Kuala Lumpur,
\nThe road to Malaysia\u2019s May 9 General Election is getting thornier for Opposition leader Mahathir Mohamad: officials are cutting out or painting over his image on some billboards and police are investigating him for spreading \u201cfake news\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mahathir and other Opposition leaders say the moves are intended to further help the prospects of Prime Minister Najib Razak, whose ruling coalition already enjoys a near-monopoly of coverage in newspapers and on television and radio.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have never seen an election like this. It hasn\u2019t yet begun but efforts to cheat are already underway,\u201d Mahathir, 92, said at an election rally on Thursday. \u201cYou can see that this time Najib is so afraid, he is afraid of even a picture.\u201d Najib\u2019s Barisan Nasional alliance dismissed the allegations. \u201cEvery election we hear the same complaints,\u201d Communications Minister Salleh Said Keruak said in response to Mahathir\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n
Najib has said the Opposition has subjected the government to a \u201ctsunami of slander\u201d.<\/p>\n
BN, which analysts say is facing its toughest election since it took power when Malaysia became independent six decades ago, has previously said the opposition claims are an effort to win sympathy votes and smear the reputation of the Election Commission.<\/p>\n
Malaysia\u2019s longest-serving Prime Minister, Mahathir was once a mentor of Najib but turned against him and joined the opposition over a multi-billion-dollar financial scandal that has plagued the government since 2015.<\/p>\n
Pictures of Mahathir have been removed from billboards in a constituency in Johor state, an opposition MP has said. The Election Commission said that was done to comply with new guidelines regulating the use of images of party officials on campaign materials.<\/p>\n
Mahathir said his allegations of \u201ccheating\u201d also referred to the redrawing of electoral boundaries just weeks before the poll, which his camp says will favour the government.<\/p>\n
The Election Commission said the redrawing of the electoral map in March was free from political interference, and says its rules on campaign materials are being applied equitably.<\/p>\n
A recent report by political risk consultancy Eurasia Group said that although support for the opposition appeared to be gaining momentum, it had only a 15 percent chance of winning.<\/p>\n
\u201cNajib has placed too many obstacles in their way and there is too little time before the vote on May 9 to overcome those,\u201d said Eurasia\u2019s Asia director, Peter Mumford.<\/p>\n
A BN spokesman said the government had placed no such obstacles.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe opposition are preparing excuses for when they lose, but Malaysians – whose free and fair votes will determine the result – know better,\u201d the spokesman said.<\/p>\n
In April, Najib\u2019s government passed an anti-fake news law seen by critics as a move to suppress dissent and free speech.<\/p>\n
Within four weeks of the introduction of the law, Mahathir was under investigation for spreading \u201cfake news\u201d over claims his plane was sabotaged in the run up to elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo ahead and charge me,\u201d Mahathir said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The opposition also says BN has stifled publicity for its candidates and campaigns, which get negligible coverage on national television, radio or newspapers, most of which are state-linked or seen as supportive of the government.<\/p>\n
There are no laws stipulating equal broadcast airtime for political parties in Malaysia, though in recent years this has become less of a disadvantage for the Opposition because of the growing importance of social media.<\/p>\n
Elections in Malaysia have mostly been seen by international observers as lopsided and in favour of BN, including under Mahathir, who was prime minister from 1981 to 2003.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kuala Lumpur, The road to Malaysia\u2019s May 9 General Election is getting thornier for Opposition leader Mahathir Mohamad: officials are cutting out or painting over his image on some billboards and police are investigating him for spreading \u201cfake news\u201d. Mahathir and other Opposition leaders say the moves are intended to further help the prospects of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30201,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30202,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30200\/revisions\/30202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}