Malaysians Vote In Hotly-contested Election

By Staff, Agencies

Malaysians 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 8 am local time, with queues forming early. Polling continues until 6 pm 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.

Turnout stood at 30 percent three hours into voting, according to the Elections Commission, slightly below the level at the same time in 2018.

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.