Najib Razak and By-polls in Malaysia By Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal

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After having been sworn in as premier of Malaysia on Friday the April 03, Najib Razak, succeeding Abdullah Badawi, has already begun his work  quite earnestly and the net result is promising for the country: he has lifted recent bans on two opposition newspapers, freed 13 people detained without trial and promised a review of the controversial Internal Security Act. Meanwhile by-polls in three constituencies went off peacefully without much loss to the ruling party. 

It looks the new government is beginning to make its impact felt on the nation. The Malaysian government led by new Prime Minister Najib Razak has won one out of three by-elections as token of his new efforts to his government.  Najib's ruling coalition, led by the United Malays National Organisation (Umno), won a seat in the state parliament of Sarawak on Borneo Island. But it lost a state parliament seat in Kedah, while in Perak the opposition scored won another seat in the national parliament in a landslide win.

The results cannot be considered to be a "rebuke" to Najib's new government. However, the opposition is still trying to outsmart the ruing party. "Malaysians want change, irrespective of the new prime minister," said Anwar Ibrahim, who leads the three-member Pakatan Rakyat opposition alliance and has been spearheading to oust the ruling front from the government.  "It is definitely a bruising for Najib," an anti-government political analyst was quoted as saying. The opposition claims that the government's win in Sarawak, where the government is the primary source of development funding, was expected, but the loss of Kedah could be more worrying for Najib dispensation. 

Opposition says Najib is punished in Perak, while they are silent about their own punishment in Sarawak which the ruling party won. The most closely watched vote was in the northern state of Perak, where Najib had been prominent in a recent power struggle which deposed the opposition-led state government of Near Jamaluddin in February. Perak was one of five states that voted for the opposition in the March 2008 elections, in which the ruling party lost its historical two-thirds majority for the first time since the country's independence from Britain in 1957. However, growing power struggle across the globe two thirds majority has become a rare phenomenon and the parties get only in exceptional circumstances now.  Malaysia cannot any more think of giving two third to any party, including the opposition.

Although the results do not affect the national balance of power, the three constituencies were seen as useful snapshot of the national mood because they represent a cross-section of Malaysia including rural Malays, ethnic Chinese and Indians. Indian and Chinese settlers are keen to rule Malaysia by using the opposition drive to oust the ruling party, whereas in both India and China the majority has converted the entire polity into just one voice Hindus and Chinese.  The double-speaking West promotes "democracy" and corruption in Islamic world and majority rule elsewhere. Cutting across the political divisions and color of their flags, they have taken a common stand to purse the national interests and never to raise the issues of Kashmir sovereignty and Babri Mosque  which they through Hindu terrorists and hooligans destroyed in 1992 and the government had pledged to rebuild the mosque. In India most of the Muslims have been converted into a sort of semi-Hindus to pursue Hindutva objectives in India and around the world and even Muslim League is part of this hidden design of India. Malaysia, a prominent Muslim state cannot afford to play into the ugly opposition hands. However, it is necessary to evolve a consensus approach in Malaysia to avoid unnecessary friction in politics that helps the anti-Malaysian forces thrive there.

Obviously, sensing the recent trends in Malaysian divisional politics, the opposition has projected the by-polls as a referendum, but that cannot be so. "The feel-good factor from the power transition is still too new and has not sunk in," the prime minister's spokesman, Muhyiddin Yasin, told reporters. The new government under Najib has to concede that opposition has used the ethnic minorities against Malaysia - and just against his government – and state has to deal with them through democratic and constitutional means. As the incumbent head of the government, Najib has a responsibility to in this regard. To keep the ruling coalition intact and retailing the power bases. 

In fact, the consensus approach in naitonal poliltics, if pursued in a sustianed manner, could do a lot of good for Islamic world to face the anti-Islamic rhetoric and terroism plank of the anti-Islamic world. .

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Yours Sincerely,

DR. ABDUL RUFF Colachal

Columnist & Independent Researcher in World Affairs, The only Indian to have gone through entire India
South Asia.