by Dr. Lim Teck Ghee
Finally the general election is over. For politicians and analysts, the work of number crunching, deciphering the results and trying to understand the choices made by voters is just beginning.
Some conclusions are easy to arrive at. Firstly, despite a skewed electoral playing ground and the rolling out of more than RM2.6 billion worth of financial and other incentives to voters, the BN could not improve on its 2008 performance. Although it regained power in one state and has a comfortable majority at parliamentary level, its share of state and parliamentary seats has been substantially reduced. Had a fair election prevailed, it would have been consigned to the opposition benches. In fact BN lost the popular vote count by a substantial margin nation-wide. In most if not all electoral systems found in the world, it would have been booted out of office. In our case, it came dangerously close to it.
Barisan National: Still in Denial Mode
Najib blamed the Chinese tsunami for the BN’s lack luster performance. This was a knee jerk overreaction to the strong Chinese voter support given to the DAP and his disappointment with it. It can also be read as an attempt to tap into Malay public sympathy ahead of the backlash expected from UMNO conservative forces anticipated to come together to demand his resignation for failing to deliver the highly publicised target of a two thirds majority for UMNO and the BN.
Other commentators including UMNO ones have noted that the UMNO and BN results point to rejection not just from Chinese but also from large segments of other voters, including Malays.
Efforts had been made by Najib to woo just about every racial segment of the population. In particular the Malay dominated rural, civil service and police and military constituencies were targeted with perks and handouts timed for the election. For several months leading up to voting day, government and Malay media had also given prominence to Dr. Mahathir and other conservative Malay leaders playing up Malay and Muslim insecurities and emphasizing the importance of preserving Malay and Islamic dominance. Their objective was aimed clearly at bringing about the eclipse if not decimation of Dr. Mahathir’s nemesis, Anwar Ibrahim’s PKR and its multi-ethnic agenda of change, equality and reform.
That these failed to work was mainly due to demographic, occupation and spatial changes in the Malay population and widespread disapproval of the BN’s record of corruption, cronyism, and bad governance. Attempts to stampede the majority Malays into rejecting the opposition through raising racial and religious sentiments were only partially successful with young, better educated and urbanized Malays joining their non-Malay counterparts in opting for change – even if it was for a relatively untried, little tested and potentially unstable new coalition.
It is telling that despite a massive media campaign touting the stability of the BN and demonizing the divisions of the opposition, the electorate in the urbanized states of Selangor, Penang and other urban areas preferred to vote for the deep blue sea rather than the familiar.
In the end, the tsunami was not a Chinese one but a Malaysian urban and middle class one with voters who were better informed considerably less influenced by the government and BN friendly mass media and less susceptible to subtle threats and not so subtle incentives, and opting to cast their vote against the BN.
Pakatan’s Dilemma
For the opposition, although they had their best result ever in winning the overall popular vote both at federal and state level and in making some inroads into formerly unassailable Barisan strongholds, Putrajaya was too far a reach this time.
Predictably, and with justification, PR has blamed electoral fraud and irregularities as the main reason for their failure to win power. Anwar Ibrahim, the PR leader has refused to accept the election results especially in closely contested constituencies and announced that a special investigative team from the three opposition parties will work with electoral reform group Bersih to gather information and proof that the election was neither free nor fair.
Even if proof of election fraud and irregularities is produced, there is no way the opposition or any other force can persuade the Election Commission to overturn the outcome of the election or order new elections. PR needs to reconcile itself to the fact that it went into the elections knowing and accepting of the obstacles the ruling party would deploy to stymie the opposition including possibly seeking to deny the handing over of power even if it was won fairly and squarely by the PR.
For PR to keep complaining about the way the election was stolen provides BN the justification to label them losers intent on inciting an Arab style spring mass revolt and bent on seizing power illegally. Better for them to take the high ground by accepting the outcome; and leave civil society groups to raise doubts about the legitimacy of the election results and to provide the evidence that can help pave the way to genuinely free and fair elections the next time round.
While the excoriation of the Electoral Commission and BN will not get the PR far in reversing the election results, critical analysis of their own shortcomings that have prevented Pakatan from securing a greater measure of popular support will be more useful in helping the opposition establish a basis for an overwhelming victory five years from now. The concern that the PR offers a potentially fragile replacement government and is badly divided on the key issue of Islam’s role in the country’s socio-political system remains in many minds – even amongst staunch PR supporters – and needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.
The three parties comprising PR will also need to demonstrate that they have an inclusive political vision which can garner a larger measure of political support from Sabah and Sarawak’s natives. An important reason why BN has retained power has been the failure of the Peninsula tsunami to be replicated in East Malaysia in 2008 and now again in 2013.
Malaysia’s Growing Political Maturity
What should both sides –BN and PR – take away from the elections? Firstly, the limited success of the vote buying and racial chauvinism inciting campaign should lead both coalitions to rethink their post election strategies and policies. The present and next generation of voters will be even more predominantly urban dwellers, better educated and politically informed. They will be less easily fooled by political rhetoric or bought over by handouts and promises of rewards – the latter is already viewed by many as akin to bribes which have an effect opposite to that intended.
Besides desiring fair and good governance, Malaysians crave for moderate and accommodative policies and will reject politicians and parties espousing racial and religious extremism. The clock may have been turned back by the irresponsible post election race baiting engaged in by Utusan Malaysia and Dr. Mahathir. But it cannot be turned back on the country’s growing political maturity and the changes for the better that this will bring.
Those who are now in BN, who felt the need to reform and yet unable to do it in BN, for sure will be buried even before next general election, should join the main stream Pakatan Rakyat now. There is no hope that BN will undergo changes in terms of corruption, racism, abuse of power, dll
Think carefully and quickly about moving to Pakatan so that you can really serve the people.
Sadly d truth is PR is NOT a cohesive entity comprising disciplined n righteous politicians
There r opportunists ever willing 2 sell their mothers when UmnoB/BN offer them an astronomical figure of $$ n titles
There r also selfish, terribly ambitious, impatient n kepala besar individuals who tot highly of themselves, even above d party
They BETRAY d trust dat voters gave them
Voters chose them 2 serve NOT 2 BOSS over voters n ENRICH themselves
PKR: What’s going on? What is dis rumour dat Azmin is on d verge of ditching PKR n PR, n taking 11 newly-elected MPs with him 2 UmnoB/BN?
AhCheatKor will die 2 reward them with diamonds fr his stumpy fat wife’s collection + astronomical corrupt $$
So, rakyat n voters r watching: WHO is d first toad 2 jump?
PKR won 51% msian votes, this meant in every 2 msian, 1 support PKR. It roughly translate half of the police, army support PKR.
PKR needs to plan with military generals to overthrown BN. Though it sound crude, time is running out & there isn’t much option left.
International bodies unable to interfere as the current situation is a domestic problems.
Not to worry. The game is not over yet.
The devil will be punished for electoral fraud and issue the IC to Illegal immigrant.
If everything goes according to plan. PR will take over Putrajaya by next month.
If my guess is right.
So what we have here is two sides who went into a fight and both did not get what they want.. One side need a plan, the other side need change the team..On paper the side that need a team seems to have the easier task but people fail far more easier than coming up with a new plan..
Anyone that has build an organisation knows if you got good people, then a new plan is not that hard. If you got bad people many plans will fall apart.
As a result of the just concluded elections, BN is now essentially UMNO and UMNO is BN. The rest are just insignificant hangers-on suckers.
BN = UMNO = BN.
THINGS FALL APART; THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD
(“The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats)
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood dimm’d tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
THINGS FALL APART; THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD
(“The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats)
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood dimm’d tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of pa$sionate intensity.
you have a head in BN who is full of scandals.
submarine deals, Mongolian woman,…. you help me i help you,… you never cleared yourself from these allegations.
you helped to harbour the most corrupted person in the sate of sarawak. toothless anti corruption agency. the police force is using force against the people, always abusing their power.
how can majiv lead the party and the nation with such a record?
look at the chief of mca. what kind of movie did he produce?
supp and mca always involved in internal fighting. how could they be strong parties?
why blaming others? just look carefully at yourself and you have all the answers on why you failed.
Produce the proof of election fraud and irregularities, proof to those voted these corruption government, they done sin lead to….
These bunch are still sleeping
After this GE, which shows an overwhelming support for the PR, the scums will be back at the drawing board.
Not to improve themselves or work for the benefit of the people, but to further erode and subvert the will of the people.
Looks like the first order of the day will be to induce as many frogs to leap as possible, thereby strengthening their position.
This sort of action, together with the subversive MSMs that they control, will be as virulent as never before.
There’ll be no let up from them!
PR will do well to take whatever action to counter such moves.
What is Azmin trying to do?
I hope he understands that Pakatan is the only place he can survive. If he frogs over to BN, then that will be the end of his political career. He can get what he want for 5 years and then he will be dumped forever by the rakyat.
I hope he will consider carefully and stop being big headed afterall, PKR is not even the biggest winner in Selangor.
///Even if proof of election fraud and irregularities is produced, there is no way the opposition or any other force can persuade the Election Commission to overturn the outcome of the election or order new elections. PR needs to reconcile itself to the fact that it went into the elections knowing and accepting of the obstacles the ruling party would deploy to stymie the opposition including possibly seeking to deny the handing over of power even if it was won fairly and squarely by the PR.///–the author
The Election Commission is not above the law. If there is proof that the election results did not reflect the outcome of voting, the court can overrule the EC, and the results can either be reversed, or a by-election might be called. Yes the opposition had no choice but to enter in the contest knowing that the electoral roll was not perfect, it does not mean that the people have to accept EC as the sole authority to determine the results as it pleases. For example, the EC staff decided that there should not be a recount when the majority votes were small compared to votes cast, would the decision by EC staff be absolute? In which case, the EC staff might just refuse to have a recount when the party he voted in the election won. His decision could not even represent that of the Chief of EC, and the election results in a country which practices democracy cannot depend on the whims and fancy of the EC officers. The EC has set a guideline on how votes might be classified as spoilt, and not acceptable for counting. That guideline is to facilitate counting, and the EC has not the authority to determine the intention of voters. Hence if the votes separating the winner and loser is more than the number of spoilt votes, the intention of the voters whose votes were rejected does matter. However when the number of majority votes are less than that of spoilt votes, the true intention of voters becomes important and the guideline established by the EC regarding spoilt votes determination cannot override the decision of voters. Efficiency for vote counting should not take precedence over the democratic rights of voters to exercise the right to vote, and the weight of their votes. Clearly EC has decided that the outcome of such cases are final. But we cannot accept that voters right are curtailed. PR should take the results of three state seats where the number of votes separating winners and losers were less than the number of spoilt votes in Perak for court decision.