http://www.atimes.com/se-asia/CG25Ae01.html

DIRE STRAITS

Divided they fall

By Anil Netto

PENANG, Malaysia - The runaway victory for Malaysia's ruling coalition in a by-election for a controversial state assembly seat in the north Borneo state of Sabah indicates that a divided opposition is unlikely to pose a significant threat to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

In Saturday's poll for the Likas seat, the Barisan Nasional (National Front) thumped opposition parties the Sabah United Party (PBS) and the National Justice Party (Keadilan). The Barisan polled 9,758 votes to PBS's 2,217 and Keadilan's 1,724, its winning majority jumping by about 50 percent to 7,541 votes. Voter turnout, however, fell to 52 percent from 68 percent in 1999.

The result had as much to do with the service-oriented approach of the ruling coalition's veteran candidate Yong Teck Lee as it had with the confusion sowed by the opposition's failure to agree on a single candidate and the subsequent intra-opposition feuding.

Some analysts saw the battle as a proxy contest between Mahathir, in power for 20 years, and his jailed former deputy Anwar Ibrahim, whose wife Wan Azizah heads the multi-ethnic Malay-based Keadilan. But the result suggests that the Anwar issue still doesn't strike enough of a chord among voters in Sabah. That must be reassuring to Mahathir as Sabah and its neighbor, Sarawak, together make up 25 percent of the 193 seats in the federal Parliament.

Keadilan's performance means it will have to re-assess its strategy in preparing for the Sarawak state elections, which are expected to be held soon. The by-election highlighted the opposition's Achilles' heel: its seeming inability to agree on seat allocation among opposition parties to ensure one-to-one contests with the ruling coalition for the various state assembly and parliamentary seats.

Keadilan is a member of the main opposition alliance, Barisan Alternatif (Alternative Front), along with the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), the multi-ethnic, Chinese-based Democratic Action Party (DAP), and the multi-ethnic Malay-based Malaysian People's Party (PRM).

The multi-ethnic Kadazan-based PBS, however, is not an alliance member, but observers had expected it to strike a deal with the Barisan Alternatif to field only one opposition candidate for Likas.

In any event, the opposition's failure to agree on a single candidate dealt a body-blow to its hopes even before the campaign began. It also confused opposition supporters in Likas, a Muslim-majority seat, with ethnic Chinese making up about 30 percent of the voters.

The PBS had once ruled Sabah from the mid-1980s before it fell to Barisan Nasional hands. Keadilan, on the other hand, is seen largely as a peninsula-based party, and is still fairly new to the state. The intra-opposition sniping between these two parties effectively put paid to their hopes of pulling off an upset win over the ruling coalition. Two days before polling, in a move reminiscent of Barisan Nasional tactics, Keadilan announced that the PBS division leader and 27 PBS branch heads had defected to Keadilan - much to the PBS's chagrin.

That sort of one-upmanship among opposition parties may have cost the opposition dearly. The lower turnout may have been due to opposition supporters, disgusted and disillusioned with the intra-opposition feuding, staying away. Others may have been afraid that National Registration Department officers on duty would detect fake identity cards if they showed up to vote.

Keadilan was also handicapped by the continued detention of six key reformasi activists who had been among its most effective campaigners. The six were among 10 activists detained in April under the harsh Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial.

The key issue in the by-election was phantom voters. The seat fell vacant last month after high court judge Muhammad Kamil Awang ruled Yong had won it with the help of "phantom voters" and declared the Likas electoral roll "illegal".

Sabah's population of about 3 million includes some 500,000 immigrants, mainly from Indonesia and the Philippines, many of whom live in squatter colonies. Opposition politicians have in the past alleged that many of them were given citizenship and allowed to vote to undermine support for the PBS.

"It cannot be denied that the registration of voters in the Likas electoral roll was in contravention of the law," said Justice Muhammad Kamil. "It is common knowledge that an influx of illegal immigrants has plagued Sabah for some years. It is a well known fact as it had appeared in the local dailies too frequently. The SPR [Election Commission] ought to be aware of it and when the objections were raised as in this case, the SPR ought to have held a public inquiry as prescribed by the election laws."

Apparently worried that the judgment might open up a Pandora's Box of legal challenges in other constituencies in Sabah, the ruling coalition is now studying the possibility of passing constitutional amendments to make it impossible to challenge the validity of the electoral rolls in court. That is a move that worries the opposition, which has in not a few cases challenged the validity of the rolls.

In a related development, the authorities have frozen the issuance of permits for all political rallies - whether organized by the ruling coalition or the opposition - since early this month "in order to check on activities which may undermine national security". The ban on such gatherings is a major blow to the opposition, which relies heavily on them to get its message across to the public. The ruling coalition uses the mainstream media to propagate its views.

Handicapped by such rulings, the opposition must learn some lessons from the Likas by-election defeat if it is not to repeat the same mistakes in Sarawak. Only a united opposition front will be able to challenge the Barisan Nasional effectively and failure to cooperate and to ensure one-to-one contests with the ruling coalition could prove costly, as it did in Likas.

Indeed, seat allocations will have to be agreed upon well before the elections and campaign tactics re-assessed to ensure they don't alienate opposition supporters and that they take into account local sensitivities.

The Barisan Alternatif will also have to resolve its other bug-bear - the dispute between the DAP and PAS over the latter's aim to set up an Islamic state - soon if it is not to slide further into oblivion.

For the ruling coalition, the convincing Likas by-election win offers some respite after the stunning loss of its safe seat at the Lunas by-election last year in Mahathir's home state of Kedah in northern Malaysia.