(Kuala Lumpur) Malaysians vote Saturday in legislative elections, anticipated by more than ten months, the government splashed by a vast corruption scandal hoping to establish its legitimacy and restore political stability in this country of Southeast Asia.
Political analysts predict a tight ballot, but opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who campaigned on the theme of fighting corruption, said he was ‘cautiously confident’ his coalition would win a majority simple in Parliament, which has 222 members.
“A victory today would certainly be gratifying after more than two decades of struggling to win the hearts and minds of the people,” he told AFP before casting his vote in Penang state.
“Let’s be clear: it would be a victory for the people,” he added.
Around 21 million registered voters are expected at polling stations throughout the day, amid fears that heavy monsoon rains could disrupt voting in some areas.
The offices opened at 7 p.m.
In the rural town of Bera (central) in Pahang state, women wearing the traditional Malay headscarf went to vote by car or motorbike, while some elderly people went in wheelchairs.
Nurul Hazwani Firdon, a 20-year-old teacher, said she thought about the economy first when going to vote.
“I want a strong government and a stable economy so that there are more jobs for young people,” she said.
Mohamed Ali Moiddeen, 60, a scrap metal collector, simply wants an honest government.
“We just want someone who is trustworthy and can do the job right,” he said.
fragmented landscape
For four years, this parliamentary monarchy has been shaken by political turbulence and a waltz of governments which have led to three prime ministers succeeding each other in four years.
After more than sixty years in power, the historically dominant party – the Malayan Unified National Organization (Umno) – was heavily sanctioned at the polls and ousted from power in 2018, marking the first alternation in the country’s history.
The then Prime Minister Najib Razak, implicated in the embezzlement of several billion dollars from the sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, is currently serving a twelve-year prison sentence.
Umno only returned to business with a narrow majority in 2021, taking advantage of the struggles between the two governments that had succeeded it.
And it was in the hope of strengthening his grip on power that Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob dissolved parliament and called snap elections, originally scheduled for September 2023.
Not without having been pressured by a faction of his party which hopes to come out on top in Saturday’s election, with 222 parliamentary seats at stake.
But even if Umno benefits from the well-oiled mechanics of the historically dominant party, its image suffers from its association with a vast corruption scandal.
The 1MDB fund scandal, which involves large-scale embezzlement of the sovereign wealth fund that was supposed to help the country’s development, sparked investigations in the United States, Switzerland and Singapore, where financial institutions were allegedly used to launder money. billions of dollars.
Some observers fear that if the party returns to power, Umno will work to obtain the release of Najib Razak and to prevent corruption prosecutions against several other party members, including its president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.
“If Umno wins, there is a fear that the law will not be respected in the sentencing of Najib Razak,” noted Bridget Welsh of the University of Nottingham in Malaysia.
“In practice, the voters will decide whether Najib Razak and the president of Umno should be punished for the charges against them,” she said.
If so, Malaysians may choose to give their ballots to opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, a veteran of the Pakatan Harapan alliance, whose last chance to lead a government could be.
He has been imprisoned twice for sodomy, a crime in Muslim-majority Malaysia, but he has always maintained his innocence, referring to his imprisonment as political persecution.