Stakes are high in malaysian election

The impassioned battle for political supremacy betwixt Malaysia's government party and a resurgent political resistance is playing out under the shade of rambotan trees and about the cheap plastic tables of java shops in this otherwise laid-back parliamentary territory.

Voters will decide on Tues whether Anwar beijing, the feisty former deputy sheriff prime curate, wins back his seat in the Malaysian Parliament after a decade-long absence. Finally Tuesday's by-election will determine whether Anwar is given the opportunity to carry out his promise to win over sufficiency defections to unseat a hesitation governing alliance that has held power for the past 51 years.

"The interest are much higher than in any convention by-election," said Mustapha Mohamed, the state's agribusiness minister, pickings a break mon in a fly-invested campaign tent. "We're the underdogs," Mustapha said of the authorities's prospects in the vote.

Permatang Pauh, as the territory is known, was Anwar's long-held constituency earlier he was banished from the government party and jailed for corruptness and buggery amid a power battle in the late 1990s. Anwar's wife, Azizah Ismail, held the seat while her hubby was in prison house and resigned last month to make way for Anwar's attempted tax return.

The election Tuesday is set against a background of an electorate unhappy about glide inflation rates that are the highest in 27 years, a authorities struggling with one of the widest gaps betwixt rich and poor in Asia, and Malaya's longstanding reputation as a stalls nation with a comparatively prosperous hereafter increasingly approach under inquiry.

Anwar is to a great extent favored to win the election against Arif Shah Omar Shah, the campaigner from the United Malays subject Organization, the government party known as UMNO. But the piercingly and at times sordid campaigning here is a possible foretaste of the acrimonious political battles to come if Anwar is elected to Parliament.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, whose own constituency is nearby, has sent so many senior ministers to campaign here that one news Web site remarked that he could easily hold a cabinet meeting amid the palm oil plantations, rice paddies and factories.

Last week the government announced it was lowering gasoline prices, one of the chief concerns of voters. That move undercut Anwar's pledge to do the same if he becomes prime minister. The government also flew in an Olympic silver medalist in badminton, Lee Chong Wei, who is from Malaysia's Chinese minority, which polls show increasingly favors Anwar and his allies.

"We provide fair and equal opportunities to all races in this country," said Najib Razak, the deputy prime minister and Anwar's chief rival, as he handed Lee a check for 300,000 ringgit, or nearly $90,000, as a reward for his Olympic performance.

The central platform of the governing party is that Anwar is unfit for office because of fresh charges - still unproven - of sodomy made against him recently by a former campaign aide.

Campaign speeches have at times been coarse. K.S. Nallakaruppan, a former ally and friend of Anwar's, used sexual innuendo to campaign against him last week: if Anwar becomes prime minister, Nallakaruppan repeatedly said in a speech, Malaysians will be looking "back," not  forward.

A pamphlet distributed by the governing party accused Anwar of being "surrounded by Jews" and featured pictures of him with Paul Wolfowitz and James Wolfensohn, both former presidents of the World Bank.

One campaign banner said Anwar's first moves as prime minister would be to allow Israel to open an embassy in Kuala Lumpur and to give the Americans an air base in Penang. Malaysia does not formally recognize Israel.

"These are the only weapons that UMNO can use against Anwar - relying on xenophobia to sustain its support," said Tian Chua, a member of parliament and an adviser to Anwar. "UMNO is trying to polarize the communities and is attempting to paint Anwar's reform agenda as a form of betrayal to traditional Islamic principles."

Permatang Pauh, which is in northern Penang State, lives up to the country's tourist promotion campaign as a thriving mix of ethnic groups where campaigning is conducted in Malay, a variety of Chinese dialects, Tamil and Thai.

Groups of Malays from a fundamentalist Islamic party that backs Anwar campaigned to win the hearts of Buddhist Thais. The government party candidate, Arif Shah, is of mixed Malay and Indian descent who speaks Mandarin and Hokkien in addition to Malay and English, the two most commonly spoken languages in the country.

Permatang Pauh is a microcosm of Malaysia, with its urban housing estates and rural agricultural areas. Political analysts are watching the turnout and voting patterns for signs that the unprecedented support for Anwar's allies in the watershed elections in March is petering out - or, on the contrary, mounting. Anwar's allies won control of the Penang state assembly in March. The state's chief minister, Lim Guan Eng, declared Tuesday a public holiday to encourage high voter turnout.