true or not, it is certain that the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional, has huge inbuilt advantages. Gerrymandered constituencies meant that with less than 47% of the popular vote, its worst-ever electoral performance, it still won 60% of the 222 parliamentary seats. The state has dispensed cash handouts and other goodies, while much of the civil service works as a party-political tool, and the election commission has long brushed aside allegations of malfeasance. Add in an obsequious mainstream media, and it is rather remarkable that so many Barisan Nasional campaigners still felt the need to resort to blatant vote-buying.

All of this gives rise to two dangers. The first is of a loss of faith in the political process itself. Mr Najib argues that, in a parliamentary system, it is not the popular vote that matters. But in any system it is time to redraw boundaries when distortions have reached this level (something for others, such as Britain and Japan, to note). And Mr Najib owes it to Malaysians who backed the opposition—more than half of the electorate—to investigate the alleged frauds.

The second danger is of a rekindling of the ethnic animosities that led to bloody rioting in the 1960s. Mr Najib has said he wants to be prime minister for all Malaysians. Sadly, however, he presided over an ugly campaign by his United Malays National Organisation, UMNO, the main component of Barisan. In the rural Malay heartlands, UMNO was as negative, racially divisive and pro-Malay as ever. Barisan’s ethnic-Chinese parties did lamentably at the election. Mr Najib has blamed Barisan’s losses on a “Chinese tsunami”, encouraging disgraceful anti-Chinese headlines in the Malay-language press.

Casting the election in such racial terms is neither wise nor accurate. The tsunami washing over Barisan is of the young and the rising urban middle class, sickened at the unfairness, cronyism and corruption they see around them. Mr Najib has taken to Facebook to court these groups. All things to all Malaysian voters, he is more popular than his party.

Show your true colours

The threat he faces now is from UMNO itself. It was quick to dispatch Mr Najib’s predecessor after he did almost as badly in the previous election in 2008. Likewise, UMNO hardliners might argue that what is needed now is to bolster support among its Malay core by replacing Mr Najib with a less bashful Malay supremacist. In fact, if UMNO is to have a future in a prospering Malaysia it needs young urban voters, not poor rural ones. To counter his opponents in the party, Mr Najib therefore needs to capitalise quickly on his own popularity to reform more boldly: to complete the demolition of the affirmative-action edifice; to go further in improving civil liberties; and, above all, to make the electoral system fairer.

Wall Street Journal

Tens of thousands of Malaysians packed a sports stadium in this rain-sodden Kuala Lumpur suburb on Wednesday, erupting in cheers when opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim alleged that Prime Minister Najib Razak had stolen the country’s weekend election.

“Let’s not be intimidated. We’re on the side of just and peaceful struggle,” Mr. Anwar told the crowd. He accused Mr. Najib’s ruling National Front of a vote-rigging campaign that he characterized as the death of democracy in Malaysia.

“This is a heated fight between the people and corrupt government,” he said.

The fight is also personal—the latest in a long feud that pits Mr. Anwar, a humble-born opposition figurehead who has led calls for reform for much of the past 15 years, against Mr. Najib, the British-educated son of the Malaysia’s second prime minister.

For years, the two have maneuvered for influence at the highest levels of power. Now, the personal chess match is showing signs of turning into a street brawl that could determine the future of one of Asia’s most complex and potentially highest-growth countries.

“National reconciliation needs to begin with Mr. Najib and Mr. Anwar,” said Karim Raslan, a Malaysian newspaper columnist and political observer. “Unfortunately they can’t stand one another.”

At Wednesday’s rally, Mr. Anwar’s repeated attacks on Mr. Najib elicited wild applause from the crowd. Surrounding the stadium were thousands more protesters who couldn’t fit inside. Traffic jams choked roads and interchanges, though motorcycles zipped around the area waving opposition flags.

Mr. Anwar has said his party is planning to petition Malaysian courts to rerun Sunday’s voting in disputed districts. He alleges that many voters couldn’t find their names on electoral rolls, or found that others had already voted in their place. “They’ve stolen the election,” he said in an interview Tuesday, amid planning for Wednesday’s rally and others across the country in coming days.

Mr. Najib denied Mr. Anwar’s allegations. He also ridiculed a separate Anwar accusation that government supporters had flown as many as 40,000 people around Malaysia in a bid to pad the voter rolls in marginal seats.

Electoral fraud “is one of the things they played up in the days leading to the election,” Mr. Najib said in an interview Tuesday. “Some people, even professionals, believed we were prepared to cheat. No.”

Mr. Anwar enjoys broad backing. His opposition alliance won the popular vote, securing 50% of the ballot by pledging to remove race-based quotas for the majority but poorer ethnic-Malay community in this mostly Muslim country of 28 million.

The incumbent Mr. Najib, who has espoused a more cautious approach to change, won 47% of the popular vote. But he won 60% of the seats in parliament, thanks to heavy support in more conservative rural areas, which have disproportionately higher numbers of legislators than urban districts.

The scion of an aristocratic family, Mr. Najib was first elected to parliament at the age of 23. When Abdullah Badawi stepped down as prime minister in 2009 after a poor showing in elections the previous year, Mr. Najib took the position and quickly rebranded the premiership, loosening some of Malaysia’s race barriers and opting for a presidential style that focused heavily on social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Mr. Anwar, by contrast, was born to a hospital porter in northern Malaysia and made his name as an Islamist student radical, shocking his colleagues when he joined the National Front. He rose quickly through the ranks, becoming finance minister in 1991 and then deputy prime minister under his mentor, then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

Mr. Anwar challenged his boss at the height of Asia’s 1997-98 financial crisis and was sacked from his post in 1998. Later, Mr. Anwar was prosecuted for corruption and sodomy, and spent six years in jail. The conviction was later overturned on appeal.

Mr. Anwar faced similar charges again in 2008, when one of his former aides leveled sodomy accusations against him—allegations that emerged publicly after the accuser had visited Mr. Najib.

Mr. Najib said he didn’t encourage the accuser to come forward, leaving it to the man’s own discretion. Mr. Anwar was acquitted in January 2012, after a long and frequently lurid trial that he complained was a conspiracy to smear his reputation.

In 2009, Mr. Anwar presented to reporters a private detective, Balasubramaniam Perumal, who declared in a signed statement that Mr. Najib had a sexual relationship with a Mongolian model and translator, Altantuya Shaariibuu. Ms. Shaariibuu had been murdered in 2006, her body blown up with plastic explosives, according to prosecutors.

Mr. Najib denied he had known her. After making his initial declaration, Mr. Balasubramaniam retracted his testimony. Two policemen were convicted in 2009 for killing Ms. Shaariibuu. Both men appealed.

The rivalry’s latest iteration could lead to legal action over who is Malaysia’s rightful leader as well as sustained protests.

“Both Mr. Anwar and Mr. Najib are under strain,” said Bridget Welsh, a political-science professor at Singapore Management University and an expert on Malaysian politics. “But the key is who will be the most willing to step out and be a statesman.”

Al Jazeera

Malaysia’s opposition on Wednesday raised the stakes in its campaign against alleged fraud during the May 5 election as tens of thousands of people joined a mass rally on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur even as the government rejected official observers’ conclusion that the poll was only partially free and not fair.

People started arriving in the stadium as early as 6pm local time and two hours later traffic on the major highways nearby was at a standstill. Many abandoned their vehicles and walked. Highways became car parks as did some petrol stations.

The stadium was packed to capacity with crowds thronging the surrounding roads and parks.

“This is the beginning of a battle between the Rakyat [opposition political party] and an illegitimate, corrupt, and arrogant government,” Anwar Ibrahim, who heads the three party opposition coalition, told the crowd.

A team is collating data on alleged irregularities, focussing its attention on around 30 seats where it feels the results were questionable and where the margin of victory was small.

The ruling Barisan Nasional, the world’s longest governing electoral coalition, got 133 seats with 47 percent of the popular vote. Pakatan, the opposition alliance, secured 51 per cent of the popular vote, but only 89 seats. Independents got the remainder. The election, the most intensely fought in Malaysian history, marks the first time Barisan has lost the popular vote.

Integrity issues

Concern about the integrity of Malaysia’s electoral system has triggered mass street protests in the past few years, led by the civil society group Bersih, the Malay word for clean. The group put forward a number of proposals to improve the system ahead of Sunday’s vote, but the Elections Commission adopted only a few of them including the use of indelible ink and the deployment of official observers.

In their interim report, presented first to the EC and then released to the media on Wednesday, some of those observers concluded that the election was, “only partially free and not fair”.

The observation mission, led by the think-tanks Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) and the Centre for Public Policy Studies (CPPS), focussed on Peninsular Malaysia, deploying 325 observers to 99 constituencies throughout the campaign period. Appointed by the EC, its terms of reference were kept secret.

The report noted that the mainstream media, dominated and owned by Barisan was “heavily biased” in its favour, that government and military facilities were used for campaigning and there was a lack of trust in the EC and the electoral roll. The observers stressed too the lack of transparency in relation to political financing and the distortions created by vastly different constituency sizes, meaning that a vote in the country’s smallest constituency is worth nine in the largest.

“A lot of these irregularities are significant and important,’ said CPPS’ Ramon Navaratnam who was an advisor to the mission. “There’s this big problem with delineation. Unless you solve that problem it’s always going to be viewed as unfair.”

IDEAS founder and chief executive, Wan Saiful Wan Jan, said the outcome was the “best result that we can get bearing in mind all the challenges that we are facing”.

IDEAS and CPPS will release a final report once the EC, which is part of the Prime Minister’s Office, has responded to its findings. Merdeka Center, the country’s most respected polling organisation, which was also part of the official mission, will release its conclusions next week.

In a statement in response to the interim report, the government said it rejected some of the “accusations” because it believed they had gone beyond their scope of work.

“This report strays far outside the original mandate, by choosing to provide ‘context’ by taking a ‘long-term view… [over] the last few years’, rather than just the election period itself,” the statement said.

On Tuesday it accused the opposition of making a “host of unsubstantiated allegations about the elections”.

‘People’s Tribunal’ 

Even before polls opened on Sunday there were concerns about the integrity of the electoral roll, with analysts noting large increases in voters which were not linked to patterns of population growth. Reports that thousands of people were being flown from Borneo to Kuala Lumpur on specially chartered flights, acknowledged by Barisan as “normal” and paid for by “friends”, also triggered outrage and online campaigns to stop “foreigners” voting that sometimes descended into racism.

On the voting day itself, there were problems with indelible ink, spoilt votes actually exceeding the winning margin and reports of vouchers and cash being given to voters. As Singapore Management University’s Bridget Welsh noted in a report, such issues become “more salient” when a third of all seats were won by margins of less than 10 per cent.

Bersih, which mounted its own unofficial monitoring mission known as PEMANTAU, on Monday noted “serious electoral fraud” and alleged that some of its volunteers had been harassed by Barisan’s party workers.

It has set up a “People’s Tribunal” to investigate the claims – they’re expected to work closely with opposition politicians who are doing the same.

Anwar has promised a “fierce” campaign to highlight the irregularities.

The rally attracted Malaysians from all walks of life and ethnicities. They thronged the stadium, packed the field and spilled out onto the surrounding streets.

Dressed mostly in black and waving flags of the three main opposition parties, they shouted and waved the flags of the three parties. Some sat on motorbikes, others hung from the gates to get a better view.

“People in the city are more informed but people in the villages are more followers,” said a local resident who only wanted to be named as Mr Sathien. He joined the rally with his wife. “Malaysian elections have never been fair. It began with gerrymandering. This protest will show the world that Malaysian elections are not fair. That’s the intention.”

Or as fellow protester Gary Yeo put it, “Malaysians have woken up. They know what goes on.”