A Pyrrhic victory

So Barisan Nasional has returned to power with yet another thumping two-thirds majority. Not surprisingly, BN chief Mahathir Mohamad is gloating. After all, he has proven his critics wrong. Yes, again.

As expected, the mass media pulls no punches in lavishing praises on the man who has won his fifth straight electoral contest. But if Mahathir thinks that he has an overwhelming mandate, he is dead wrong. Here is the bad news.

A cursory look at the results will show that of the five elections Mahathir has fought, this was his worst showing. More important is that the percentage of popular votes garnered by BN is about 56 percent. This is a drastic cut from the 65 percent who backed BN in the 1995 elections, hailed as its best ever performance in history.

That close to half of Malaysians voted for the opposition is quite remarkable. This, in spite of millions of ringgit being poured into advertising; in spite of the blatant abuse of the government machinery for campaign purposes; in spite of the scare tactics and the many "predictions" - which failed to materialise - of violence and riots; in spite of the 680,000 voters who were denied their constitutional rights; and in spite of the lies and half-truths purveyed as facts in our slavish media.

Try as he might, Mahathir cannot easily dismiss the sizable support for the opposition. After all, he knows well that the number of seats BN won is not quite reflective of voter sentiments. Because of some creative gerrymandering, the BN needs slightly over 40 percent of the votes to win a two-thirds majority.

Moreover, Mahathir's victory came at the price of a number of Umno leaders' heads, including those of a mentri besar who was way past his use-by date and a number of ministers with rather unsavory reputations -- all of them casualties of the unprecedented swing among Malay voters against BN.

Much has been said about the defeat of the venerated DAP party boss, Lim Kit Siang, who has dominated the opposition political landscape for three decades, and the taming of Karpal "Tiger of Jelutong" Singh. But when all is said and done, the DAP has not done too badly. It added an additional seat to the nine it bagged in 1995.

With Lim out of action, perhaps it is time for him to retire. He has no doubt contributed much to political development in Malysia. Now is the time for a new crop of leaders to make their mark. However, the going won't be easy. The DAP will need to reinvent itself in order to keep in step with the aspirations of the younger generation.

The mass media, too, will need to examine its conduct. Its role in cheerleading BN has left an indelible scar in the minds of many Malaysians. Perhaps the rise of the Internet will soon end the mass media's monopoly as news providers. Indeed, the next election will be determined by the digital generation. In the meantime, the mainstream media will desperately hope that the people have a short memory, or better still, are blind to its machinations.

When Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid was elected president of Indonesia, cries of exasperation were heard from some quarters. Indonesia, they lamented, would now be led by a blind man. They need not despair. After all, it is better for a country to be led by a blind man than to have a "visionary" man leading a country of the blind.

Steven Gan
(from Malaysiakini.com)