Month: April 2011

By Bridget Welsh
Apr 23, 11

The simple fact in the wake of Saturday’s polls is that Pakatan Rakyat has failed to dent the two-thirds majority in Sarawak and deliver the needed electoral gains to push Abdul Taib Mahmud from office.

Much has been made of the unfairness of the polls, the use of money and the electoral irregularities. While these issues were important, they should not be excuses that overshadow shortcomings.

The Sarawak polls serves to remind the opposition some its weaknesses and without addressing these problems, their own one-third in the Dewan Rakyat could be in jeopardy.

Unlike in Sarawak, there is no dominant Taib issue at the national level and Prime Minister Najib Razak has regained support, particularly among Malays and Indians.

Further, in many ways, the unbalanced nature of the results, with the DAP winning the lion’s share of seats, has also created a new set of hurdles and it points to a growing unevenness within the opposition itself.

In the aftermath of the polls, the opposition faces the stark reality that it needs to move from a campaign of promising “change” to actual delivery. Continue reading “S’wak polls: Reality check for Pakatan”

By Bridget Welsh

The Sarawak polls are over and the attention is now on assessing its implications at both the state and national levels. Much attention has focused on predictions for the next general elections, with the range of possible dates moving from a few months to further postponement until 2013.

My own view remains that there needs to be some time before the national election machinery is in place again, given the challenges that have emerged from the Sarawak campaign and that anything held this year would be too risky for the BN.

The political terrain is now more uncertain. In this vein, this article examines the immediate political implications, the “sweet” and “sour” challenges that the BN has to face in the wake of the state polls. Tomorrow’s piece will examine the implications for Pakatan Rakyat.

The Sarawak results indicate that the BN has suffered a serious bruising and will have to make hard decisions to improve its performance in the next general election.

Taib the victor (and loser)
Continue reading “Sweet and sour aftermath of S’wak polls”

By Terence Netto
Apr 21, 11

COMMENT If a mature politics is a pattern of creative responses to society’s vast inertia and small margin for change, then the idea of a merger between DAP and Snap is one of the more stimulating propositions to emerge in recent times.

With one stroke, Alexander of Macedon solved all the mystery of the Gordian knot. A DAP-Snap merger, in one fell swoop, would break the racial mould in which Sarawak’s politics has for the last four decades been mired.

Floated by the DAP’s strategic director, Lim Kit Siang, in the immediate aftermath of his party’s redoubtable showing in the Sarawak polls last Saturday, the idea is a win-win proposition for both parties.

For the DAP, the merger would enable them to field suitable Chinese Malaysian candidates in Dayak-majority seats; as for Snap, they can commend capable Dayak candidates to stand in the urban centres in Sarawak where Chinese voters predominate and who, in the election last week, overwhelmingly preferred DAP candidates to rival, SUPP, ones.

This hypothetical cross-fielding of candidates would begin to bridge the real but unspoken gulf in Sarawak: the chasm in politics and economics that exist between the more affluent Chinese and the majority and disadvantaged Dayaks, especially the Iban.

The gulf is compounded on the one side by condescension and, on the other, by mistrust. It’s the kind of divide that politicians are loath to deal with. In sallying forth to try, Lim delivers another blow to his critics’ unfair stereotype of him as a covert racist. Continue reading “DAP-Snap merger would break the mould”

By Ong Kian Ming

I did not have time to write a prediction piece for the recently concluded Sarawak state election because I was heavily involved in the campaign this time, rather than analysing it as an outside observer.

But I did tweet and put on Facebook (and placed a few friendly wagers) that the BN would lose its two-thirds majority by failing to win at least 47 seats. I was, not for the first time and certainly not for the last time, wrong.

In this first of my two-part analysis of this election, I will quickly lay out the basis for my initial optimism and then proceed to explain, using the election results, why my prediction did not materialise.

I will pay particular attention to the very complicated voting patterns exhibited by the various non-Muslim bumiputera groups because these voters were, and will likely be, the swing voters come the next general election.
Continue reading “S’wak: Why Pakatan failed to deny 2/3rd majority”