By Irving Feng
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – The Rakyat, Malaysia’s three party opposition alliance to the allegedly corrupt central government, held a protest rally to shun a possible election fraud that may have been present in Malaysia’s May 5th national elections.
Anwar Ibrahim, leader of the opposition alliance, vowed to expose the central government’s actions that fraudulently allowed the Barisan Nasional coalition to stay in power. The opposition alliance bases their allegations on the fact that the Barisan party only won 46% of the popular vote during the national election, however, they still own a majority of the parliamentary seats.
Anwar Ibrahim’s opposition alliance only managed to secure 89 parliamentary seats despite securing a majority of the popular vote (at 51%). The Barisan managed to hold onto 133 seats. Investigators have alluded to possible voting irregularities and are now focusing their efforts around 30 seats where the margin of victory was extremely small and perhaps the integrity of the votes was questionable.
Growing concerns over voting integrity and the possibility that the central ruling party has implemented some type of illegal tactic in the recent election triggered a massive number of mass protests in the streets in addition to Anwar Ibrahim’s large stadium demonstration.
Malaysia’s electoral system has been under scrutiny by the public in recent years and the civil society group, Bersih, has pushed for electoral improvements. The proposed improvements, however, were struck down after being put to a vote and the central government’s elections commission only adopted a small portion of the broad number of proposed changes.
Third party think tanks including Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) and the Centre for Public Policy Studies (CPPS) had dispatched observers to the Malaysian election scene in order to gather information and verify the legitimacy of their voting practices.
The report compiled by the third party observers noted that mainstream media is dominated by the Barisan ruling party and the content is heavily biased in favor of the current central government. Furthermore, central government and military facilities are commonly used in campaign efforts by the Barisan.
The third party observers further reported that the lack of transparency in political and electoral financing further exacerbates the problems with allegations of voting fraud. The irregularities in the May 5th election will have a significant impact on the legitimacy of the ruling party going forward.
The current prime minister’s office has rejected the allegations and accusations of voting fraud because they believe that the evidence brought forward by the third party observations are unsubstantiated. However, concerns over voting fraud were already in the winds with reports that thousands of constituents were flown in from Borneo to Kuala Lumpur to rig the vote.
For further information, please see:
Al Jazeera – Opposition protests Malaysia vote ‘fraud’ – 9 May 2013
The Wall Street Journal – Malaysian Premier Tested by Protests Over Vote – 9 May 2013
Reuters – Malaysian rally to protest election “fraud” draws big crowd – 8 May 2013
BBC – Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim urges protest over poll defeat – 6 May 2013
