Reuters - 26 minutes agoKUALA LUMPUR, March 9 - Malaysia’s weak opposition was up against a hostile mainstream media and restrictive campaign rules, but it can chalk up much of its stunning success in Saturday’s election to the power of cyberspace.
Voters exasperated with the unvarnished support of the mainstream media for the ruling National Front furiously clicked on YouTube and posted comments with popular bloggers about tales of sex, lies and videotapes in the run-up to Saturday’s election.
Jeff Ooi, a 52-year-old former advertising copywriter who made his name writing a political blog, “Screenshots” won a seat in northern Penang state for the opposition Democratic Action Party .
Elizabeth Wong, a human rights activist and political consultant who runs a blog , won a state assembly seat in the central state of Selangor.
YouTube, the phenomenally popular video Web site, did as much damage as any opposition figure could hope to inflict, after netizens uploaded embarrassing videos of their politicians in action on hot-button issues.
One YouTube video in January showed ruling party MP Badruddin bin Amiruldin causing a ruckus in parliament over whether Malaysia was an Islamic state. “Malaysia is an Islamic state”, he declared. “You don’t like it, you get out of Malaysia!”
Muslim Malays form the majority in multi-racial Malaysia, but ethnic Chinese and Indians account for a third of the population and they deserted the ruling National Front in droves, partly in outrage over the religious debate.
SEX, SLEAZE, CORRUPTION
Another YouTube video that got wide distribution shows a rambling and incoherent Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin, in a live interview with al-Jazeera, excitedly defending a police crackdown against peaceful protesters calling for changes to the electoral process in November.
Zainuddin was one of several “big guns” in the National Front that fell to the opposition’s onslaught.
Sex, sleaze and corruption were election issues and they all had video soap operas on Web sites.
Malaysia’s health minister resigned in January after admitting he and a female friend were the couple in a secretly filmed sex video uploaded on YouTube. That cost some votes.
“We were concerned about the morality of our leaders,” said Maisarah Zainal, a 26-year-old teacher in Kuala Lumpur. “It didn’t help that Chua Soi Lek was involved in a sex video.”
Loh Gwo Burne, who secretly videotaped a phone conversation, allegedly showing a high-profile lawyer trying to fix judicial appointments with Malaysia’s former chief judge, was elected to a seat in parliament from a seat in suburban Kuala Lumpur.
The grainy video hit a nerve in Malaysia, whose judiciary has been under question since the late 1980s.
Malaysia’s blogging community offer alternative views in a country where the government keeps a tight control on mainstream media. The government said last year it might compel bloggers to register with the authorities to curb the spread of malicious content on the Internet.
Government backers doubt whether bloggers turned opposition politicians could make their presence felt. “Beyond the major cities like Kuala Lumpur and Penang, there’s not much the bloggers can really hope to accomplish,” says Mohamad Norza Zakaria, a leader in Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s UMNO party
The Chinese-backed DAP, by contrast, appointed blogger Ooi to head the party’s “e-campaign”.
Even a barely literate 89-year-old grandmother running for parliament with little money and only a bicycle to get around on, hopped the cyberspace bandwagon with a Facebook profile and her own blog, courtesy of some Internet savvy supporters. Mamin Yusuf, however, lost. It wasn’t clear how many of her potential voters were hooked up to the Internet in northeastern Terengganu.
AFP - 20 minutes agoPENANG, Malaysia, March 9, 2008 (AFP) - Weekend elections that have reshaped Malaysia’s political landscape will reverberate in the stock market and could dampen investor confidence, economists said Sunday.
Massive defections by the small but economically dominant Chinese community and once loyalist minority Indians have highlighted resentment towards the Malay-led government’s economic policies, they said.
The Barisan Nasional coalition, led by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) failed to win a two-thirds majority in parliament for the first time in four decades.
It also lost control of four states, including the technology hub of Penang, to a resurgent opposition in Saturday’s polls.
Analysts said that although the government also suffered a rejection from the Muslim Malays who form its bedrock, investors may be concerned that the results could trigger political and racial instability.
“Fund managers will be concerned with the racial divide,” Chua Hak Bin, a Singapore-based economist with Citigroup told AFP.
“With the Chinese and Indians voting for the opposition, you raise the question if Malaysia’s fundamentals are intact and whether there will be racial violence even though the Malays also voted for the opposition,” he said.
Malaysia’s minorities are concerned over rising “Islamisation” and angry over the government’s refusal to abandon positive discrimination policies that give Malays advantages in education, housing and business.
Chua said the “shocking” election results could keep investors at bay for the next three months.
“The polls outcome has rattled investors. There will doubts raised whether the development projects under the previous state governments will continue. The political shake-up could affect projects and companies,” he said.
In the run-up to the elections, the Barisan Nasional launched a series of big-spending economic development plans touted as bringing tens of billions of dollars in investment and infrastructure to Malaysia’s regions.
Chua said the fall of Penang, Malaysia’s “Silicon Valley” which is home to many high-tech firms and the only state dominated by ethnic Chinese, could affect equity prices.
“It could also have an impact on billion-dollar projects in Penang, including the second bridge crossing,” he said.
Wan Suhaimi Saidie, economist with Kenanga Investment Bank, said there could be a drop in share prices when the bourse opens on Monday.
“Some investors may shift their position when trading opens on Monday while others may take to the sidelines. But I think it will just be temporary,” he said.
Wan Suhaimi said that with a strong new opposition, the government could hopefully fine-tune its investment policies to woo overseas funds.
But Chua said that Malaysia’s long-term political prospects were in the balance, amid uncertainty over the future of Abdullah who is facing calls to resign.
“The election speaks for itself. It shows there is no confidence in his leadership. I will not be surprised if he steps aside,” he said.
“They (investors) will not come in aggressively and we will see the Malaysian bourse remain marginalised vis-a-vis other regional bourses.”
Kaladher Govindan, head of research at TA Securities, tipped the bourse to fall Monday and said that in the short-term it would suffer from fears over looming instability.
“My gut feeling is it will fall sharply. It is due to concerns of political uncertainties and whether there will be unrest. But it will not crash,” he said.
KUALA LUMPUR, March 9 - Malaysia’s share market is expected to slide on Monday, gripped by political uncertainty after voters stunned the government with a massive protest vote.
Brokers and fund managers said Malaysian politics was in uncharted waters after Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s coalition registered its worst-ever result, losing a third of its federal seats and five states to the opposition in weekend polls.
“There would be some major initial reaction in the markets,” said Pankaj Kumar, chief investment officer at Kurnia Insurance, who helps manage 1.6 billion ringgit in assets.
“The political stability has finally been challenged. The question is, how does Malaysia move forward from here in restoring confidence?”
A sales broker said he expected Malaysia’s benchmark stock index, the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index to fall around 50 to 100 points, or up to around 8 percent, on Monday as investors tried to answer that question.
The KLCI index closed down 0.26 percent at 1,296.33 on Friday, in line with regional markets, and has fallen 9 percent since Abdullah called on Feb. 13 for early elections.
Brewing stocks such as Carlsberg Brewery Malaysia Bhd and Guinness Anchor Bhd are likely to be in focus on Monday, given the success of Islamist party PAS, which took control of three state assemblies in Saturday’s elections.
Gaming and leisure stocks such as Magnum Corp and Berjaya Sports Toto could also come under pressure.
PAS’s policy bans alcohol and gambling and calls for amputations and stonings of non-Muslim thiefs and adulterers, but it has recently tried to soften its stance and broaden its appeal to non-Muslims, who make up more than 40 percent of the population.
Given the scale of its electoral success, winning seats in multi-racial urban areas as well as the Muslim countryside, PAS looks to have attracted many non-Muslim votes on Saturday.
LONG TERM, “NO CONCERNS”
“The market is not going to be so good. There will be major reaction on Monday,” said an international-sales broker based in Malaysia. “It would take time for the market to settle down.”
Former premier Mahathir Mohamad also warned that investors could now feel unsafe and urged Abdullah to step down as leader.
“I am afraid investors are already showing that this election worries them,” Mahathir said. “Now, unless they are blind, I think they will feel very unsafe in the country.”
Despite the concerns, several fund managers and brokers said the so-far peaceful acceptance of the poll result was encouraging and perhaps pointed to a new political maturity in this country, which has effectively never known a change of government.
Some said PAS was not necessarily such a big worry, given that it would have to be pragmatic in a multi-racial nation.
“We have no concerns in regards to the election,” said Malaysia-based fund manager Gerald Ambrose, of Aberdeen Asset Management, which has $2.2 billion invested in Malaysian stocks.
“We have a long-term investment plan. The different results in the polls would not make any difference in our portfolio.”
But Tim Condon, Singapore-based head of Asia Research at investment bank ING, questioned whether the government could still proceed with its spending plans, especially its agenda to harness $325 billion in mostly private capital to create five new economic development zones around the country.
PAS now controls three of the northern and eastern states covered by these plans, raising concerns whether PAS will cooperate with the national government in implementing them.
“The key to the future of the northern and, to some extent, the eastern is how well the federal government and the state governments can work hand in hand,” a source close to the prime minister admitted on Sunday.
Over time, some market commentators said, the new political landscape could improve the investment climate, by quickening reforms, though a lot depended now on how the opposition behaved.
Already, the opposition Democratic Action Party, which won the industrial heartland state of Penang, says it will use its new clout to push for a reform that foreign investors have long demanded: the awarding of government contracts by open tender.
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Malaysia opposition win shows power of cyberspace
Reuters - 26 minutes agoKUALA LUMPUR, March 9 - Malaysia’s weak opposition was up against a hostile mainstream media and restrictive campaign rules, but it can chalk up much of its stunning success in Saturday’s election to the power of cyberspace.
Voters exasperated with the unvarnished support of the mainstream media for the ruling National Front furiously clicked on YouTube and posted comments with popular bloggers about tales of sex, lies and videotapes in the run-up to Saturday’s election.
Jeff Ooi, a 52-year-old former advertising copywriter who made his name writing a political blog, “Screenshots” won a seat in northern Penang state for the opposition Democratic Action Party .
Elizabeth Wong, a human rights activist and political consultant who runs a blog , won a state assembly seat in the central state of Selangor.
YouTube, the phenomenally popular video Web site, did as much damage as any opposition figure could hope to inflict, after netizens uploaded embarrassing videos of their politicians in action on hot-button issues.
One YouTube video in January showed ruling party MP Badruddin bin Amiruldin causing a ruckus in parliament over whether Malaysia was an Islamic state. “Malaysia is an Islamic state”, he declared. “You don’t like it, you get out of Malaysia!”
Muslim Malays form the majority in multi-racial Malaysia, but ethnic Chinese and Indians account for a third of the population and they deserted the ruling National Front in droves, partly in outrage over the religious debate.
SEX, SLEAZE, CORRUPTION
Another YouTube video that got wide distribution shows a rambling and incoherent Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin, in a live interview with al-Jazeera, excitedly defending a police crackdown against peaceful protesters calling for changes to the electoral process in November.
Zainuddin was one of several “big guns” in the National Front that fell to the opposition’s onslaught.
Sex, sleaze and corruption were election issues and they all had video soap operas on Web sites.
Malaysia’s health minister resigned in January after admitting he and a female friend were the couple in a secretly filmed sex video uploaded on YouTube. That cost some votes.
“We were concerned about the morality of our leaders,” said Maisarah Zainal, a 26-year-old teacher in Kuala Lumpur. “It didn’t help that Chua Soi Lek was involved in a sex video.”
Loh Gwo Burne, who secretly videotaped a phone conversation, allegedly showing a high-profile lawyer trying to fix judicial appointments with Malaysia’s former chief judge, was elected to a seat in parliament from a seat in suburban Kuala Lumpur.
The grainy video hit a nerve in Malaysia, whose judiciary has been under question since the late 1980s.
Malaysia’s blogging community offer alternative views in a country where the government keeps a tight control on mainstream media. The government said last year it might compel bloggers to register with the authorities to curb the spread of malicious content on the Internet.
Government backers doubt whether bloggers turned opposition politicians could make their presence felt. “Beyond the major cities like Kuala Lumpur and Penang, there’s not much the bloggers can really hope to accomplish,” says Mohamad Norza Zakaria, a leader in Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s UMNO party
The Chinese-backed DAP, by contrast, appointed blogger Ooi to head the party’s “e-campaign”.
Even a barely literate 89-year-old grandmother running for parliament with little money and only a bicycle to get around on, hopped the cyberspace bandwagon with a Facebook profile and her own blog, courtesy of some Internet savvy supporters. Mamin Yusuf, however, lost. It wasn’t clear how many of her potential voters were hooked up to the Internet in northeastern Terengganu.
Malaysia’s polls shock rattles investors: economists
AFP - 20 minutes agoPENANG, Malaysia, March 9, 2008 (AFP) - Weekend elections that have reshaped Malaysia’s political landscape will reverberate in the stock market and could dampen investor confidence, economists said Sunday.
Massive defections by the small but economically dominant Chinese community and once loyalist minority Indians have highlighted resentment towards the Malay-led government’s economic policies, they said.
The Barisan Nasional coalition, led by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) failed to win a two-thirds majority in parliament for the first time in four decades.
It also lost control of four states, including the technology hub of Penang, to a resurgent opposition in Saturday’s polls.
Analysts said that although the government also suffered a rejection from the Muslim Malays who form its bedrock, investors may be concerned that the results could trigger political and racial instability.
“Fund managers will be concerned with the racial divide,” Chua Hak Bin, a Singapore-based economist with Citigroup told AFP.
“With the Chinese and Indians voting for the opposition, you raise the question if Malaysia’s fundamentals are intact and whether there will be racial violence even though the Malays also voted for the opposition,” he said.
Malaysia’s minorities are concerned over rising “Islamisation” and angry over the government’s refusal to abandon positive discrimination policies that give Malays advantages in education, housing and business.
Chua said the “shocking” election results could keep investors at bay for the next three months.
“The polls outcome has rattled investors. There will doubts raised whether the development projects under the previous state governments will continue. The political shake-up could affect projects and companies,” he said.
In the run-up to the elections, the Barisan Nasional launched a series of big-spending economic development plans touted as bringing tens of billions of dollars in investment and infrastructure to Malaysia’s regions.
Chua said the fall of Penang, Malaysia’s “Silicon Valley” which is home to many high-tech firms and the only state dominated by ethnic Chinese, could affect equity prices.
“It could also have an impact on billion-dollar projects in Penang, including the second bridge crossing,” he said.
Wan Suhaimi Saidie, economist with Kenanga Investment Bank, said there could be a drop in share prices when the bourse opens on Monday.
“Some investors may shift their position when trading opens on Monday while others may take to the sidelines. But I think it will just be temporary,” he said.
Wan Suhaimi said that with a strong new opposition, the government could hopefully fine-tune its investment policies to woo overseas funds.
But Chua said that Malaysia’s long-term political prospects were in the balance, amid uncertainty over the future of Abdullah who is facing calls to resign.
“The election speaks for itself. It shows there is no confidence in his leadership. I will not be surprised if he steps aside,” he said.
“They (investors) will not come in aggressively and we will see the Malaysian bourse remain marginalised vis-a-vis other regional bourses.”
Kaladher Govindan, head of research at TA Securities, tipped the bourse to fall Monday and said that in the short-term it would suffer from fears over looming instability.
“My gut feeling is it will fall sharply. It is due to concerns of political uncertainties and whether there will be unrest. But it will not crash,” he said.
Malaysia markets tipped to slide after poll drama
KUALA LUMPUR, March 9 - Malaysia’s share market is expected to slide on Monday, gripped by political uncertainty after voters stunned the government with a massive protest vote.
Brokers and fund managers said Malaysian politics was in uncharted waters after Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s coalition registered its worst-ever result, losing a third of its federal seats and five states to the opposition in weekend polls.
“There would be some major initial reaction in the markets,” said Pankaj Kumar, chief investment officer at Kurnia Insurance, who helps manage 1.6 billion ringgit in assets.
“The political stability has finally been challenged. The question is, how does Malaysia move forward from here in restoring confidence?”
A sales broker said he expected Malaysia’s benchmark stock index, the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index to fall around 50 to 100 points, or up to around 8 percent, on Monday as investors tried to answer that question.
The KLCI index closed down 0.26 percent at 1,296.33 on Friday, in line with regional markets, and has fallen 9 percent since Abdullah called on Feb. 13 for early elections.
Brewing stocks such as Carlsberg Brewery Malaysia Bhd and Guinness Anchor Bhd are likely to be in focus on Monday, given the success of Islamist party PAS, which took control of three state assemblies in Saturday’s elections.
Gaming and leisure stocks such as Magnum Corp and Berjaya Sports Toto could also come under pressure.
PAS’s policy bans alcohol and gambling and calls for amputations and stonings of non-Muslim thiefs and adulterers, but it has recently tried to soften its stance and broaden its appeal to non-Muslims, who make up more than 40 percent of the population.
Given the scale of its electoral success, winning seats in multi-racial urban areas as well as the Muslim countryside, PAS looks to have attracted many non-Muslim votes on Saturday.
LONG TERM, “NO CONCERNS”
“The market is not going to be so good. There will be major reaction on Monday,” said an international-sales broker based in Malaysia. “It would take time for the market to settle down.”
Former premier Mahathir Mohamad also warned that investors could now feel unsafe and urged Abdullah to step down as leader.
“I am afraid investors are already showing that this election worries them,” Mahathir said. “Now, unless they are blind, I think they will feel very unsafe in the country.”
Despite the concerns, several fund managers and brokers said the so-far peaceful acceptance of the poll result was encouraging and perhaps pointed to a new political maturity in this country, which has effectively never known a change of government.
Some said PAS was not necessarily such a big worry, given that it would have to be pragmatic in a multi-racial nation.
“We have no concerns in regards to the election,” said Malaysia-based fund manager Gerald Ambrose, of Aberdeen Asset Management, which has $2.2 billion invested in Malaysian stocks.
“We have a long-term investment plan. The different results in the polls would not make any difference in our portfolio.”
But Tim Condon, Singapore-based head of Asia Research at investment bank ING, questioned whether the government could still proceed with its spending plans, especially its agenda to harness $325 billion in mostly private capital to create five new economic development zones around the country.
PAS now controls three of the northern and eastern states covered by these plans, raising concerns whether PAS will cooperate with the national government in implementing them.
“The key to the future of the northern and, to some extent, the eastern is how well the federal government and the state governments can work hand in hand,” a source close to the prime minister admitted on Sunday.
Over time, some market commentators said, the new political landscape could improve the investment climate, by quickening reforms, though a lot depended now on how the opposition behaved.
Already, the opposition Democratic Action Party, which won the industrial heartland state of Penang, says it will use its new clout to push for a reform that foreign investors have long demanded: the awarding of government contracts by open tender.
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