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Malaysia's ruling coalition has unveiled a candidate list with a significant portion of new faces for the General Election in May.
Facing the real danger to lose its grip on power for the first time since the independence of the country in 1957, the National Front, led by Prime Minister Najib Razak, is depending on the " winnable" candidates to retain power, or even retake the two-third majority in parliament that it lost in the last general election in 2008.
One-third of its candidates for the 222 parliamentary seats and nearly half for the 505 state legislation seats are new faces.
The full candidate lists would be announced by party chiefs and state leaders by Tuesday.
Those being dropped include party veterans and ministers, whom Najib said must make way for the reform that asked by the voters.Najib, who is also the president of the United Malays National Organization, (UMNO), the dominant party of the coalition, has embarked on talks on the line-up long before the dissolution of parliament on April 3.
His transformation agenda and own political future will more of less hinge on the outcome of the election.
Joseph Liow of S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore said the election result will much depend on the quality of candidates in the individual seats.
"For the National Front, they will have to produce new candidates who can capture or recapture the imagination of the constituents," he told Xinhua."For the opposition, they have to ensure that the reform spirit of 2008 remains alive."
Both sides faced fierce infighting on arrangement of candidacy. Najib admitted earlier that the line-up could not satisfy everyone.
He told a press conference on Monday that he had to meet the need to bring up new faces while guarantee that there will be enough experienced hands to form the next government.The ethnic Chinese, consisting a quarter of Malaysia's total population, have been supporting the opposition in large numbers since the last election, marginalizing the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and other Chinese-based component parties within the ruling coalition.
MCA president and former minister Chua Soi Lek will not contest in the election, nor will two of its vice-presidents and incumbent cabinet members.
Liow said Najib is still facing difficulties to win over the Chinese vote.
"He has tried hard but he cannot do it alone," Liow said.
"The fact of the matter is that at the grassroots level much more will need to be done by the National Front to win back Chinese support. The main Chinese parties have not been successful in doing so."
