Kuala Lumpur - WHEN Penny Wong made the federal ministry in the new Rudd Government and immediately began playing a pivotal role in the Bali global warming conference, there were gasps in Malaysia as well as at home.
"When a Sabah-born woman became an elected minister in Australia, that caused a lot of buzz around here," says Rehman Rashid, opinion editor at Kuala Lumpur`s New Straits Times.
"That she could go further in Australian politics than she could in her own country."
Malaysia is in heightened ferment as it moves towards a snap election called for next Saturday by the Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
No one remotely sees Abdullah`s ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front) coalition at any risk of losing power, and the odds are long that it will even fall below the two-thirds majority in parliament needed to change the rules of the game.
But the opposition parties are likely to make strong gains.
The core of the Barisan, the United Malays National Organisation or UMNO, still can rely on overwhelming support from ethnic Malays, 60 per cent of Malaysia`s 27 million people, and may even win back control of Kelantan state from the Islamist, Malay-based Parti Islam se-Malaysia, or PAS.
But support among the two largest racial minorities, the Indians (8 per cent of the population) and the Chinese (25 per cent), is dropping for the parties that represent them in the ruling coalition - the Malaysian Indian Congress and the Malaysian Chinese Association - because of financial and sexual scandals.
Both communities now question the Malaysian bargain forced by Malay riots in 1969: accept second place and the right to go quietly about your business, while the state gives priority to raising the relative wealth, status and qualifications of the Malays.
Nearly four decades later, including 22 years of pressure-cooking the Malay corporate sector under the former prime minister Mahathir Mohammad, the racial minorities and a growing number of educated Malays are starting to ask when, if ever, the handicaps can be removed.
Malaysians see themselves doing well by regional comparisons - under Mahathir their per capita income quadrupled while population doubled - but some wonder whether they, like Penny Wong, wouldn`t have got further in similar-sized but more liberal countries such as Australia or Canada.
Mahathir blurred state and corporate entrepreneurship in wasteful and often corrupt cronyism and used detention-without-trial powers to frighten critics.
Source: www.smh.com.au (1 Maret 2008)
