Najib’s Narrow Win Exposes Problems in Malaysian Electoral System

Najib’s Narrow Win Exposes Problems in Malaysian Electoral System

In elections over the weekend, the ruling coalition in Malaysia, which has been in power for 56 years, won 133 out of 222 seats in parliament, despite apparently having lost the popular vote by a thin margin.

Anwar Ibrahim, who leads the opposition coalition, claimed the election outcome—which kept Prime Minister Najib Razak in office and his National Front coalition in the parliamentary majority—was the result of electoral fraud.

“We are in uncharted waters for Malaysian politics,” said Jason Paul Abbott, director of the Center for Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville. “We just need to hope what we see is a maturation of the Malaysian political system rather than the stoking of ethnic and racial violence.”

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