Malaysia’s Ruling Coalition Wins Electoral Landslide

Malaysia’s ruling National Front won a crushing landslide victory in national elections Tuesday, leaving the country’s tiny opposition in disarray, according to returns broadcast from Kuala Lumpur.

The Front, headed by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, took 162 seats in the 192-member national Parliament, increasing its majority from 125 held since 1990.

The opposition Democratic Action Party, or DAP, saw its 20-seat presence in Parliament cut to just nine seats.

Analysts said the vote was a resounding personal victory for Mahathir, who had campaigned on his record of leading the country toward the status of a fully developed country by the year 2020. It also strengthens his hand in dealing with rival factions within the Front.

The opposition fared even worse in elections for state legislatures, especially in Penang, where Democratic Action leaders had campaigned heavily and had made allegations of government corruption a major issue. The Front swept 32 of 33 seats in Penang.

“We’ve been wiped out,” said Teoh Teik Hua, organizing secretary for the DAP, about the Penang results. “Maybe the people were frightened of the DAP taking power. It might, after all, be good that the people experience what it is like to have no opposition at all.”

The only opposition strength appeared to be in the state of Sabah on the island of Borneo, where the Parti Bersatu Sabah won eight of the 20 Parliament seats.

The Front also was not expected to unseat a fundamentalist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party in Kelantan, the only one of Malaysia’s 13 state legislatures in opposition hands.

The National Front is a coalition of 14 parties headed by the United Malays National Organization, which represents ethnic Malays, the largest racial group in the country, which along with other indigenous groups make up 58% of the population. Ethnic Chinese are the next-largest racial group, with 31%, followed by ethnic Indians with 7%.

Mahathir, 69, has governed the nation of 19 million people since 1981.

The Front, which ruled Malaya after independence from Britain in 1957 and has governed Malaysia since its founding in 1963, has in recent years had a two-thirds majority in Parliament. The opposition has said the Front is flush with cash because of corrupt business deals.