9 Sept, 2008
More than three dozen government lawmakers flew out of the country Monday in a hastily arranged "study trip" that appeared to be an effort by the ruling coalition to prevent defections to the opposition.
The trip to Taiwan, ostensibly to study farming techniques, was the latest sign of fragility inside the Barisan National, or National Front, the coalition that has governed Malaysia without interruption since independence from Britain 51 years ago, but which is undergoing a leadership crisis and internal turmoil.
Malaysia's resurgent opposition is waging a campaign to woo enough members of the coalition to bring it down, and in recent weeks smaller parties in the National Front have openly flirted with the idea of leaving the coalition.
Top government officials have dismissed the challenge by the opposition as unrealistic. But they also have publicly asked government lawmakers to sign pledges of allegiance to the ruling coalition.
Officials insisted Monday that the weeklong trip by about 50 members of Parliament - representing more than one-third of government lawmakers - was strictly for study purposes.
"We are going to Taiwan to study about agriculture," Bung Mokhtar Radin, a member of Parliament from the eastern state of Sabah, told Reuters at the airport. "There's nothing political about this trip."
Salehuddin Hashim, secretary general of the National Justice Party, which leads the opposition, said members of Parliament had been forced to go against their will, describing it as a "kidnapping."
"This has obviously nothing to do with agriculture," Salehuddin said. "It's a very clear sign of the anxieties and insecurities inside Barisan."
The leader of the opposition, Anwar Ibrahim, returned to Parliament last month after a 10-year absence. He has set Sept. 16, the anniversary of the eastern states of Malaysia joining the federation, as a deadline for defectors. He needs control of 30 more seats to unseat the government and form his own.
Salehuddin said the Taiwan trip would affect the party's plans to win over defectors but would not elaborate on how.
Tricia Yeoh, director of the Center for Public Policy Studies, a research organization, described the government's reaction to the opposition's challenge as a mixture of "fear and incompetence."
"The Barisan government is really grasping at straws," she said.
The Taiwan trip, Yeoh said, will give senior officials from the party an opportunity to try to dissuade potential defectors by lavishing expense money on them and striking deals.
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