Reporter's Diary: Election a new dawn for Malaysia

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Mahathir Mohamad was battling to cope with the Asian financial crisis when I first moved to Malaysia 20 years ago. Within months, he would have fallen out with his protégé and heir apparent Anwar Ibrahim and sacked him from the government and the party, UMNO.

Anwar went on to lead the “Reformasi” movement and form his own political party before being put on trial and jailed on charges of sodomy that looked politically motivated to many.

The notion that Mahathir and Anwar would not only reconcile but end up fighting an election on the same side – albeit with Anwar again behind bars on newer charges – would have seemed absurd.

But no more improbable than Mahathir making a comeback 16 years after he stepped down to lead an opposition alliance to victory over another former protégé Najib Razak – unseating the party and coalition he led for 22 years.

A voting station./CGTN Photo

The huge numbers of voters who swarmed polling stations Tuesday, queuing up for hours in the sweltering heat to cast their ballots even in safe opposition seats told me that the desire for change was powerful.

What about in the ruling Barisan Nasional’s so-called fixed deposits or vote banks of Johor state, the birthplace of ruling party, which borders Singapore, or Sarawak on the island of Borneo? Or the sentiment of ethnic Malays living in rural areas whom UMNO could always count on for support?

“The turnout, at least in the urban areas, has been immense. The usual conventional wisdom is that usually favors the opposition, but let’s see,” analyst Keith Leong told me. “There’s just been so much uncertainty, so many unprecedented occurrences, so many black spots in what has been a really really roller-coaster campaign.”

Among the most bizarre twists, the election commission citing a rule no one had heard of before that led to municipal workers cutting out or covering up Mahathir’s face whenever it appeared on billboards during the election campaign.

It was the kind of petty and biased move that might have won him even more support as election day arrived.

CGTN Photo

I spent the evening at the tabulation center and gathering point for a prominent opposition candidate. The early counts seemed astonishing. Sure, they were just from a few individual polling stations. But they were showing Pakatan Harapan beating Barisan Nasional by huge margins. And winning in places that they never thought they stood a chance.

Opposition supporters whooped and cheered as the results came in and the cheers got louder as one after another, there were announcements of cabinet ministers falling to defeat, and then, louder still, entire states falling.

Still, they didn’t dare hold out too much hope.

“We are feeling good. It’s very encouraging,” Tony Pua, an opposition candidate in the country’s biggest constituency told me. “We’ve won seats we didn’t expect to win. Whether we can cross the finishing line with a majority of seats, we stand a good chance. It feels good.”

People queue up to vote. /CGTN Photo

In the end, Pua defeated his BN rival by more than 100,000 votes.

But while unofficial vote counts kept showing huge gains for Pakatan Harapan, official results from the election commission trickled out far more slowly than in the four previous elections I covered.

And that created a lot of anxiety and suspicion of foul play.

An election poster. /Reuters Photo

Mahathir held a press conference suggesting the possibility of dirty tricks to try to deny the opposition victory. The election commission chairman went on TV shortly after to urge calm and patience.

As the clock ticked toward 3 a.m. he and his deputies returned to the screens several more times to confirm what the opposition was already saying: that BN had lost control of most of the state assemblies and was headed for defeat nationally too.

One young reporter friend barely in her 30s told me, “I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime.” Another friend who has passionately campaigned for the opposition for nearly 20 years just appeared in shock. “It’s surreal,” she said. I assured her she’d wake up in the morning and find it hadn’t all been a dream.

The count was followed closely. /CGTN Photo

And that’s the same for the rest of Malaysia. Those who didn’t stay up till 4 a.m. when the results were confirmed would have awoken to the news that for the first time in most of their lifetimes they would be governed by a new political party and alliance, albeit led by an old and familiar face.

Among the vast majority of urban Malaysians at least, there is a sense of something nearing euphoria at the prospect of real change.

Among Mahathir’s allies, there’s plenty of talent and brains and young blood to inspire hope in Malaysians that this change in government won’t just be a change of party colors, but something that will make a profound difference to the way the country is governed.

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