Chinese Malaysians turn against government over race policies
Voters weary of bias rally around opposition parties in first serious electoral threat to ruling coalition in more than four decades
Malaysian businessman Stanley Thai says he's joining thousands of fellow ethnic Chinese citizens in abandoning support for Prime Minister Najib Razak and voting for the opposition for the first time in an election next month.
Why are the Chinese against the government? It's simple. We don't want our children to suffer what we suffered
Chinese, who make up about a quarter of Malaysia's population, are growing weary of affirmative-action programs for Malays propagated by Najib's alliance of parties, the most recent national poll indicates. Any mass defection by Chinese voters raises the risk of the ruling coalition's first election loss since it was formed after race riots in 1969.
The violence of that year helped persuade many Chinese to back Barisan Nasional, which Najib has led since 2009, as they accepted racial preferences for Malays as the cost of peace. Thai said thinking changed when the government's electoral tally fell in 2008 with little sign of renewed social unrest. "Everyone said, 'Wow, the time has come,'" he said.
Now, the opposition, led by Anwar Ibrahim, sees the end of race-based policies that have hindered firms such as Supermax as key to long-term economic growth. Najib counters that his gradual reform of the affirmative-action programs will assure stability and avert a slide in stocks and the ringgit that would accompany any opposition victory.
"It's a contest ultimately about visions - do you believe the country is Malay-centred or a state of all its citizens," asked Clive Kessler, an emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney who has studied Malaysian politics for half a century. "Najib no longer has adequate non-Malay support," said Kessler, who says the ruling coalition must win about two-thirds of Malay votes to stay in power.