Posted on 03/26/2004 6:04:46 AM PST by nuconvert
Malaysia's 'Gentler' Leader Gets Strong Mandate, Trounces Islamists
By Patrick Goodenough/ CNSNews.com Pacific Rim Bureau Chief
March 22, 2004
Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - A resounding victory for Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in Malaysian elections has dealt a significant blow to the country's radical Islamic party. By drawing a line under the Mahathir Mohamad era, it also clears the way for a less prickly relationship between Kuala Lumpur and Washington.
Unofficial results in Sunday's election gave the ruling coalition, dominated by Abdullah's United Malays National Organization (UMNO), a healthy majority in the federal parliament, and also ended opposition Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) rule in at least one, and possibly both, of the two states it has controlled.
The results constituted a clear response by Malaysia's Muslim Malay majority to PAS vision of an Islamic state under shari'a law. PAS had also sparked controversy during the short campaign by claiming that its supporters would go to heaven while other voters would go to hell.
PAS has controlled Kelantan state since 1990, and in elections in 1999 seized control of another state, Terengganu, where its attempts to introduce shari'a punishments such as stoning and amputation ran into federal roadblocks.
It went into the election saying it planned to add another one or two of Malaysia's 13 states to the list of PAS-ruled regions.
Instead, PAS has lost Terengganu, and looks set also to be defeated in Kelantan, too.
Adding to the routing, PAS leader Abdul Hadi Awang, who was also chief minister of Terengganu, also lost his seat in the federal parliament.
Abdullah, a mild-mannered 64-year-old who comes from a line of religious scholars, was hand-picked as successor when Mahathir retired last year after 22 years' in power.
The large mandate he has received not only leaves Islamic radicals drastically weakened, but gives him the ability to emerge from the shadow of Mahathir, whose rule was characterized by grandiose projects, charges of corruption and cronyism, and a testy relationship with the West.
Mahathir's often provocative statements - with the United States, Australia and the Jews among his most frequent targets - drew widespread condemnations.
Days before his retirement last October, he said in a speech to Islamic leaders that the Jews ruled the world "by proxy" and urged Muslims to learn from their Jewish enemies in order to defeat them.
He was so controversial that, when Mahathir remarked in an interview last week that Democratic contender John Kerry would make a better president than President Bush, the Kerry camp quickly put out a statement rejecting the endorsement and any association with "an avowed anti-Semite whose views are totally deplorable."
Despite Mahathir's confrontational style, the U.S. did praise him in the post-Sept. 11 period for his actions to clamp down on Islamic extremists, including members of the al-Qaeda-affiliated network, Jemaah Islamiah (JI).
'Clean sheet'
Southeast Asia specialist Dr. Greg Barton of Australia's Deakin University said Monday that Abdullah was "not so very different from Mahathir in concrete policy terms, but a world away in terms of his line of rhetoric, and that's critical."
"[Abdullah] Badawi is much more straight forward. Mahathir became so tangled up in the detritus of history that he couldn't really break free, whereas Badawi starts with a clean sheet."
Barton said the election result was mostly positive for relations with the West and cooperation in the war against terrorism.
It was also good news domestically with the routing of PAS, although the absence of a viable opposition coalition did perhaps leave Malaysian democracy weakened.
Barton attributed PAS' poor showing to several factors, including the fact Mahathir was no longer on the scene and so likely to be the object of a protest vote - as occurred in 1999, when PAS tripled its representation in parliament and won its second state.
Also, UMNO succeeded in taking the center ground in Malaysian politics, leaving PAS constrained to the narrow, single issue of Islamic politics.
"In this age of terrorism, people were increasingly uncomfortable with PAS and its rhetoric. Even if they didn't take it literally, it struck them as highly unrealistic and foolish," he said.
"The majority of support for PAS had come from people who were social conservatives rather than Islamic radicals. They have concerns about public morality and the place of religion in society, but don't want to turn things upside down."
Those "social conservatives" had returned to UMNO, both pushed away by PAS rhetoric, and drawn to Abdullah, whose father and grandfather were both Islamic scholars.
Islamists 'on the back foot'
Prof. Clive Kessler of the University of New South Wales in Sydney said Monday that any changes to Malaysian foreign policy under Abdullah would be slow and incremental rather than dramatic.
"He's going to be a far more constructive, less abrasive in his manner," he said, adding that Abdullah would protect Malaysian interests, but do so in "a far gentler," way than his predecessor had.
Kessler said while the trend in the election had been predictable, the scale of the shift was surprising.
Events since 9/11, especially the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, had put the Islamists "on the back foot," and made Malaysians less likely to support PAS simply as an anti-UMNO protest vote.
Nonetheless, Kessler said he did not believe Islamic politics was over in Malaysia.
"The underlying sources of discontent are still there," and Abdullah would have to try to minimize them, by making changes in UMNO and the way in which it governs, especially with regard to nepotism and corruption.
"At least he now has the mandate to do so."
Among smaller opposition parties, the Parti Keadilan Nasional (National Justice Party) of the jailed former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim was wiped out, according to preliminary results, while the secular, ethnic Chinese-dominated Democratic Action Party did well, winning at least seven seats (with several recounts pending).
Anwar was sacked by Mahathir in 1998, and later convicted of corruption and sodomy, charges his supporters said were trumped up. PAS' strong showing in the 1999 election was, in part, attributed to Malay anger at Anwar's treatment.
About 60 percent of Malaysia's 23 million population are Muslim Malays, while ethnic Indians and Chinese are significant minority groups.
Southeast Asia's other Muslim state and the world's largest Islamic country, Indonesia, holds elections next month.
Imagine if John Kerry said something like this... Talk about easy street. John has to believe in Heaven and Hell first though and from what I can tell...he only sees Teddy Kennedy as his God.
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