By-elections for Rompin and Permatang Pauh have come and gone. As expected, both winners and losers claimed they didn’t lose, literally speaking. Barisan Nasional “Taikors” who retains Rompin seat said the results are positive to them. Pakatan Rakyat “Taikors” who retains Permatang Pauh seat said the results means Malaysian Tsunami is coming. Nobody admits that the results show voters’ displeasure.
First, let’s take a look at Rompin. The seat was up for grab after Emperor Najib Razak’s chief strategist, Jamaluddin Jarjis or popularly known as JJ, was killed in an eerie helicopter tragedy. While everybody expected Barisan to retain the seat, nobody predicted the majority would be in such a humiliating manner. Slashed from 15,114 majority votes two years ago, to merely 8,895 votes, BN is still licking its wounds.
Sure, a win is still a win, and the (majority) number is still sexy, BN bootlickers explained to their emperor. But that’s a whopping 41% lost in majority, an unbelievable and unacceptable losses. Conveniently, the blame was put on lower turnout (39,198 votes or 73.5%). Cool – so using 2013’s turnover of 85.5% as a yardstick, BN mathematicians believe the “absent” 6,651 votes would have added up nicely to its 23,796 votes to yield 30,447 votes, a figure roughly won by JJ.
Of course, that assumption can only be true if all the 6,651 absent voters would have ended up voting for BN. Amazingly, BN lost 6,244 votes while PAS lost 25 votes in the same by-election, despite lower turnout. From another perspective, a lower turnout of 12% would cause BN’s votes tumble by 20.8% while PAS’s votes drop by 0.2%. Obviously, PAS is the biggest winner, considering the massive manpower, money and resources dumped by BN.
Here’s the fun part – did PAS excel due to “Hudud” or multi-scandals hitting Emperor Najib Razak? Since Najib is carrying bags of scandals now, ranging from 1MDB’s RM42 billion debt to Empress Rosmah’s lavish spending hobby, it’s hard to say which scandal(s) actually pissed off Rompin voters. Or could it due to protest votes on GST issue? Regardless, it’s highly unlikely PAS did well because of its hudud ambition.
The reason is pretty simple. Rompin voters, whereby 87% are ethnic-Malay, would have had scrambled to cast their votes for PAS in drove, if they really “love hudud” as much as PAS conservatives would want the ethnic to believe. It seems the swing of Malay votes against BN happens everywhere in Rompin – ranging between 3-6% in non-Felda areas to as high as 10% in Felda areas (refer to statistics chart above).
Felda settlements have traditionally been BN strongholds. For oppositions to enter Felda territory to give a speech is like for United States army entering ISIS stronghold to persuade them to give up their arms. It was neither 1MDB scandal, Rosmah’s Birkin bags nor Hudud which angered these otherwise simple-minded illiterate settlers. They felt cheated by FGV (Felda Global Ventures) who forced them to sell the oil palm fruits below market price.
Their supposedly FGV cash cow shares are now as worthless as toilet papers, trading at RM2.09, below IPO price of RM4.45. After losing more than 50% between the last general election in 2013 and now, what you need to do is to throw in anti-GST flame to keep the anger burning and voila, you’ve battalions of very upset settlers who couldn’t wait to teach BN a lesson. And that was precisely what the Malay settlers did.
Another proof that PAS’s baby hudud was working against the party – the swings in Chinese votes to BN in Rompin. Areas with substantial Chinese voters – Bandar Baru Rompin, Kuala Rompin, Endau – all have 14%, 27% and 16% Chinese voters respectively had swung between 4.4% to 9.6% in favour of the evil BN. The writing is on the wall how anti-GST has helped PAS candidate, but not Hudud.
Sure, the presence of Chinese in Rompin is insignificant to PAS. But if these rural Chinese could show their displeasure, what more with urban Chinese in other states? Again, it’s beyond the logic why PAS still plays with Hudud cards. Wouldn’t it be nice to attack on bread and butter issues instead of hudud? Since this hudud toy doesn’t bring in significant benefits to PAS vote bank as can be seen in Rompin, why still so stubborn about it?
In Permatang Pauh, Wan Azizah managed a reduced majority as compared to her hubby – Anwar Ibrahim – who is now feeding mosquitoes in prison. Her majority of 8,841 is 24.5% lower than husband’s 11,721 two years ago. Proportionately, Wan Azizah has gotten 18.2% lesser votes than Anwar, while BN’s Suhaimi Sabudin did better by getting 15.3% lesser votes. That’s on a platform of 14.9% lower turnout voters this time.
Thus, one can roughly say the status quo remains in Permatang Pauh. However, the Chinese in Permatang Pauh did what the Malay in Rompin have done. They punished the incumbent candidate. While the Felda settlers swung in favour of opposition PAS in Rompin, the Chinese swung in favour of opposition BN in Permatang Pauh. The primarily reason – Hudud – and to a lesser extent GST.
Voting districts of Sungai Semambu, Teluk Wang which consists of 21% and 26.7% Chinese voters saw a swing of 0.04% and 3.4% in favour of BN. While Kampung Cross Street 2, which comprises 76.7% Chinese voters saw a 3.9% swing to BN, a whopping 13.5% increase in Chinese votes for BN at Sungai Lembu (98.6% Chinese area) polling district has sent minion MCA dancing on the streets with joy (*grin*).
However, while minion MCA is bragging about their little success about securing 30.4% of Chinese votes in Sungai Lembu (they did only 16% two years ago), Emperor Najib’s UMNO has everything to worry about Malay votes in Permatang Pauh. Despite BN promises of hundreds of millions of projects, PKR Wan Azizah has captured about 5% more young Malay votes than UMNO.
Here’s the biggest problem for opposition Pakatan, which consists of PKR, DAP and PAS. Despite mountains of scandals hitting BN, not to mention “assistance” from Godfather Mahathir in punching and jabbing Emperor Najib, both PAS and PKR couldn’t secure significant new votes which could catapult them to the Putrajaya. With BN at its weakest point now (Najib didn’t even dare to use his celebrity poster), it really sucks that Pakatan could achieve so little.
Stop finding excuses that BN couldn’t do any better to capitalise on PR’s internal infightings too. That’s because BN is in power at the federal government while PR is not. If the status quo remains, it simply means BN will still be in power comes the next general election. And that is sufficient to make BN happy. The rural ethnic-Malays care about bread and butter issues, while the ethnic-Chinese hate everything about BN, plus hudud. Go figure.
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May 9th, 2015 by financetwitter
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