Glad Mahathir Mohamad finally quit, Malaysia’s Muslim majority gave his successor a stunning election victory, abandoning a dalliance with political Islam for hopes of clean government and economic progress.
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s success will help wash away fears that the increasing religiosity of Muslim Malays could be channelled into radicalism and extremism.
Tough on militants, Malaysia has bridled at western perceptions of it as a risky place in a world running scared following al Qaida’s attacks on the US on September 11, 2001.
“Ever since 9/11, they’ve portrayed Malaysia as a moderate Muslim country. This election shows it,” commented Bridget Welsh, an expert on Southeast Asia from Johns Hopkins University in Washington, who came to follow the election first hand.
The moderates secured their victory in a way that prompted criticism from the fundamentalists and other Opposition groups.
“This election has been unfair. We were not given any chance through the media, through anything,” said Abdul Hadi Awang, leader of the main Islamic Opposition Parti Islam se-Malaysia, as he conceded defeat as chief minister of Terengganu state.
Mainstream media are uniformly pro-government, the election campaign lasted just a week and the creation of new seats and constituency boundary changes all favoured the ruling Barisan Nasional alliance and its leading force, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO).
For all that, analysts say, the scale of the rout leaves little doubt that Abdullah is the leader the Muslim Malays and Malaysia’s other races want.
It marked a rejection of the conservative social agenda and weak economic policies of PAS, left clinging to power in just one of Malaysia’s 13 states, analysts said.
The inward-looking Malays were less bothered by outsiders’ assumptions equating conservative Islam with militancy, and the vote for Abdullah was more to do with his vision of the faith than sensitivity over how foreigners view them, analysts said.
Countries in the region will be relieved that the Islamists have been put to flight.
Neighbouring Singapore, the rich, mostly Chinese island state that was part of Malaysia until 1965, will no doubt be pleased about the election outcome.
The island state, with a sizeable Muslim minority, smashed a militant Islamic cell in late 2001 that had planned to bomb western embassies and other targets.