It is in the hope of strengthening its grip on power, after a scandal of corruption which splashed the government, that Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob dissolved the Parliament and advanced this election initially scheduled for September 2023.
mo12345lemonde with AFP
About 21 million voters and 222 seats at stake. Malaysians are summoned on Saturday, November 19, for anticipated legislative elections of more than ten months. The first offices opened at 8 am local (1 hour in Paris) in this country in Southeast Asia.
For four years, the country’s parliamentary monarchy has been shaken by political turbulence and a waltz of governments that have led three primary ministers to succeed one another in four years.
After more than sixty years in control, the historically dominant party – the national unified Malaise (UMNO) – was heavily sanctioned in the ballot boxes and ousted from power in 2018, marking the first alternation of the country’s history . The Prime Minister of the Najib Razak time, involved in the diversion of several billion dollars of the sovereign fund 1MDB, is currently serving a twelve -year sentence.
The UMNO only returned to business with a small majority in 2021, taking advantage of the struggles between the two governments which had succeeded him. And it is in the hope of strengthening its grip on the power that Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob dissolved the Parliament and summoned early elections, initially scheduled for September 2023. Not without having undergone pressure from a faction of his Party who hopes to come out on Saturday’s election.
But even if the UMNO benefits from the well -oiled mechanics of the historically dominant party, its image suffers from its association with a vast business of corruption. The scandal of the 1MDB fund, which relates to large-scale diversions of the sovereign fund which was to contribute to the development of the country, triggered surveys in the United States, Switzerland and Singapore, where financial institutions would have been used to whiten billions of dollars.
Some observers fear to see the UMNO, if the party returns to power, work to obtain the release of Najib Razak and to prevent prosecution for corruption targeting several other members of the party, including its president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.
“In practice, voters will decide if Najib Razak and the president of the UMNO must be punished for the accusations against them,” said Bridget Welsh of the University of Nottingham in Malaysia.
The threat of monsoons
In the affirmative, Malaysians will be able to choose to give their bulletins to the leader of the opposition Anwar Ibrahim, a veteran of the Alliance Pakatan Harapan, of which it could be the last chance to lead a government. He was incarcerated twice for sodomy, a crime in Malaysia with a Muslim majority, but he has always proclaimed his innocence, speaking of his imprisonment as a political persecution.
Voters could also prefer the 97 -year -old reformist, Mahathir Mohamad, a UMNO former who created his own party. This ex-Prime Minister directed the country with an iron fist from 1981 to 2003, before becoming “the oldest Prime Minister in office” according to the Book Guinness of Records, during his election in 2018 to a second term of 22 months.
But voters are summoned to the ballot box during the period of monsoons. “The Prime Minister puts the life of voters in danger,” criticized Mahfuz Omar, opposition deputy, by organizing the elections at this time and, with climate change, “I really fear stronger rains throughout Malaysia “He told the France-Presse agency ..
The parliamentarian fears that voters cannot “vote if their houses are flooded and the roads become impassable”. Strong rains have already started to affect certain regions. Malaysia was struck in 2021 by the worst floods in its history. The balance sheet has risen to fifty dead and thousands of displaced.