Word: malays
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...areas, where opposition parties hold some sway. The weighted system explains why the National Front won 64% of the popular vote in 2004 yet managed to fill 90% of the seats in Parliament. In five decades, the country has had exactly five Prime Ministers - all leaders of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the Malay-based party that dominates the National Front. "Malaysia is a heavily controlled state," says Steven Gan, editor of the online daily Malaysiakini. "We are stuck with Abdullah because of the nature of patronage politics and the enormous power of the office he holds...
...eroding the purchasing power of urban Malaysians-and generating support for the political opposition, whose spiritual leader is Anwar Ibrahim, a former deputy Prime Minister who is temporarily barred from holding political office because of a 1999 corruption conviction. Anwar's promise to reform the country?s pro-Malay programs, under the slogan of 'We Are All Equal,' appeals to many Chinese, who make up 30% of the country's 10.9 million voters. "Life is more then just economic success," says opposition leader Lim Kit Siang. "Justice, equality and humanity are important components...
...Indonesia's rupiah. The devaluation sent company profits dramatically downward; Jakarta's stock market crashed. Food prices spiked upwards, leading to rioting in the streets and the death of perhaps hundreds of people clamoring for food in the capital. The country's divisions re-emerged: Muslims vs. non-Muslims; Malay-Indonesians vs. Chinese-Indonesians; secular Muslims vs. orthodox Muslims. The ghosts of the old Indonesia that Suharto thought he had exorcised had returned to haunt the country...
...Wealth If Malaysia's races are separating, it is partly because of the legacy of the New Economic Policy (NEP), an ethnically based affirmative-action plan instituted in 1971 to create opportunities for the economically disadvantaged Malays. During colonial times, Chinese traders were favored by the ruling British, and they controlled much of the economy upon independence. Malays and indigenous peoples - collectively known as bumiputras, or "sons of the soil" - wanted to redress that economic imbalance. The NEP, which offers preferential treatment to bumiputras in everything from education to politics, has lifted millions of Malays into the middle class...
...Leading the political charge against the NEP is a Malay, former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. In 1999, Anwar was jailed for six years on sodomy and corruption charges that human-rights activists characterized as politically motivated. Now he has emerged as de facto leader of the opposition People's Justice Party, which is campaigning to dismantle the race-based NEP and replace it with a class-based scheme that would, say, help poor Indians while preventing rich Malays from taking handouts they don't need. Anwar blames the NEP both for breeding corruption and decreasing competitiveness, since many lucrative...