On Election Day, May 5, Najib averted disaster, clinging to power with the most slender of margins. Low had delivered yet again, and the prime minister was grateful. But it was a Pyrrhic victory. Not only did the government’s coalition fail to win back Penang, it also lost the popular national vote. Najib remained in power only because of electoral rules that reserve more parliamentary seats for Malay-dominated rural areas. Sophisticated urban voters, many of them Chinese-Malaysians, had turned out in droves for the opposition, sick of the money politics. Anwar Ibrahim claimed election fraud,
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