Some ‘Silent Protest’ in Malaysian Malls after Disputed Election

BEIJING â€" After the Malaysian opposition parties failed to win in Sunday’s election, some Malaysians staged “silent protests” in the country’s malls, dressed in black with their mouths taped shut, according to photographs posted online and #TheSilentWalk, a Twitter feed.

They are alleging election fraud; a charge also being made by the leader of the opposition, Anwar Ibrahim, who has called for a protest rally Wednesday in a sports stadium in Selangor state, an important industrial region near the capital, Kuala Lumpur, and an opposition stronghold, according to the Singaporean newspaper Today.

As my colleague, Joe Cochrane, reported from Kuala Lumpur, Sunday’s election saw the National Front coalition of Prime Minister Najib Razak returned to power to continue its 56-year-long run in the economically prosperous Southeast Asian nation, where allegations of corruption and cronyism are widespread and quite a few had hoped for change.

As Joe wrote, the fact that the ruling coalition failed to gain a majority of the popular vote - the first time in 44 years - has raised questions about the “future” of Mr. Najib, the son of a former premier, Abdul Razak.

Questions were also being raised about the future of Mr. Anwar, who is 65, though his supporters see in him an “inspiration”:

The vote fraud allegations center around “phantom voters” and not-really indelible ink, while anger over a highly sensitive issue - race - was also brewing following the premier’s comment that a “Chinese tsunami” led to the ruling coalition’s relatively tight win.

“And just so we’re clear, it wasn’t a ‘Chinese tsunami’. It was a Malaysian tsunami,” wrote a person called S.N. Wong on the Malaysiakini Web site.

Malaysia is a multiethnic state where racial, cultural and religious tensions simmer. Mr. Najib was pointing to the fact that quite a few supporters of the opposition People’s Alliance are so-called Malaysian Chinese, though its leader, Mr. Anwar, is a Muslim.

S.N. Wong wrote: “This is Malaysia, a supposedly democratic nation. We were told to be a proud nation for being multi-racial but peaceful, small but resourceful. So Mr Prime Minister, I believe you owe us all an apology. That’s the very least you can do for us disappointed Malaysians right now.”

Several Malaysian political analysts agreed with that analysis, saying that the election outcome that deprived the ruling coalition of a popular majority wasn’t about the Malaysian-Chinese vote, but “a major swing in the urban and middle-class electorate that saw Malaysia’s urban-rural rift widen,” as The Malaysian Insider wrote.

For feminists, the election was also a disappointment, with women gaining just one extra seat in parliament, wrote Dahlia Martin, a guest commentator at New Mandala, a Web site about Southeast Asia run by the Australian National University in Canberra.

“Based on the final results, approximately 24 women have been elected to the 13th Malaysian Parliament,” Ms. Martin wrote. “That means that from the 12th Malaysian Parliament, there has been a net gain of: one.”

In the United States, a State Department spokesman congratulated Malaysia’s ruling coalition but acknowledged the opposition’s concerns over “irregularities” in the voting, Agence-France Press reported.

“We congratulate Barisan Nasional and Prime Minister Najib [Razak] on their victory in Malaysia’s 13th general election. We look forward to working with the new government once it is formed,” said Patrick Ventrell, a State Department spokesman.

Still, “we are aware of concerns about voting irregularities and note that the opposition parties faced significant restrictions on access to the media. Addressing these issues is important to strengthening confidence in the electoral process. And so we call on all parties to peacefully respect the will of the voters,” Mr. Ventrell said.