Meredith Weiss is an associate professor in the department of political science at the University of Albany.

Adamantly pro-government newspaper Utusan Malaysia raised hackles among opposition Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Alliance) supporters two days after Malaysia’s May 5 election with its blaring headline, Apa Lagi Orang Cina Mahu? (What more do the Chinese want?) The barb refers to what incumbent Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has called a “Chinese tsunami:” his Barisan Nasional (National Front, BN) coalition’s unprecedented failure to secure a majority of the popular vote—even if a highly disproportionate electoral system has left the BN still with 60 percent of parliamentary seats. Read more »

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week.

1. China offers to play peacemaker, but Bibi and Abbas don’t bite. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas both visited China this week. The Chinese media enthusiastically reported on the possibility that the country could serve as neutral territory for the two leaders to negotiate a peace settlement. However, the Chinese government made sure the leaders stayed far apart throughout the trip and were never in the same city at the same time. Read more »

On May 5, Malaysians went to the polls in what was expected to be the closest national election since independence. Massive turnout was reported, particularly in urban areas, with many districts reporting that over 80 percent of eligible voters came to the polls. In the early part of the vote counting, opposition supporters seemed jubilant, and opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim even announced that he believed his three-party opposition alliance had taken down the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, which has dominated the country since independence, never losing an election. Of course, BN has used massive gerrymandering, enormous handouts from state coffers, thuggish election day tactics, and outright vote-buying in the past to secure its victories. Still, the May 5 vote seemed to be a potential watershed, putting the opposition into power and putting Malaysia onto the path of a real, consolidated two-party democracy. Read more »

Meredith Weiss is an associate professor in the department of political science at the University of Albany.

If all goes according to plan, election-watchers of all sorts will be thick on the ground for Malaysia’s upcoming thirteenth general elections. Admittedly, that plan is dependent upon rounding up and training an extraordinary number of volunteers, and doubtless will be forced to exclude the least accessible, but purportedly most watch-worthy districts. But what tends to get lost in the tea leaf-reading and data-crunching of this long-awaited showdown is the why behind such widespread interest in process and participation, which extends well beyond the polls themselves. Read more »

Sharone Tobias and Will Piekos look at the top five stories in Asia this week.

1. Japan gets aggressive on deflation. The Bank of Japan surprised investors Thursday by unveiling aggressive easy-money policies to stimulate the Japanese economy, under newly installed central bank chief Haruhiko Kuroda. This is a huge change for the historically conservative bank, which will double its holdings of government bonds—a program 60 percent larger than the Federal Reserve’s QE4 bond-buying program, relative to GDP. Read more »

This past week, Thailand’s government made the surprising announcement that it would launch talks with the insurgent organization National Revolution Front (BRN) in the south, with the discussions focused on achieving peace in the south. This marked the first time Bangkok had opened talks with any insurgent organization in the south since the violence flared up again more than a decade ago. Previously, many Thai leaders had insisted that even opening formal talks with an insurgent organization would be providing the insurgents with the kind of status they did not deserve, and possibly would open the door to significant autonomy for the three southern provinces. Read more »

Today Asia Times has an excellent overview of the political fallout from this past weekend’s large protest in Kuala Lumpur, which focused on reforming election laws. The turnout, as Asia Times noted, was far higher than the government expected (though figures of size were of course debated). What’s more, the fact that it was largely peaceful, and then resulted at the end of the protest in the use of excessive force by police against demonstrators, will cut into the image of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak as a reformer, an image he has worked hard to cultivate in the past two years, and which is critical to his election prospects as the prime minister is far more popular personally than his party is. Read more »

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was acquitted Monday morning in Kuala Lumpur on sodomy charges — the second time he has faced such charges in two decades. The decision was frankly a surprise to nearly everyone who follows Malaysia, and to most Malaysian opposition politicians; nearly all expected that Anwar would be sent to jail again, so as clear the way for the current government’s re-election campaign (Several Malaysian opinion leaders I spoke with just before the verdict were convinced it would go against Anwar). Shockingly, it took the judge only two minutes to deliver the verdict. Read more »