Anti-establishment students make surprising comeback in UM polls
Universiti Malaya’s anti-establishment faction can finally put to bed memories of humiliating defeats five years in a row after it emerged triumphant in campus elections today.
After five years of successive defeat, Universiti Malaya’s anti-establishment faction finally has something to smile about after narrowly winning the campus polls.
Universiti Malaya’s anti-establishment faction can finally put to bed memories of humiliating defeats five years in a row after it emerged triumphant in campus elections today.
The faction, better known as pro-student group, or pro-Mahasiswa, beat its pro-government rival, pro-Aspirasi, by a narrow margin when it wrested 19 of the 41 contested seats.
With independent candidates winning another two seats, the pro-Aspirasi group conceded defeat after having won only 20 seats.
Although winning only 19 seats, the pro-Mahasiswa faction garnered a larger portion of the popular vote compared to pro-Aspirasi's 20 seats and as such were declared the winners.
The election results were announced by UM’s deputy vice-chancellor associate professor Dr Azarae Idris early this morning and were confirmed by the faction’s chairperson Norazali Zainuddin.
Yesterday’s polls saw pro-student winning eight more seats than last year, a surprise result that shocked even members of the faction, said Norazali, given that the group last won the polls in 2004.
"This victory is symbolic - we won the election this morning, on Jan 20, the same date as Barack Obama’s ascendency as the president of the United States of America," Norazali added.
But there is still a bit of uncertainty due to the tissue-thin majority with two elected student representatives said to be aligned to pro-student faction are expected to make a final decision tomorrow on which faction they would support.
Nevertheless, the rival pro-Aspirasi faction has conceded defeat but offered to form a joint 'cabinet' in the student coucil.
Anti-establishment groups, described by the government as fronts for opposition parties, have traditionally controlled the nation's major campuses but suffered successive defeats since 2004.
Polling took place yesterday for public universities nationwide. For UM - the nation's premier university - polling started early yesterday morning and ended at 5pm.
Last night, the university was in a festive mood when some 400 students from both factions gathered in front of the UM Chancellor’s Hall, where vote-counting was taking place. Around 20 police and university security personnel kept watch.
On one side, around 250 pro-Mahasiswa members sang and chanted slogans such as "down with corruption" and "long live students" throughout the night.
Most of them had started gathering since 8pm and despite waking up early and juggling classes, the long and laborious day did not hamper their enthusiasm.
Leaders of the group made impassioned speeches to a sea of orange-clad students holding up placards that called for "hope and change."
At the same time, just 10 metres away, about 150 students from the rival pro-Aspirasi group had gathered to support their candidates.
Accusations galore
But unlike their pro-student counterpart, this group was much more aggressive in its campaigning tactics, making confrontational speeches accusing the former of being aggressors, racists and "bankrupt on ideas".
One of their leaders, Mohd Aizam Aizat Hamdan, explained to Malaysiakini why the group had made such allegations.
"The pro-student group has no ideas. They want change but act aggressively to attain them. For example, there were cases where our video camera was stolen and our wardrobes smashed.
"They are also playing up racial issues like saying that our Chinese members will never be accepted by Islam," he claimed.
The pro-student chairperson when met later, however, denied that the faction had committed the acts, saying such allegations were aimed at discrediting the group.
"They’ve been saying all this for years. We have never played up any racial issues. Our group has always been diplomatic in our approach.
"For example, we held a dialogue session with the university authorities on various campus issues instead of going around vandalising as has been alleged," he explained.
The pro-Aspirasi students made a surprising appearance in major campuses, which are traditionally hotbeds of anti-estalishment activism - on the back of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi coming to power in 2004.
However, pro-Aspirasi student continue to rule supreme in all other public universities.
The International Islamic University campus polls - slated for Monday - had been postponed to Thursday following water disruption.
The postponement, the second in IIUM, follows a palm oil tanker contaminating a water catchment area nearby.
The IIUM has been under the control of the anti-establishment students for the past two years.
