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(The Toledo Times) - MALAYSIA'S successful general elections held earlier this month were a tribute to the ability of its varied peoples to cooperate in making the country work.

The Southeast Asian nation of 27 million includes the 60-percent majority Malays, 25 percent Chinese and 8 percent Indians by ethnicity, overlaid by various religions. Malaysians can be Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, or Hindu. Ethnicity and religion may correspond, but not necessarily.

The gaps these differences present potentially in elections make American political sniping over race, gender, and - when former Massachusetts and Arkansas governors Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee were still in the contest - religion, look truly trivial.

In any event, Malaysia's governing coalition, the 14-party National Organization for Malay Unity, led by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, held onto power, but with a considerably reduced majority from the 91 percent it won in the last elections in 2004. The prime minister's party has been in power in Malaysia since independence in 1957.

Three major opposition parties, the Pan-Islamic Party of Malaysia, the Democratic Action Party, and the National Justice Party, gave the coalition a run for its money for the 222 seats in the parliament. Malaysia's economic performance is fairly strong and the country stays out of wars, so the major campaign issues were corruption, sex scandals involving the country's leadership, and the possibility of the elections being crooked, an ever-present danger with a single party that has been in power for 51 years.

Americans, of course, have never heard of such issues in their political campaigns.

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