How will UMNO, under Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, do this time around?

Producer: Imelda Saad
First broadcast: 9 March 04, News Radio 93.8

The upcoming Malaysian General elections is said to be shaping up as a battle between dominant party UMNO and Islamic hardline opposition party PAS.

In part II of the series leading up to the polls, political reporter Imelda Saad finds out more about the fight for the Malay heartlands.

Failing to stem the Islamic tide in the North, the ruling coalition lost 14 parliamentary seats - it won only 148 out of a total of 193, down from the 162 seats it took in the 1995 polls.

The biggest shocker was perhaps the fall of Trengganu into the hands of PAS.

But that's not all, the country's dominant opposition party also made further inroads into Perak, Selangor and Pahang.

And in Kedah, the home state of then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the ruling front took only 8 parliamentary seats compared to PAS' 7.

Dr Joseph Liow, from the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies says the challenge for UMNO this time round is to regain the seats it's lost, "In a sense they have to settle some scores. PAS having done well in the previous elections in 1999 and further eat into UMNO's support base of the Malays. For UMNO, it is obviously looking to regain much of the Malay ground it has lost to PAS in 1999 so it's mainly an UMNO versus PAS battle. Although obviously UMNO has the backing of the component parties of the Barisan Nasional, the National Front coalition - which will obviously help to buffer the coalition government in terms of helping to deliver the non-Malay, non-Muslim support to the ruling coalition."

Political observers say the fight this time will be concentrated in the Northern Malay states of Kelantan, Trengganu, Kedah, Pahang and Perlis.

In the 1999 polls, UMNO, which had built its party on the basis of promoting Malay rights, lost favour with the very people it had promised to protect.

There were several reasons for this, allegations of corruption; the Islamnisation of Malaysia; and the disgrace of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, had all contributed to the alienation of the Malay ground.

Voters were also said to be increasingly frustrated over what they deemed were ineffective politicians who were entrenched within UMNO.

The unpopularity of Trengganu's then-Chief Minister was said to be partly blamed for the state falling into the hands of PAS.

Given the history, analysts say the fight for votes will boil down to individual candidates - the strength and popularity of the politicians being fielded.

Professor Shamsul Amri Baharrudin from the University Kebangsaan Malaysia, "They are going to go seat by seat, person by person. For example take former Mahathir seat, they say - who's going to replace mahathir? Mr X? Mr X is never in town, he's always in Kuala Lumpur. Now what we want is someone who's here to attend to our needs. So I think they are going to go for this kind of personalised campaign because in the end, the quality of the candidate now has become more important than the party!"

UMNO has already dropped several veteran leaders as office bearers, including Trengganu's Chief-Minister and observers say this move has sweetened the ground for the ruling front.

But they add the key is really in winning the hearts and minds of the fence-sitters.

Professor Shamsul says, "There are two sections of the Malays. One are those staunch supporters of UMNO and staunch supporters of PAS. We are not talking about these people. You can have the whole world collapsing and these people will still support UMNO and PAS respectively. But we are talking about the people who I call - in no man's land you know, who decide according to how they feel. And how they feel is according to how their stomach feels and how the economy feels. I think most of the fence sitters are now finding Abdullah Badawi a more amiable person. And all the agenda which the Keadilan Party has had on their list for a long time is no more there because it's all already in place and implemented by Abdullah Badawi like the fight against corruption."

Keadilan is the opposition party that was built on former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim's plight - he was sacked, charged and convicted of corruption and sodomy

That drove many in the arms of PAS

But analysts say the issue has faded from centre-stage.

Added to this, Keadilan is said to be in disarray, with several members defecting to UMNO.

Dr Liow from the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies says it'll do Keadilan no favours to harp on the Anwar issue, "Keadilan has indicated that it intends to revive the Anwar issue. I'm not too sure if that would be a wise tactic given that criticisms of Keadilan over the past few years since 1999 was precisely that the party appears to be a party supporting one man and only one cause and to the extent that they have not been able to bring the party beyond Anwar might actually work to its disadvantage. We also note that some key Keadilan leaders over the past years have either resigned or been removed from power precisely because they had hoped to take the party further away from the Anwar issue and tried to generate a viable political platform for the party. So I think if indeed Keadilan decides to revive and focus on the Anwar issue, it might actually do them more harm.

Part III >>>