Malaysia's Elections

Went to the IT show with my family over the weekend and boy was it crowded! We could hardly even move about in the tide of people however, that didn't stop my dad, who managed to chalk up over $2500 worth of bills. What an achievement eh? ha! Well...most of what was spent was mainly bought by my dad for the school and the rest of the techy gadgets are LDS-subsidised. =)

Anyway, what i wanted to write about was on the Malaysian Elections last Saturday. Why did BN lose the majority vote of the Malays even though it ran racist policies and routed for them for the past 30-odd years. And shockingly, they lost the vote most drastically in urbanised areas like Penang, etc.. Does that mean that the educated, well-informed in society are veto-ing the BN out of the government? If so, why??

To me, as a Singaporean, i prefer a neighbour with a stable government. Like the PAP, Malaysia had the BN in power for a very long time. That strong mandate ensured that the country does not waste time and energy worrying about uncertain leadership nor scare away potential investors. This, i feel, is of utmost importance for any country. The BN may have some faults, but are able to take responsibility for them and improve (albeit slowly) on their weaknesses.

While it is true that BN has some unfair rules like the "bumiputra rights" , but such benefits will stay on with any govt of Malaysia in the near future. My reason being that if such benefits are forcibly taken away by an opposition government, it will cause irate protests from the malay community, victory parades from the Chinese and Indian ethnic groups and may well escalate to racial rioting throughout the country.

So...What can the opposition do to improve the lives of the Malaysians that the current, stable government of BN can't? Critics may point fingers at PM Abdullah for not fufilling his promise to rid corruption from Malaysia but hasn't the corruption situation improved from yesteryears? The pay of the police force has increased and the penalties were raised. Yes, corruption is still evident among the authorities however, you can't say that no effort has been put to quelching it, can you? if not, look at it this way....will an opposition government be able to mitigate the spread of corruption once and for all? Especially with the unrest it caused to attain its power?

Those are just my thoughts but i guess the Malaysian have really given the BN a wake-up call, similar to what Mas Selamat did for Singapore. In short, governments should never be complacent. If there is something to improve, they should do it...and do it in a well-thought out and effective manner.