Polls close in Malaysian tight elections

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: A record number of Malaysians voted in tight national elections yesterday, with some choosing to preserve the ruling coalition’s 56-year rule for the sake of stability and others pressing for an unprecedented victory by an opposition that pledges to create a cleaner government.
Prime Minister Najib Razak’s National Front coalition has won 12 consecutive general elections since independence from Britain in 1957 but now faces its most unified opposition challenge ever.
Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s three-party alliance hopes allegations of arrogance, abuse of public funds and racial discrimination by the National Front will propel the opposition into power.
More than 10 million Malaysians cast ballots for a record turnout of 80 percent of about 13 million registered voters, the Election Commission said in preliminary estimates.
Some people lined up for more than an hour at schools and other voting centers, showing off fingers marked with ink to prevent multiple voting after they had finished.
The National Front held 135 seats in the 222-member Parliament that was dissolved last month. It is anxious to secure a stronger five-year mandate and regain the two-thirds legislative majority that it held for years but lost in 2008.
“The government has made some mistakes but the prime minister has made changes and I believe they (the National Front) will do their best to take care of the people’s welfare,” said Mohamed Rafiq Idris, a car business owner who waited in a long line at a central Selangor state voting center with his wife and son.
Andrew Charles, a Malaysian businessman working in Australia, flew home to vote for the opposition because he believes it can end corruption and mistrust between the Malay Muslim majority and ethnic Chinese, Indian and smaller minorities. Many political observers believe the race will be tight, with the National Front potentially edging out Anwar’s alliance partly because of its entrenched support in predominantly rural districts.
The opposition is likely to retain control of at least two of Malaysia’s 13 state legislatures and should perform well in urban constituencies where middle-class voters have clamored for change.
If the opposition wins, it would mark a remarkable comeback for Anwar, a former deputy prime minister who was fired in 1998 and subsequently jailed on corruption and sodomy charges that he says were fabricated by his political enemies. He was released from jail in 2004. “We stand today on the brink of history,” Anwar said in a statement. “The elections will mark the decisive step in an amazing, peaceful, democratic revolution that will take Malaysia into a new era.”
The opposition is worried about electoral fraud, saying the National Front was using foreign migrants from Bangladesh, the Philippines and Indonesia to vote unlawfully. Government and electoral authorities deny the allegations.