KUANTAN, Malaysia — Not long ago he was flirting with the idea of
semiretirement, maybe a teaching job at an American university. But now
Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of the Malaysian opposition, former political
prisoner and longtime bugbear of the establishment, says those plans are
firmly on the shelf.
After a disputed election this month, in which he and his allies won a
majority of votes but failed to capture control of Parliament, Mr. Anwar
has returned to his roots as a political street fighter, drawing large
crowds across the country to protest what he calls mass vote rigging.
“Rise up!” he beseeched a crowd of thousands crammed last week into a
field in this seaside city. “We won the election, but we were robbed of
victory.”
Street politics is a sort of political oxygen for Mr. Anwar, who turns
66 in August. His wife jokes that when he complains of aches or fatigue,
the only way she can revive him is with a microphone and a crowd.
As a Malay radical in the 1970s, he led student protests for expanded
Malay rights and was imprisoned for two years without trial. In the
1990s, he led tens of thousands of followers through the streets of
Kuala Lumpur, the capital, embarrassing the government during a visit by
Queen Elizabeth II. He was later convicted of sodomy, a charge brought
by his political enemies that was ultimately overturned. He spent six
years in prison.
Now, as Mr. Anwar poses a new type of challenge to his government, many
questions loom for him — and indeed for this relatively prosperous but
unsettled country of about 30 million people. How long will he continue
to protest the election results? And how long will the government, which
has been slowly relaxing its mildly authoritarian powers, put up with
the unrest?
At stake in the battle, besides the questioned validity of the election,
is a fight over two visions for the future of this multiethnic country:
the government view that continues to favor the Malays and those linked
to the governing coalition with preferences versus Mr. Anwar’s campaign
to curtail patronage and make government assistance operate on the
basis of need, not ethnicity.
For Mr. Anwar, a Malay who once defended those preferences, the shift is
a personal sea change, which some say is born of political ambition but
that he says came to him during years of reflection in jail.
“My dream was to have a Malaysian spring that would be unique in the
sense that we would do it through votes, not in the streets — a peaceful
transition into a vibrant democracy in Malaysia,” Mr. Anwar said in an
interview at his modest office in an obscure neighborhood outside Kuala
Lumpur. Now, with victory elusive, he said he wanted a peaceful
resolution but hedged when asked how far he would take his protests.
Malaysian politics, so closely entwined with the country’s ethnic complexity, can be bewildering to outsiders.
Like Indonesia, Myanmar and many other countries in Asia, Malaysia is a
product of European colonialism and still a work in progress. The mix of
ethnic Malay, Chinese and Indians (a much smaller group) is far from a
melting pot — more a Babel of language, a hodgepodge of foods and a
tense coexistence of Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism.
Malay Muslims have a slim majority of the population but have dominated
politics since independence from Britain in 1957. Their wide-reaching
set of preferential policies — cheap loans, scholarships and government
contracts among them — were put in place in large part to help them rise
in a society in which much of the wealth was held by the strongly
entrepreneurial Chinese, who make up about a quarter of the population.
Under the social contract of decades past, ethnic groups shared power
within the governing coalition led by the United Malays National
Organization, or U.M.N.O. But that informal compact is now in tatters,
with a majority of Chinese Malaysian voters defecting to the opposition
over resentment of what many term “second-class citizenship.”
The falling out between the governing party and Chinese Malaysians seems
mutual. “It’s the first time that a Malay government thinks it can
govern virtually without any minority representation,” said Bridget
Welsh, an associate professor at Singapore Management University and a
leading researcher on Malaysian politics who said that many people “feel
traumatized” by the election and the alleged irregularities.
The May 5 election was the closest that the opposition had come to
defeating the governing party. Mr. Anwar and his allies won 51 percent
of the vote, compared with 47 for the governing coalition. That was not
enough for Mr. Anwar to win control of Parliament because the governing
coalition is strong in rural areas, where it captured many more small
districts, adding up to a comfortable majority of 133 seats, with 89 for
the opposition.
There are glimmers of a multicultural Malaysian identity among Mr.
Anwar’s supporters. At rallies where speaker after speaker proclaims
interethnic brotherhood, Chinese Malaysian women in skimpy shorts stand
next to Malay Muslim women fully covered in Islamic robes. Chinese
Buddhists drape themselves in the green flag of the opposition’s Islamic
party.
Mr. Anwar, his supporters say, is a sort of midwife in the slow birth of Malaysia’s multiethnic identity.
“Anwar sparked people’s thinking,” said Mohammed Razif, a 30-year-old
Islamic teacher who attended the rally Tuesday. “Malaysia is a
multicultural country, but only recently I realized that not every race
is treated equally.”
Najib Razak, the prime minister who was returned to power after the
elections, announced what he described as a “unity cabinet.” It includes
several new faces, including the head of the local chapter of
Transparency International, an anticorruption group.
“Together we will act to bring about national reconciliation,” he said.
Yet his new cabinet is most notable for the dominance of Malays — and
the near absence of ethnic Chinese. Mr. Najib angered many in the
opposition when he said that his coalition’s weak showing was the result
of a “Chinese tsunami,” the withdrawal of support by Chinese Malaysian
voters.
The opposition said the shift in support was by voters of all
ethnicities and that singling out Chinese Malaysians served only to
deepen divisions.
Such anger and frustration are palpable at opposition rallies, where
protesters wear black because, as their T-shirts proclaim, they see May 5
as “the day that democracy died.”
At the rally in Kuantan, leaders of the opposition took turns addressing
the crowd, but when Mr. Anwar’s arrival was announced, people rose to
their feet and cheered. An ethnic Chinese woman, wearing a Malaysian
flag draped over her shoulders, began jumping up and down.
“At the moment, he’s the only leader who can keep the opposition
together,” Selva Raja, a courier-company employee who attended the
rally, said.
Mr. Anwar paced the stage, telling the crowd that the election had been
stolen and that the governing party was trying to divide the country.
“Look to your left; look to your right; look in front of you and behind
you,” Mr. Anwar said. “You will see Chinese, Malays and Indians. This is
the new Malaysia.”
