For some politicians it has been the most euphoric ride of their life, for others a ride through hell. As for journalists, it has been an experience of a lifetime as they watched history unfold from a ringside seat.

The rollercoaster has yet to come to a halt and by the time it does, the entire political landscape of Malaysia is going to be utterly different.

For several days after the stunning election outcome, the media struggled to keep up with the speed at which events unfolded, from the swearing-in of the new Prime Minister to the formation of his Cabinet.

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The state governments of Kedah, Kelantan, Terengganu, Selangor, Melaka, Johor and Sabah are up and their respective Mentris Besar and Chief Minister have been sworn in.

Kedah must be experiencing some cosmic force – the late Sultan of Kedah became the King twice in his lifetime, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is Prime Minister for the second time and his son Datuk Seri Mukhriz Mahathir is once again Mentri Besar of Kedah. That is a pretty amazing trio of coincidences.

But Mukhriz will be presiding over a minority government because Kedah has a hung assembly.

Barisan Nasional had tried to form a coalition government (15 from PAS and three from Umno) but it is understood that the Kedah palace saw Pakatan’s solid bloc of 18 assemblymen as the more stable entity.

An online portal reported that Barisan’s Datuk Suraya Yaakob, the Sungai Tiang assemblywoman had joined the Pakatan government in Kedah.

Suraya was known to be close to Mukhriz during his first stint as Mentri Besar but she has no intention of leaving Umno. She said there had been endless calls from the other side since election night to get her to cross over.

She was really cross at the fake news about her, especially when she had to spend three hours on her phone denying it and pacifying her friends from all over.

Perak, which also struggled with a hung assembly, finally had a government led by Pakatan.

It was a sort of vindication for Pakatan supporters who had never quite gotten over the 2008 take-over.

PAS whom some analysts had predicted would win zero seats is now the government in Terengganu and Kelantan.

It singlehandedly won both states with comfortable majorities and a total of 15 seats in Kedah. The anti-Umno votes in the Malay crescent states swung in a big way to PAS.

Political intrigue hangs over Perlis which has yet to form a government even though Barisan won by a comfortable majority.

There is a stand-off over the Mentri Besar post. An Umno warlord has insisted on having his brother as the Mentri Besar while the palace is considering another candidate.

In Sabah, a government appeared to be in place in the morning but seemed to be gone by afternoon as long-time nemeses, Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal and Tan Sri Musa Aman, wrestled to take control, each claiming to have the numbers.

Cash is king in Sabah and both Shafie and Musa have immense war chests to play the money game.

As of press time, Shafie appears to have secured the numbers to become Chief Minister.

But the new man is not going to be able to sleep well at night. A government formed by cross-overs is never stable, it is old politics and cannot command the moral high ground.

While new faces have come in as Mentris Besar in so many states, Pahang reappointed Datuk Seri Adnan Yaakob for a fifth term as Mentri Besar.

And that, said political commentator Dr Azmi Omar, is the problem with Umno.

“PAS has appointed an aerospace scientist as its MB in Terengganu. Have you seen the background of their candidates? They have graduates and even their ustaz are from universities. Some of the Umno candidates in Terengganu have only Form 5 schooling and one of them studied only until Form 3,” said Dr Azmi.

Two of the Wanita Umno candidates in Terengganu were dubbed “menopause candidates” because they were in their 70s and they lost.

In contrast, PAS Mentri Besar in Terengganu Dr Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar is a former university don and political secretary to the PAS president.

The PAS list of candidates everywhere suggests that it is serious about transforming its image from that of a party of village preachers to one led by professionals and well-educated religious scholars.

On Thursday evening, photos of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim watching the live telecast of the new Prime Minister being sworn in at the national palace went viral.

He was still at the Cheras Rehabilitation Hospital and Malaysia’s special prisoner was watching together with his guests who included PKR leaders Datuk Seri Azmin Ali, Shamsul Iskandar, Dr Afif Bahardin and Sivarasa Rasiah.

Such visits are never purely social in nature, and one can only guess at what they were there for.

The delegation were there for more than three hours, sharing a meal and chatting as they waited for the live telecast to begin.

Anwar, said one of those present, was upbeat about the election result and eager to leave prison.

The next day, news that Anwar would be released that very day spread like wild fire but Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail said her husband would be out in a week’s time.

Anwar as a free man is going to add more oxygen to the political dynamics.

But the most electrifying news of all was that Barisan in Sarawak may join the Pakatan government.

A Sarawak minister confirmed that Governor Tun Taib Mahmud had met with Dr Mahathir and Tun Daim Zainuddin in Kuala Lumpur. If Sarawak comes along, it will give Pakatan an invaluable foothold in that region of the country.

The nature of the hook-up is unclear because they certainly cannot go in under the Barisan banner. They may have to join as individual parties or as a new state coalition.

The additional MPs from Sarawak will give Pakatan a more solid footing in Parliament because its current 121 Parliament seat count is rather too precarious for comfort, especially given that eight of those seats come from Warisan in Sabah where the frog culture prevails.

No other Malaysian election has produced so much drama and twists and turns. Then again, this is the first time the federal government has fallen.

The second coming of Dr Mahathir has made international news. They find it bizarre yet fascinating that he is making a comeback at 92 and he has been described as the oldest elected leader in the world.

But power has been like an elixir for him. His voice sounds strong, his breathlessness has disappeared and he looks energised.

He obviously had trouble on the hectic campaign trail but watching him go about the business of pulling together his complex victory suggests that the man has not lost that indomitable will to get things done his way.

His experience came through. He could anticipate situations and problems and, at the same time, there was his usual sparkling wit and sarcasm when dealing with the media.

He outshone the other party component leaders, many of whom looked completely overwhelmed by the weight of their victory.

But the new ruling coalition is still treading water at this point in time.

“He is a man in a rush, so much to do, so little time to do it in but he reads the ground well. For now, he has to hold the ship together and build confidence and trust in his government,” said former Jelutong MP Jeff Ooi.

According to Rita Sim, founder of the CENSE think tank, Pakatan secured some 5.8 million votes or about 48% of the popular vote.

Sim estimated that about three million of those votes came from the super Chinese tsunami, while most of the remaining votes came from Malay support.

That makes them the most multi-racial of the three coalitions, and that will be their strength in the coming years.

The Malay votes went three ways this time around but thanks to Dr Mahathir, Pakatan managed to draw its share of Malay votes even without the help of PAS.

Malays, who otherwise would not have thrown their support behind a coalition domi­nated by DAP, saw in Dr Mahathir a safe pair of hands, a reassuring figure and a guarantor of their concerns over race and religion.

However, Pakatan’s Malay support fell short in some places which explains why Pakatan had trouble forming the government in Kedah and Perak.

Barisan secured 34% or around four million votes which Sim estimates to be largely Malay votes given that an overwhelming number of Chinese had voted against it.

PAS defied predictions of sudden death, securing two million votes or about 17% of the popular vote.

While one side is basking in the euphoria of victory, the other side will struggle to pick up the pieces.

“I have taken the decision to step down as president of UMNO and chairman of Barisan Nasional (BN) immediately,” he told a press conference, surrounded by senior party members.

The United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) is the main party in the coalition.

An opposition alliance headed by new Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, 92, inflicted a shock defeat on BN in Wednesday’s election, ejecting the coalition from power after more than six decades of unbroken rule.

Mahathir, the world’s oldest elected leader, had retired as premier in 2003 after over two decades in the top job but staged a surprising comeback in a bid to oust his ex-protege Najib.

He was spurred out of retirement by allegations that Najib oversaw the wide-scale looting of sovereign wealth fund 1MDB. Najib and the fund deny any wrongdoing.

“If the party failed in the general election, the leader has the moral obligation to step aside. So based on this principle I have decided to give up both positions,” Najib said.

Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, the former deputy prime minister, would take over as UMNO president, he said.

“I urge all UMNO members to unite and support the new leadership.”

Earlier, Najib was banned from leaving the country with his wife after speculation mounted that they were about to flee, in a possible bid to avoid prosecution over the 1MDB case.

He insisted he was only planning to take a short break and return to Malaysia next week.

“We will never get a straight answer. Since the communist government was set up, the truth behind all major historical events has never been officially revealed,” the conceptual artist told AFP at his studio in Berlin.

Ai was among the volunteers and rescuers who rushed to Sichuan in the immediate aftermath of the 7.9 magnitude earthquake that devastated the region on May 12, 2008, flattening entire villages.

An outpouring of grief soon turned into fury as it emerged that thousands of children were killed in 7,000 schools that collapsed entirely, sparking allegations that corruption had led to shoddy building work.

But as bereaved parents pressed for answers from authorities, they were met with a stony silence, while Ai said he was detained and beaten by police who blocked him from testifying at the trial of an activist investigating the school collapses.

Only in May 2009 did the government say that 5,335 children were killed in school collapses — a number that was in fact far below figures given by state media previously. No official list of the victims was released.

An official investigation into construction standards for schools was promised but the results have not been published.

Ten years on, Ai is still enraged by the government’s stonewalling.

“Of course I’m still furious. Nothing has changed in this matter. It concerns people’s rights and dignity, the government’s responsibilities, lies and corruption,” he said.

‘Shock is too mild’

In the aftermath of the earthquake Ai began investigating the so-called “tofu schools” — a term likening their structural instability to the popular soft bean curd dish.

The probe sought to determine how much of the damage was wrought by natural disaster and how much was exacerbated by to human error, as well as to uncover “how this government that calls itself the people’s party deals with the people’s suffering”.

But his activism came at a high personal price.

Once the artist commissioned to help design Beijing’s Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium, Ai found himself at the receiving end of the state’s wrath.

He was beaten by police who blocked him from testifying at the trial of another activist, Tan Zuoren, who had separately investigated the school collapses. Ai was detained in 2011 for 81 days and had his passport confiscated for four years.

“All that has to do with our insistence on finding out the truth, insistence on investigating the list of dead students. Insistence on getting the government to tell us how these buildings were constructed.”

In 2010, Ai underwent surgery in Germany to relieve pressure on his brain from a blood clot which he said was the result of the police beating in Chengdu.

The operation happened just ahead of an exhibition in Munich, where Ai produced an installation using 9,000 backpacks writing out in Chinese: “She lived happily for seven years in this world” — a sentence from the letter of a mother of a schoolgirl killed in the quake.

“The government has the duty to provide information because it is a servant who works for you. You can’t say your servant doesn’t tell you what he’s used your money to buy, or how many chairs are in your house or where your bed is.

“If he doesn’t tell you anything, then he’s no longer your servant. He’s even tougher than the boss. If you ask these questions, he can beat you and even lock you up. How can you not be shocked? More than shocked. Shock is too mild. Furious.”

‘Government won’t change’

Despite the uproar over the school collapses then, Ai said the government hasn’t changed its approach.

If a new disaster were to strike, “the government wouldn’t do anything differently,” he said.

“It can’t change. The moment it tells the whole truth, it would no longer exist… Covering up the truth is a basic condition for the existence of an authoritarian regime.”

But Ai rejects any notion that his efforts were in vain.

“I didn’t make any sacrifices, I did what I should and, in fact it is what I think everyone should do. It is an individual’s responsibility to ask questions that have a bearing on their lives.

“The question of whether it’s worth it or not therefore does not exist.”

Ai eventually moved to Berlin after Beijing returned his passport in July 2015.

For now, Ai does not see himself returning to China even in the case of another similar disaster.

“My work now is on global refugees. There are lots of issues and they are all linked… Any place where human rights are harmed is a disaster for everyone’s human rights.

“I’m not (in China) now, I’m in Europe, where I’m faced with the refugee problem. So I’m facing it and making my voice heard on this problem.”

Rights defenders say clashes in northern Myanmar near the China border have ramped up since January as the international community focuses on the Rohingya crisis in the west of the country.

The military stands accused of carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign against the stateless minority in Rakhine.

Saturday’s violence was between the military and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, one of several insurgent groups fighting for more autonomy in the north.

“Nineteen [people] were killed in fighting,” the Myanmar military source said, adding that two dozen had been injured.

Thaung Tun, a local NGO leader who helped carry the injured to the hospital, said the dead included one police officer, one rebel fighter, four members of a state-backed militia, and two women civilians.

Pictures of burned out vehicles and armed men running for cover spread quickly on social media.

TNLA spokesman Major Mai Aik Kyaw told AFP that the group attacked joint military and militia posts in the Shan state town of Muse and on a road to Lashio.

“We fight because of thorough fighting in our region and the serious offensive in Kachin State,” he said, referring to fresh confrontations in Myanmar’s northernmost state between the army and the TNLA-aligned Kachin Independence Army.

Upwards of 90,000 people reside in IDP camps in Kachin and Shan states since a ceasefire between the powerful Kachin Independence Army and the military broke down in 2011.

Those fleeing violence have sheltered in tents and even churches in Kachin, which is mainly Christian, as rights groups accuse the military of blocking aid.

Myanmar’s patchwork of ethnic groups make up round a third of the population, but the Bamar or Burmese have filled the Buddhist-majority country’s power structures since independence in 1948.

Civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi said ending Myanmar’s long-running conflicts was her main priority after she took power in 2016, but she shares power with the military that fought the insurgencies for decades.

Suu Kyi managed to bring two ethnic groups into a ceasefire accord in February, adding to eight others who had inked the deal before she took office.

“The immigration department has just now blacklisted Najib and Rosmah from leaving the country,” Mustafar Ali, director-general of the immigration department, told AFP.

Najib said in a tweet: “I have just been informed by the immigration department of Malaysia that my family and I are not allowed to go abroad. I respect the decision and I will remain in the country with my family.”

The travel ban came as speculation mounted that Najib and Rosmah, a hugely unpopular figure due to her reported love of luxury shopping trips, were about to board a flight to fly to Indonesia.

Najib had earlier tweeted he was going to take a “short break”. An angry crowd had descended on an airport near Kuala Lumpur where the couple had been expected to leave from, in a bid to stop them from departing.

After his defeat, speculation mounted the pair might flee the country as former strongman premier Mahathir Mohamad, who beat him in the elections, has pledged to probe a massive scandal in which Najib is implicated concerning the theft of billions of dollars of state funds.

It will be the second general election in less than a year after a months-long political impasse saw the 65-member parliament dissolved in January.

Some 784,000 people are registered to vote across 13 municipalities and voters turned out early to cast their ballot.

“I am proud because today I have made my choice. I choose Fretilin because it has a good program to move the country forward,” voter Leni Fernandes said.

Political parties on the tiny half-island nation of 1.2 million people made their final pitch to voters this week, wrapping up a fractious campaign.

Violent clashes broke out last weekend between supporters of the Fretilin party and backers of the National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) led by former president and independence hero Xanana Gusmao.

Despite a relatively peaceful election in July, some analysts have warned the charged political environment could lead to unrest this time around.

“There are concerns given the vitriol that has accompanied the campaigning, that once the results are known one of the two main groups is going to be very disappointed and there may be trouble,” Damien Kingsbury, coordinator of the Australia Timor-Leste Election Observer Mission, told AFP.

Parliament was dissolved and new elections called amid tensions between former prime minister Mari Alkatiri’s minority government and the opposition centred around Gusmao’s CNRT.

Alkatiri’s Fretilin party, which narrowly won last July’s poll, collapsed after its bid to introduce a policy programme and new budget were thwarted by a hostile opposition.

The parliamentary election will determine the choice of prime minister for the former Portuguese colony.

Chosen by the winning party or a coalition of parties in parliament, the prime minister the most influential political figure, as the presidency is largely ceremonial but can help keep the peace between feuding politicians.

Fretilin and the three-party Parliamentary Majority Alliance (AMP) led by the CNRT are expected to dominate polls again.

East Timor won independence in 2002 after a brutal, 24-year occupation by neighbouring Indonesia.

Immigration director-general Mustafar Ali said that reports claiming that the former prime minister and his wife as being blacklisted were untrue.

“Both of them are not blacklisted,” he told The Star Online on Saturday (May 12).

A news portal had reported that Najib and Rosmah were on a no-fly list, based on checks on the Immigration Department’s Travel Status Enquiry System (SSPI) using their identity card numbers.

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Najib had also posted on his Facebook page that he would be taking a short break to spend time with his family “whom I have not seen enough of in recent years”.

Journalists descended on an airport near Kuala Lumpur in the morning as reports circulated on social media that Najib and his wife Rosmah Mansor were due to board a private jet and fly to Indonesia.

Najib’s long-ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition suffered a shock loss in an election to an alliance headed by Mahathir Mohamad, 92, himself a former premier who came back to take on his ex-protege, Najib.

Since his defeat, there has been speculation Najib and his wife might try to flee the country as the new government has vowed to investigate a massive financial scandal that the ex-leader has been implicated in.

In a series of early morning tweets, Najib said: “I will take a short break to spend time with my family whom I have not seen enough of in recent years.

“I pray that after this divisive period, the country will unite.

“I apologise for any shortcomings and mistakes, and I thank you, the people, for the opportunity to lead our great nation.”

He did not give further details about his plans.

Dozens of journalists descended on Subang Airport, a small airport just outside the capital, after what was believed to be a manifest circulated online showing Najib and his wife were due to board a flight to Jakarta on Saturday morning.

Police were guarding the airport.

Some media reports said the pair were on a travel blacklist and would not be allowed to leave.

But the immigration department’s director-general Mustafar Ali told AFP: “They are not blacklisted so far.”

Mahathir’s victory broke the grip on power of Najib’s Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, which had ruled Malaysia uninterrupted since independence from Britain in 1957.

Najib’s premiership was battered by allegations he oversaw the plundering of billions of dollars from sovereign wealth fund 1MDB. Najib and the fund deny any wrongdoing.

Mahathir, who is the world’s oldest elected leader, has said that the king has agreed to pardon jailed leading politician Anwar Ibrahim, paving the way for his return to politics and to potentially become premier.

Voters came out in force to topple the scandal-plagued leader and the increasingly authoritarian regime that had led the country uninterrupted for more than six decades, handing power to an opposition alliance headed by ageing former autocrat Mahathir Mohamad.

But for the ex-premier, the result could mean more than just the end of his political career — Mahathir has vowed to launch investigations into a headline-grabbing controversy in which Najib is implicated in plundering billions of dollars from sovereign wealth fund 1MDB.

At a press conference after his shock win, Mahathir — who had previously ruled Malaysia for two decades and staged a comeback to oust his former protege Najib — vowed to “retore the rule of law”.

The fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), was set up by Najib when he came into office in 2009 ostensibly to promote Malaysia’s economic development, but allegations soon surfaced that money was missing.

The scandal exploded in 2015 when reports emerged that Najib received $681 million into his personal bank accounts. A domestic investigation cleared him and concluded the money was a donation from the Saudi royal family, and he has denied any wrongdoig.

But the US State Department has alleged in civil lawsuits that $4.5 billion was looted from the fund, and used to buy everything from high-end US real estate to artworks and a luxury yacht.

After being booted out as premier and losing the protection of high office, speculation has been mounting that Najib and his wife Rosmah Mansor, a hugely unpopular figure due to her reported love of costly luxury shopping trips, might flee.

But analysts and politicians played down this possibility saying Najib would likely stay in Malaysia — at least in the short term — until the dust had settled in his party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), and in any case there were unlikely to be many countries willing to accept him.

– Few options –

“He does not have lots of options,” James Chin, a Malaysia expert from the University of Tasmania, told AFP.

“The only countries that may give him political asylum will be somewhere in the Middle East.”

Charles Santiago, an MP from the Democratic Action Party, part of the new ruling alliance, said that Najib was still the head of the long-ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition and would want to hold the fort for at leat a while.

He also said fleeing was unlikely as “other countries won’t touch him because of 1MDB”.

Mahathir told reporters this week he believed the new government could get back most of the money stolen from 1MDB.”We have to increase the confidence of investors in this administration,” he said.

He has also indicated that Attorney-General Mohamed Ali Apandi, who cleared Najib over the scandal and closed down domestic investigations, was already in the cross-hairs of the new administration.

But Chin said it was unlikely anything would happen to Najib immediately with regard to 1MDB, as the new government would want to show it was following due process.

“They will have to institute a proper investigation,” he said.

Najib’s position as head of both UMNO and BN looked shaky, with rumblings of discontent growing louder as a senior member — former sports minister Khairy Jamaluddin —  publicly called for “big changes” to be made without delay.

BN strategic communications director Abdul Rahman Dahlan, who lost his parliamentary seat in the election, said he wanted “a peaceful transition”.

“But there has to be a collective decision including from the president (Najib),” he said.

As for Najib’s widely despised wife, Chin said she only had one choice.

“If she wants to be protected, she has to disappear from public view completely,” he said.//AFP