KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak published a final speech on his official blog on Monday in a final bid to persuade voters to support the incumbent government for the 14th general elections, which will be held on Wednesday.
The Barisan Nasional (BN) government has been in power since the country’s independence in 1957.
Dubbed as the “mother of all elections,” this year’s campaign will see two seasoned politicians, Razak and Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, a former prime minister, facing off in a battle that could change the course of Malaysia’s future.
The title of Razak’s blog, “The Right Choice to Make Malaysia Greater,” is similar to Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”
“This is Najib’s last stand,” said Professor James Chin, a political scientist at the Asia Institute, University of Tasmania.
In his blog, Razak highlighted his policy achievements, namely controversial welfare programs such as cash handouts, and GST tax reform.
These are part of Razak’s vision for Malaysia to be a high-income nation by 2050.
“The International Monetary Fund commends us for being well on the way to high-income status,” the Malaysian prime minister wrote in his blog.
Dina Zaman, founding member of Malaysian think-tank Iman Research, is unconvinced — despite IMF reports on the country’s economic growth.
“You are going to (have to) deal with bread-and-butter issues and urban poverty. Malaysia will be looking at that, it is not translating a lifestyle I can afford, neither it is abolishing poverty in Malaysia,” Zaman said.
Razak’s speech attacked the opposition coalition, Pakatan Harapan, for offering “populist promises they can’t deliver.”
Calling it a “pakatan fitnah” (coalition of lies), he blamed the opposition for using “tactics and dirty tricks” in the general election.
“If the opposition resorts to undemocratic means to acquire power, they will never rule democratically,” Razak said.
“The prime minister’s speech is the perfect reverse-image of the political reality of Malaysia,” said Dr. Sophie Lemiere, a political anthropologist at Harvard University.
She said that Razak’s descriptions of the opposition were in fact a detailed account of his own governance, in which Malaysia had never been a democracy.
“Democratic institutions have long been used by the government and by the ruling party as a tool to maintain a democratic illusion,” Dr. Lemiere said.
Razak also hit out at his archrivals Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and the Democratic Action Party (DAP) in his blog.
He wrote that the 92-year-old former prime minister’s speeches “contain little policy substance but maximum slander,” while the DAP-led opposition have obscured the truth “with a tsunami of fitnah (lies).”
“I believe this speech showed the level of uncertainty and insecurity of the government and Najib (Razak) has come to the extreme,” Dr. Lemiere said, adding that the ruling government had been passing laws by force — such as the anti-fake news law and the electoral re-delineation law.
The government last month swiftly passed the two controversial laws in the Parliament, amid criticism by human rights groups and the public.
“We see that people are fed up,” Dr. Lemiere said.
“People want change; if it was not for fear or for electoral cheats, the BN would not see any victory tomorrow,” she said.
