MALAYSIANS VOTE FOR ‘HOPE, STABILITY’ IN HOTLY-CONTESTED ELECTION

Sat 19 November 2022:  

People began queueing before polling stations opened, despite storms and drizzle, as three main coalitions vie for power.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Malaysians have started voting in a hotly-contested election dominated by the cost of living and the political infighting that has plagued the country for nearly three years.

Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob called the election early in a bid to restore “stability” after three prime ministers in almost as many years.

Ismail Sabri’s Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, which is dominated by his UMNO party, is hoping to secure a simple majority of the 222 seats in the lower house of parliament known as the Dewan Rakyat. But it is facing a stiff challenge from Anwar Ibrahim’s Pakatan Harapan, which won the last election in May 2018, and Perikatan Nasional (PN) under Muhyddin Yassin, which emerged out of that government’s collapse.

Voters began arriving before polling stations opened at 8am (00:00 GMT) local time, with queues forming early. Polling continues until 6pm (10:00 GMT) with a result expected in the early hours of the morning.

Queues were seen outside some polling stations in Kuala Lumpur as a dawn thunderstorm gave way to overcast skies and drizzle. Voters also queued early in other parts of the country, despite the rain.

“There seems to be a quiet determination among the people to vote,” Thomas Fann, chairman of BERSIH, a civil society group that campaigns for free and fair elections told Al Jazeera. Fann is in the southern city of Johor Bahru where thunderstorms are forecast in the coming hours.

Going into election day, analysts said the result was too close to call and made more complex by the presence of some six million new voters following the implementation of automatic registration. Some 1.4 million of them are young people aged between 18 and 20.

Campaigning in the past few days has been intense, with candidates holding informal chats with voters, walkabouts and larger rallies known as ceramah. Malaysians have appeared more ambivalent about the election than they were in 2018 and analysts say as many as a third of people had still to make up their minds in the final week of campaigning.

After voting on Saturday morning Pakatan leader and its candidate for prime minister Anwar Ibrahim told reporters he was “cautiously optimistic” about the coalition’s chances, according to the Malaysian Insight, an online publication.

A pre-election survey by the Merdeka Center, Malaysia’s most prominent survey research firm, suggested Pakatan had the most support but would not win enough seats for a simple majority. An update on Friday forecast that the coalition was on track to win 82 seats with PN on 43 and BN on just 15. However, it stressed 45 seats were simply too close to call. Just over a quarter of seats are also in the Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak where the voting dynamics and parties competing are different to the peninsula.

The lack of any clear winner is likely to prolong the uncertainty surrounding the election by requiring parties and coalitions to renegotiate alliances, a process that could take some time.

Hope and change

Civil servant Adilla, who preferred only to share her first name, said “stability” was important for her after the revolving door of governments and prime ministers.

“I want someone who has a voice and can make a change,” she told Al Jazeera.

Yun Koh, a 24-year-old voting for the first time in another part of Kuala Lumpur, said her motivation for voting was “hope”. She was at the polling station with her four siblings and her parents.

“I’m hoping for change,” she said.

Her view was echoed by Siti Sarah Ismail, a 40-year-old banker voting at the same polling station.