ELECTIONS should be won or lost on issues and policies but sadly, that’s not always the case. Personal attacks and mudslinging are a common feature in Malaysian elections. We take a look at some of the arguments that have been made by politicians wanting to trump their opponents in the run-up to GE13.

AS Malaysia faces the most keenly-contested general election since independence (GE13), what are both the Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat coalitions saying about their respective chances of forming government?

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak recently told Chinese Malaysians they are “citizens with full rights” and that those who call them pendatang are “lunatics”. But how do Chinese Malaysians having “full rights” accord with the “Malay agenda” that Najib also claims to champion? To what threat is Najib referring when he warns Malay Malaysians that they may become squatters in their own land? And what has Najib said previously about organisations such as Perkasa that have openly chastised Chinese Malaysians for being ungrateful to the Umno-led government?

(Updated 11pm, 9 March 2012) ON 27 Feb 2012, an apology appeared in The Star regarding a photograph of US R&B singer Erykah Badu used on that day. The photograph showed Badu with body art, including the word “Allah” in Arabic script on her shoulders. Badu was due to perform in Malaysia on 29 Feb [...]

ON 26 Feb 2012, Kwong Wah Yit Poh journalists Adam Chew and Lee Hong Chun were injured in an attack while covering a demonstration in Penang against the Lynas rare earth refinery. Chew and Lee were both hit on the head by a group appearing to be Umno supporters who had gathered to heckle the [...]

The Bersih 2.0 9 July 2011 march drew thousands of Malaysians onto Kuala Lumpur’s streets to call for clean and fair elections. But according to Barisan Nasional (BN) leaders, the government-controlled press and the authorities, that’s not what the march was really about. In the aftermath of the Bersih march, The Nut Graph summarises some of the more popular theories by Bersih’s detractors of why it actually organised the march.