The March 8 general election result in Malaysia was a rejection done in exasperation, not only of the race-centered politics of the ruling coalition, the Barisan Nasional (BN), but of its culture of politicisation. It was a demand for an end to uninspired governance contaminating all aspects of social life.

To put it simply, the common Malaysian was tired of being inconsequential. He was tired of being overruled, in all senses of the word. Enough was enough.

“Good governance, transparency and accountability” were the catchwords the opposition used during the election campaign. In essence, these wished for politics to evolve towards becoming technical formalities. If laws were openly discussed, wisely made and fairly applied, then there would be more predictability in public life and the seepage of political agendas into all forms of human relations would be reduced. This was the message the opposition managed to capture from the ground.

The voter revolt certainly did shake, but did not dethrone the BN. While this may have been one reason why no violence broke out, it has nevertheless led to grave political uncertainties, and to a more vulgar politicisation of public life.

The lines traced by the numerical results of the election were temptingly moveable. While negotiations between parties within each coalition were no doubt expected after the elections, the maneuvers to shift the boundaries between the coalitions were not.

Immediately following the elections, the dominant United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) is known to have initiated talks with the Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS). True to form, UMNO has been pushing a Malay-centric line to entice PAS leaders to desert the opposition. Given PAS’s fear of an internal split and of alienation from its voters in the longer term, chances of UMNO succeeding are not great.

But if PAS should switch sides, then a real crisis starts for Malaysia. A new polarisation of the races would begin, and painfully so, coming as it would at a point when an end to racial politics seems just round the corner.

But the new game of coalitional dualism, though in its infancy, is a complicated one. Should PAS team up with UMNO in a new show of Malay and Muslim unity, the risk is great that the other member parties of BN will feel antagonised.

Stalwart members such as the Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia, the Malaysian Chinese Association and the Malaysian Indian Congress already feel let down by their present association with UMNO. The East Malaysians, despite their ability to deliver the votes for BN, have already been complaining about the smaller share of the political cake. A new wave of Malay ethnocentrism on the peninsula would alienate them further.

A ganging up of “secular” UMNO with the religious PAS may lead to an exodus from the coalition.

This serves to remind us of the ceasefire solution between the races that the BN actually is, and always has been. Once a major member exhibits its ethnic chauvinism too strongly, its partners suffer at the ballot box. The BN should have learned this from what happened on March 8, when the issue of UMNO Youth chief Hishammuddin Hussein stubbornly waving the Malay dagger or keris at party assemblies caused the party to lose support badly.

Now in a new crisis, UMNO fails to do anything out of character to save itself. Instead it scurries along the well-worn path of communalism despite the risk of losing voter support even more. Perhaps it is happily aware that the next elections are five years away.

Equally destabilising are the attempts by the de facto opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to get BN members of parliament to cross the coalitional divide. This has helped to unsettle the new power equation formed through the ballot box in a deeper way than the calls for the resignation of Premier Abdullah Badawi have been splitting UMNO.

More shocking are allegations, on the one hand, that Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak knows more about the murder of the Mongolian Altantuya than he claims. On the other hand are charges that de facto opposition leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim had committed sodomy – an act illegal in Malaysia – with a young aide.

And so, instead of diminishing in strength after the elections, the culture of politicisation becomes ever more dominant. Recent events do show an adamant incapacity in the political establishment in dealing with the general will, as expressed in numbers through the ballot box.

While wheeling and dealing is admittedly part of the democratic game, the fear is that the sinking moral standard of politics in Malaysia may become the rule more than the exception. If that should happen, then the voter revolt for more legal and procedural formalism to replace politicking would have backfired.

Perhaps the numbers that will be more decisive than election statistics will be inflation figures. The latter do come much more often than once every five years. Latest price comparisons show that transport in Malaysia now costs 19.6% more than last year, and food prices are higher by 10%.

Overall inflation for June was 7.7%, the highest since 1982, when Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed had just come to power!

These hard figures are perhaps the politician’s reality check. Simple food and fuel inflation is what Malaysians on the street care about most.

The election message was perhaps too subtle. The inflation message will not be.