With less than a week to general elections, Malaysia‘s opposition alliance is banking on the promise of bold change to end the governing coalition’s 56-year rule. It says a new economic playing field will strip away decades of race-based policies that it believes bred corruption and hampered growth
The three-party opposition alliance led by former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim says it cannot be business as usual in Malaysia, where affirmative action policies that favor majority ethnic Malays in business, jobs and education have polarized the country and suppressed its economic competitiveness.
Despite posting robust economic growth in the past decade, the opposition says the cost of living has surged in Southeast Asia‘s third largest economy, outpacing rise in wages. The country is lagging behind many of its Asian peers such as Taiwan and South Korea, as its race-based policies fueled a brain drain abroad. Corruption is endemic, and the government ran a budget deficit for the last 15 years, swelling the national debt.
Anwar’s People’s Alliance promises a more competitive merit-based system and a clean break from what it calls a corrupt past if it wins May 5 national polls.
Its election manifesto says it will end monopolies in sectors such as telecommunications, rice and sugar that kept prices high. It will review suspicious government concessions, abolish highway tolls, cut taxes to lower car prices and free up civil liberties.
“This election offers a possibility of a political transition of power. The campaign will come down to who can deliver more genuine and fundamental reforms and who will give them a better deal,” said Bridget Welsh, a political science professor at Singapore Management University.
Anwar’s alliance surged into political prominence in 2008 elections when it won more than a third of seats in the federal parliament and gained control of several states. It was the biggest blow for Prime Minister Najib Razak’s National Front coalition since independence from Britain in 1957 and was spurred by discontent about corruption and racial and religious discrimination.
The keystone of the opposition policies is reform of preferential treatment started in 1971 to lift Malays, who account for 60 percent of Malaysia‘s 29 million people, from poverty after race riots. The policies are credited with enlarging the Malay middle class and putting 20 percent of corporate wealth in Malay hands, but the opposition says the system has been abused to enrich the well-connected elite and distorted the economy. Many contracts go to businesses
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