Meanwhile, that other major election ended in a veritable landslide:

On Tuesday, Mr. Anwar won back his parliamentary seat in a by-election, sealing a remarkable political comeback and putting Malaysia's emboldened opposition closer to its goal of taking power. Anwar received 31,195 votes, beating his top rival's 15,524 for the seat vacated by his wife Wan Azizah, who had held it since 1999.

As opposition leader in parliament, Anwar claims he can persuade enough lawmakers to cross sides so as to bring down the government, which saw its support crumble in national elections in March. Such a move would shake the foundations of coalition politics in a democracy that is fissured along ethnic and religious lines. Anwar has said a vote of no confidence in the government could come as early as next month.

Anwar's victory is definitely one with a populist bent, as he has combined national dissatisfaction regarding the country's faltering economy with a storm of support from the blogosphere to herald the first serious shakeup in Malaysia's political structure in decades. You can't underestimate the significance of this. The Barisan National Coalition has held power for fifty years. This is in the same realm as the Soviet Union falling apart, if not quite the same level of scope. If you see a parallel here with Barack Obama and his meteoric rise, that's probably not a coincidence.

If Anwar can maintain his fractious coalition without resorting to cheap anti-Semitic demagoguery in order to maintain favor with the religious right, and can successfully duck the charges of sodomy that the ruling party has been harassing him with, he will have a golden opportunity to begin large-scale transformation of a country that is evolving in fits and starts to become a technological and economic giant, but is still crippled by race, cultural, and religious fissures. This, too, is a clear parallel, and any rising Western leader would do well to watch Malaysia's--and Anwar's--progress. There's a lot to be learned.