Back In the Light

Yet Malaysians' desire for change never died. Abdullah, handpicked by Mahathir on the assumption he'd be easy to control, actually took up the reform mantle himself at first, pledging sweeping change during the campaign of 2004. Abdullah vowed to promote moderate Islam to counter creeping fundamentalism, promised an anti-corruption campaign and suggested he might turn back Malaysia's race-based development policies. Voters responded well, especially when, in 2005, he began dismantling massive Mahathir-era infrastructure projects. But the electorate slowly soured on the new leader as scandal and indecisiveness hobbled his administration. "He did not deliver effectively, and Malaysians called him on it," says Welsh.

If anything, the opposition's triumph was even more significant than the raw numbers indicate. Anwar's People's Justice Party grabbed 31 seats—up from just one in 2004—and its victors included his wife and daughter. Opposition candidates dominated in peninsular Malaysia's west coast, seizing the key industrial states of Penang and Selangor. To reach voters, the opposition relied on bloggers, You-Tube and text messages sent to grass-roots organizers via cell phone: common tactics in places like Indonesia, Taiwan and South Korea but new to Malaysia. Indeed, they took UMNO and its National Front coalition so much by surprise that the opposition nearly won the election outright. Anwar, for one, thinks it could have; during his NEWSWEEK interview, he hinted at fraud connected to the use of mail-in votes and the Election Commission's last-minute decision to scrap plans to stain the voters' fingers with indelible ink.

The electorate also broke with the race-based voting patterns of old. Malaysia's Chinese and Indian minorities, which make up a quarter and a tenth of the population, respectively, deserted government-allied ethnic parties in favor of Anwar's Justice candidates and those of center-left Democratic Action Party. The rebellion of ethnic Indians was particularly dramatic; many quit the pro-government Malaysian Indian Congress and the MIC's leader even lost his seat. "This is new territory" for the ruling party, says Garry Rodan, director of the Asia Research Centre at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. "The [party's] longstanding emphasis on ethnic identity to mask socioeconomic inequalities traversing ethnic groups has much less currency now."

Anwar's coalition deftly managed this feat by playing on one issue that united Malaysians whatever their race, sex or station: dismay at rising prices that have lead to hoarding of some staples like cooking oil. Jeff Ooi, a blogger turned parliamentary candidate, traded on this anger, writing in February that "now that the cost of living has gone up, unhappiness is fermenting." By promising to raise the people's concerns in Parliament, Ooi won a seat in Penang with an impressive 16,000-ballot margin (out of 46,000).

Now the opposition must quickly transform its promises into a cohesive strategy for governing. Given internal divisions, that won't be easy; the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party wants to establish an Islamic state, while the secular, center-left Democratic Action Party wants to abolish pro-Malay preferences. These divisions kept the opposition from uniting during the last election, in 2004. But Anwar and his Justice Party are hoping to provide a bridge; in addition to controlling the most seats, his party sits between its partners on most issues. Anwar himself is working overtime to find common ground, using his charismatic magic on all parties. Before the election, he managed to persuade the three factions to divvy up constituencies so as to avoid splitting the vote, and ever since he's been working his cell phones relentlessly, jawboning allies into submission. Though he lacks a formal position, Anwar hopes to enter Parliament soon: he plans to ask an ally to resign once his legal ban lifts, and then to run for the seat in a by-election.

Any number of things could disrupt his grand plans. His Islamic allies could prove too uncompromising, or Malaysia's economy could deteriorate—something the newly empowered opposition might be blamed for. On the first trading day after the election, the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index fell by almost 10 percent, as investors dumped shares in companies with large government contracts.

Yet if he manages to hold on, Anwar's comeback will offer a powerful lesson on the dangers of complacency for long-ruling parties throughout Asia. The 4 million citizens of neighboring Singapore, for example, are already watching events closely, and comparing UMNO's fate to the city's own dominant political machine. Abdullah's shortcomings—scandals and political indecisiveness—have no obvious equivalents in Singapore. Yet UMNO's surprise setback "holds a lesson" for the city-state, one reader argued in a letter to The Straits Times last week. "Democracy's tool, the vote, is powerful and swift. A government chosen by its people must stay in touch with the ground. An incumbent who holds power for too long" could run into trouble fast if he becomes unresponsive, the writer warned.

That has been Anwar's point since the 1990s. With his nemesis, Mahathir, now reduced to carping from the sidelines, and the government coalition looking shakier than ever before, Anwar has again illustrated the fact that when fed-up citizens demand sweeping change, they can accomplish it. Anwar, of course, still has to turn promises into reality. But he's already made one thing very clear: if anyone can accomplish it, Anwar's the man.

© 2008