UMNO told to get into election mood
UMNO told to get into election mood
Jalil Hamid, Reuters, Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia's ruling party leaders whipped up expectations of an
early election on the eve of their annual party conference, with
the Islamic opposition's image still suffering from a militancy
scare after Sept. 11.
"We should be in election mood," Rafidah Aziz, International
Trade and Industry Minister told a meeting of the women's wing of
the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) on Wednesday.
The Barisan Nasional (National Front) coalition that UMNO
leads has two years of its term still to run, but odds narrowed
on an early election after Sept.11 saw a sharp upturn in fortunes
for Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.
"Everyone is expecting an early election. The only question is
how early," Lim Kit Siang, leader of the mainly Chinese
opposition Democratic Action Party, told Reuters. "If it was in
the next six months it would be a surprise."
Sept. 11 made many Malaysians grateful for a strong leader
like the 76-year-old Mahathir, who has kept the peace among the
races during his 21 years in power and is regarded as progressive
on religious issues.
His police have locked up more than 60 suspected militants in
the past year. Some of them admitted this week to receiving arms
training in Afghanistan and the southern Philippines.
Aside from rallying support, Mahathir will use the next three
days to persuade grassroots members to bless his plans to snip
away at some Malay privileges guaranteeing them college places.
The moves are incremental, but after three decades of
affirmative action many Malays remain fiercely defensive of the
props given to help them compete against the better off Chinese.
In the 1999 election, more than half the Malay vote turned
against UMNO after Mahathir's deputy Anwar Ibrahim was sacked and
jailed following a challenge to the prime minister a year
earlier. The coalition just scraped a two-thirds majority.
Most of the anti-Mahathir Malay vote went to Parti Islam se-
Malaysia (PAS), which wants to turn Malaysia into an Islamic
state although nearly half the people are non-Muslims.
On Tuesday Mahathir telling PAS's de facto leader Abdul Hadi
Awang he was in danger of damnation for trying to pass strict
Islamic sharia laws in Terengganu, one of two states controlled
by PAS.
The Keadilan (Justice) party, led by Anwar's wife and allied
to PAS, is in disarray as their leaders quit in the last year,
disenchanted with Anwar.
Lim, who took the DAP out of an alliance with PAS and Keadilan
after Sept.11, says the opposition parties have less chance of
breaking that two-thirds majority at the next election than they
did three years ago.