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About 10,000 ethnic Indians took to the streets of Kuala Lumpur on Nov. 25 in the second demonstration allowed inside the Malaysian capital in a month. These demonstrations signal more chaos and unpredictability to come before elections are announced. While businesses may experience temporary impacts, the government is not about to lose its grip on security in the city any time soon.

In Kuala Lumpur’s second demonstration in a month, about 10,000 ethnic Indians marched in the Malaysian capital’s streets Nov. 25.

While instability can be expected in Kuala Lumpur in the run-up to national elections, and business may experience short-term negative effects, the Malaysian government is not likely to lose control of the situation.

The Nov. 25 protest initially was organized to draw attention to a $4 trillion lawsuit being launched in London by a Malaysian rights group known as the Hindu Rights Action Force. The lawsuit demands compensation from the United Kingdom for transporting Indians to Malaysia to exploit the labor during the colonial era.

The protests did not take the Malaysian government by surprise — it arrested three ethnic Indian leaders before the marches and released them afterward. Notably, ethnic Indian protesters have organized along racial lines as opposed to uniting behind a nonrace-based issue (such as electoral fraud). Even more significantly, opposition groups in Malaysia are portraying these race-based riots as a milestone in the country’s political evolution, a sign of the looming ethnic crisis facing the coalition government of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.