As intraparty elections near in the country's biggest political party, the temperature rises
With intra-party elections scheduled for March in Malaysia's United Malays National Organization, there seems to be no stopping the deluge of political crises in Malaysia. Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has made it his mission to claw back as many opposition seats as he can in the effort to gain primacy for his faction within the party, which has been riven for months by interparty squabbling that has put many of his lieutenants at risk.
In rapid fire over recent weeks, the Perak state government, like Selangor led by the Pakatan Rakyat, was toppled via a coup-de-tat in which three state legislators crossed the floor although the state assembly was not in session to hold a no confidence vote. At about the same time, Pakatan in Kedah lost another state legislator who was forced to resign when it became known that he had two wives, illegal for non-Muslims.
The latest, but probably not the last, occurred with the humiliation of Elizabeth Wong, an unmarried 37-year-old Selangor state assemblywoman and councilor for Pakatan Rakyat, the national opposition party. As the world knows, Wong's jilted boyfriend sent photos of the woman sleeping nude to the media and the blogosphere. Although Wong had not posed for the photos, they kicked off a huge fuss in the conservative country and resulted in her offering her resignation. If it is accepted, it would mean there would be three by-elections.
The aggressive tactics, most of them credited to Najib, have included the filing of scores of police complaints against Karpal Singh, the veteran lawyer and national chairman of the Democratic Action Party, one of the three component parties of Pakatan Rakyat. Karpal Singh offered to sue Sultan Raja Azlan Shah, the titular head of Perak, after Azlan Shah named an UMNO chief minister to head the Perak assembly when the body was still in a 28-28 tie. The opposition speaker, from the Democratic Action Party, has refused to seat the new chief minister or the executive councillors, however, continuing the constitutional crisis.
The accusations against Karpal and other Pakatan members are meant to attempt to whip up ethnic Malay resentment against the opposition although UMNO leaders have, when they found it necessary, attacked the sultans themselves. In particular, Mahathir Mohamad, the former prime minister, accused them of giving the country away to the British colonialists and a long list of other sins. His son, Mukhriz, was one of those who filed a complaint against Karpal Singh.
UMNO and the rest of the Barisan Nasional, or national ruling coalition, had been perceived as fumbling and unable to slow the march of the opposition, led by onetime Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, since March 8, 2008 national elections in which the coalition lost its historic two-thirds majority in parliament and five state legislatures. Since the start of the year, however, the opposition coalition has been under unceasing attack on all fronts.
The contest is especially lethal in Selangor, the most developed state and a national jewel, contributing about 20 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). Shortly after the general elections, the UMNO-controlled Malay media singled out Teresa Kok, a four-term Member of Parliament and Selangor senior councilor. The former Selangor chief minister, Mohd Khir Toyo, accused her of trying to abolish the azan, the Muslim call to prayer. At the height of the assault, Utusan Malaysia, a Malay newspaper owned by UMNO, published a short story in which a narcissistic woman politician who appeared to share some of Kok's attributes was assassinated. Kok has claimed that the character refers to her and has sued Utusan, Khir and the writer of the short story.
The current episode is probably a new low in Malaysian politics, observers say. Politicians have called it "gutter politics", while Wong herself said, "The distribution and publication of these photos/video is a malicious attack on my personality. This constitutes a gross outrage on my modesty, a gross invasion of my privacy, and in particular the sanctity of my personal life. It is being done by unscrupulous persons to embarrass and discredit me."