Photo of the Day:
In a gentle way, you can shake the world. - Ghandi
Tweet Joke of the Day:
"You may ask questions but in a very orderly fashion. Please remember I was 'the dictator'," - Dr Mahathir says to media, prompting laughter across the room. #GE14 pic.twitter.com/5NiGAgu4vJ— Sumisha Naidu (@SumishaCNA) May 10, 2018
Photo of the 'After-Day':
(PH's supporters took to the streets of Kuala Lumpur in celebration - AFP Photo)
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Report of the Day:
Bloomberg: Malaysia's Political Earthquake Is Deeply Ironic
The opposition just won, led by a former head of the establishment.
May 10, 2018, 4:39 AM GMT+8
After six decades of uninterrupted rule by one political bloc, Malaysia's democracy showed it can work — ousting that bloc and the nation's incumbent leader in a seismic shift. The irony is that it took a onetime scourge of democracy to come back from retirement to topple the party that ruled since independence from Great Britain in 1957 — the same party he led as prime minister for 22 years.
How much will change?
by Daniel Moss
That man, Mahathir Mohamad, declared in his 90s that his new mission
in life was to oust Prime Minister Najib Razak and the ruling
Barisan Nasional coalition. They had become corrupt and too addicted
to power, he claimed. Never mind that as prime minister Mahathir did
much to centralize power. Never mind that Najib's career was
nurtured by none other than Mahathir.
Najib claimed the opposition, now on the cusp of taking control of
government, is a motley collection of parties. True enough. That's
how parliaments work.
How would the opposition rule? Like Mahathir last time around or
more freewheeling? How would leadership issues within the opposition
resolve themselves, chiefly the relationship between Mahathir and
Anwar Ibrahim, now languishing in prison? (Put there the first time
by Mahathir.) What will be the administrative priorities of an
opposition that probably doubted it could ever win?
It almost doesn't matter for now, because first the nation and the
world can savor that this system, constructed on theoretical
possibilities, has been shown to work. Gerrymandering and crackdowns
on the press can't suppress political and economic tides
indefinitely. Ironies abound. Nobody in the media in the 1990s, when
I worked in Malaysia, would have considered Mahathir a friend of a
free and vibrant press.
Barisan Nasional had struggled in recent years and, as a result, had
become more dictatorial and more dependent on xenophobic appeals to
rural Malays and political Islam. How the opposition functions in
government and what the role of smaller parties looks like is
anyone's guess. And all this assumes, of course, that the government
allows the opposition to take office. There's never been a change of
power in Malaysia, since independence. The party was the government
and the government was the party.
Not to get completely swept up in the moment: Over the longer run,
Malaysia's economic and political direction will be governed by
interest rates and fiscal and regulatory policy, just like most
countries. Mahathir himself isn't exactly a political novice. And
there are broader macroeconomic forces also at work, including
China's relative economic strength, what happens with global trade
and developments in technology.
The economic and social distortions caused by the existing regime's
preferences for powerful Malays, members of the majority ethnic
group, may not go away soon. They were cemented during Mahathir's
previous tour of duty.
Malaysia faces its share of challenges in this new era. And with a
former prime minister returning to power, it's fair to wonder how
much will really change. There's also no getting away from the fact
that the once-unstoppable Barisan Nasional has lost the election.
That's already a huge change.
- Bloomberg
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