Malaysia PM Wins Election

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's coalition has won a majority of seats in Parliament, assuring him a fifth consecutive term in this Suutheast Asian nation. The wife of his main, imprisoned rival also won a seat in the assembly Monday.

Mahathir had insisted throughout the two-week campaign that his coalition, which has ruled Malaysia since independence from Britain in 1957, would retain at least a two-thirds majority in Parliament.

The 73-year-old has ruled Malaysia for the last 18 years and easily defeated opposition candidate Subky Latif, a columnist for the opposition newspaper Harakah, taking nearly 65 percent of the vote cast in his district.

Of the 124 seats announced so far, Mahathir's National Front had won 97 of 193, the Election Commission confirmed. Twenty-four seats went to the opposition coalition. A small regional party allied to the opposition won three. The final results were expected later Tuesday.

Jailed politician Anwar Ibrahim's wife, Azizah Ismail, won the biggest race for the opposition. She defeated a former minister in Mahathir's Cabinet by winning almost 62 percent of the votes in Permatang Pauh. Her husband carried the rural northern district for 16 years before he was sacked and convicted of corruption.

"This is a victory of the people. It shows that people dared to choose change," Azizah told a crowd of several hundred supporters outside the polling station. Dozens of riot police were on hand in case of civil unrest.

But voting went smoothly and no disturbances were reported, said Election Commission spokesman Muhamad Aszahari Abdul Rahman.

Malaysia Citizens Watch, an election monitoring group, complained that hundreds of people could not vote because their names did not appear on the electorate list or were misspelled. It said at some polling places, waxy marks were put over the space to mark a vote for the opposition, making it difficult for voters who favored opposition candidates to pencil in their choices.

The opposition, called the Alternative Front, had conceded that it wouldn't oust Mahathir. But it hoped to win at least 65 seats, one-third of the 193 available. In the previous house, Mahathir's National Front controlled 166 seats and the opposition only held 23.

The opposition has been galvanized by Mahathir's firing and arrest of Anwar, who was considered a possible challenger to the prime minister. Opposition leaders claim their campaign this year has forever changed the face of Malaysian politics by highlighting corruption, abuse of power and the nation's lack of civil liberties, democracy and press freedoms.

Anwar, who is serving a six-year sentence for corruption and is on trial for sodomy, was once Mahathir's hand-picked successor. But since being jailed, beaten and put on trial for crimes he denies, the 52-year-old Islamic scholar has become the opposition's symbol for change and Malaysians have protested openly against the government

Anwar's wife, Azizah, who no heads his National Justice Party, won in the Permatang Pauh constituency, a rural region in the northern state of Penang, defeating opponent Ibrahim Saad.

During the eight-day official campaign following the dissolution of Parliament, Mahathir portrayed the opposition as extremists who want to turn Malaysia into an Islamic state.

In most constituencies Monday, it was a straight contest between Mahathir's 14-party National Front and the four-party Alternative Front. While three of the opposition parties represent moderate Malays and ethnic Chinese and Indians, the fourth - the orthodox Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party, which rules the only opposition-controlled region of Malaysia - has in the past called for an Islamic state.

Mahathir has repeatedly reminded Malaysia's 22 million people how much they have benefitted as the economy grew for a decade until the Asian financial crisis of 1997. The average annual income has risen from $300 in 1957, when Malaysia won independence from Britain, to $3,800 this year.

The opposition has described Mahathir's campaign as dirty and vicious. It has also accused the governing group of relying on an electoral system crafted to suit itself by denying nearly 700,000 young Malaysians voting rights. The Election Commission said it could not process their registration papers in time for the vote.

By Ranjan Roy
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