×
Menu
Search

Congrats Mahathir – PPBM Humiliated And Lost Tanjung Piai After Angry Chinese Taught The PM A Lesson



Pin It


Nov 17 2019
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
Pinterest
Linked In

More than 3 weeks ago (Oct 21), FinanceTwitter had already predicted a humiliating defeat for Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in the Tanjung Piai by-election (click here to read the article). The official result is out – opposition Barisan Nasional has beaten Pakatan Harapan with a jaw-dropping majority of 15,086 votes. Clearly, that’s a huge slap on Mahathir’s face.

 

Barisan candidate Wee Jeck Seng from MCA received 25,466 votes, while Pakatan’s Karmaine Sardini from Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (PPBM or Bersatu) received only 10,380 votes. Amazingly, Mr. Wee received the biggest majority since he took over from (former) MCA president Ong Ka Ting, who won with a 23,615-vote majority in 2004. That’s a huge win.

 

The by-election was triggered after incumbent, Dr Md Farid Md Rafik of PPBM party, died of heart complications. Prior, Wee Jeck Seng had been a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Tanjung Piai constituency from 2008 to 2018. He had defeated the DAP candidates multiple times – in the 2004 (11,162 majority), 2008 (12,371 majority) and 2013 (5,457 majority) general elections.

Mahathir Mohamad - Thinking 3

Nope, we’re not here to gloat although it would be nice to tell Mahathir – “I told you so”. We are also not in the fortune-telling business, but the writing was clearly on the wall from the beginning. You don’t need a rocket scientist to tell why Mahathir’s party, PPBM (Bersatu), will lose the parliamentary seat – even before any of the candidates were selected.

 

We also wrote that it did not matter who Pakatan planned to field as the candidate for the election. Even if the opposition Barisan selects a donkey as a candidate, it’s a sure win. The only question was whether the opposition – Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition – will win with a massive majority. The problem BN faced was whether to field a Malay or a Chinese candidate.

 

Unlike the arrogant Bersatu party, the opposition was thinking with a clear and objective mind. The opposition’s decision to pick Wee Jeck Seng – again – was cleverly done to test and take advantage of the ethnic Chinese displeasure and anger over Mahathir leadership. And if a donkey could win Tanjung Piai, just imagine the type of victory that Wee Jeck Seng could achieve.

Tanjung Piai Johor - By Election Results

In the 14th General Election, Dr Farid of PPBM had defeated MCA’s Wee Jeck Seng with only a slim 524-vote majority. Farid secured 21,255 votes, while Mr. Wee grabbed 20,731 votes, leaving the PAS candidate with the remaining 2,962 votes. The razor-thin majority was achieved despite the people’s anger over previous BN government’s 1MDB scandal and unpopular GST tax regime.

 

In the just concluded by-election, the opposition parties have joined forces. In theory, based on the result of May 2018 General Election, a combined alliance of Barisan Nasional and PAS would win the seat – 23,693 votes against Pakatan Harapan’s 21,255 votes. Back then, the turnout was 45,858 votes or 85.67%. Wee only got 46.12% of the total votes, while Farid grabbed 47.29%.

 

However, on Saturday (Nov 16), despite a commendable turnout of 74.43% or 38,815 voters, Mahathir’s half-baked candidate failed to retain the seat, received only 26.74% of the total votes while Mr. Wee easily recaptured his seat with 65.60% votes in the six-cornered fight. What does this tell you? It simply means the voters, especially the Chinese, had voted against Mahathir.

Mahathir Mohamad – Popularity Drops From 71 Precent to 46 Percent

The constituency comprises 57% Malays, 42% Chinese and 1% Indians. In the May 2018 General Election, 74% of votes secured by Mahathir’s party were from the Chinese voters. This means 15,728 Chinese voters had voted for PPBM, while the remaining 5,527 votes (26%) came from Malay voters. Assuming the Malay votes for PPBM remained the same, only 4,853 Chinese had voted for Pakatan this time.

 

Yes, the Chinese voters had been waiting for an opportunity to send a message to Mahathir about their displeasure over Khat Jawi, Zakir Naik and dozens of other racial and religious extremism issues played by the prime minister and his minions. With crooked Najib Razak out of the corridors of power, the 94-year-old premier could not use 1MDB to fish for Chinese votes anymore.

 

The fact that the turnout was relatively high at 74.43% also suggests that instead of staying at home as a sign of protest, the Chinese were so mad with the prime minister’s leadership that they gave their votes in droves to the opposition MCA to teach the old man a lesson. Had BN sent an UMNO-Malay candidate, they may not win so massively for obvious reason.

Zakir Naik with Mahathir Mohamad

Besides bullying the minority Chinese – forcing SJKC vernacular schools to learn Khat Jawi and protecting Zakir Naik even after the Indian Muslim hate preacher insulted the Chinese – the Chinese were also unhappy with issues like pending recognition of UEC, sagging economy, rising cost of living, unfulfilled election manifesto promises and unsatisfactory performance of the Mahathir government.

 

Mr. Mahathir thought by fielding a candidate like Karmaine, with a background as a mosque imam and an architect, the Malay voters in Tanjung Piai would be impressed and threw their support for his party, sufficient to offset a small swing from a handful of angry Chinese voters. The premier’s miscalculated as he had underestimated the determination of the Chinese to punish him.

 

Perhaps Mahathir’s advisers had forgotten to remind the premier that a bird in hand is worth two in the bush. Not only did the premier fail to win more Malay votes in his little racist game, he has lost the support of the Chinese at the same time. He should be congratulated for supporting Zainal Kling who warned and threatened non-Malay minorities that their citizenship could be suspended.

Malay Dignity Congress - Azmin Ali, Hadi Awang, Mahathir Mohamad and Annuar Musa

PM Mahathir’s approach of dancing to the tune of UMNO and PAS has also proven to be a silly strategy. In his haste to transform PPBM as the biggest Malay dominant party, he tries to make his party more Malay than UMNO and more Islam than PAS. But in the Tanjung Piai election, neither UMNO nor PAS talked about racial or religious extremism in their campaign.

 

What the Chinese voters remembered on Saturday was not UMNO’s racial discrimination or PAS’ religious extremism, but Mahathir’s racial and religious bigotry in a multi-racial and multi-religious new Malaysia. They also remembered how the premier told the Malay audience at the recent Malay Dignity Congress that the ethnic Chinese were merely “orang asing (foreigners)”.

 

Fortunately to Pakatan Harapan, the Chinese had swung to the evil and corrupt opposition party not because they like MCA, but rather because they hate Mahathir and his arrogant ministers more. Hence, if corrupt and racist crooks like Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and Najib Razak think the Chinese have returned to BN for good, they must be stupider than they look.

Semenyih by-Election - Harapan and Barisan Nasional Flags

In the same breath, the PAS Islamist party must be high on weed to claim that the result of Tanjung Piai is proof that the minority Chinese (and other minorities for that matter) accept the so-called unification of the Muslim community by UMNO and PAS. This is just a temporary retaliation from the Chinese community to screw Mahathir, who is still in denial over people’s disgust over his leadership.

 

However, to be fair, the shocking loss was not only a referendum against Mahathir, but also a warning to DAP for its failure to deliver promises trumpeted during the general election campaign last year. The Chinese-based party appears to have become MCA version 2 – the lapdog of Mahathir – and even willing to be bullied by a young punk like Youth and Sports Minister Syed Saddiq.

 

Although the Chinese understood that PPBM and DAP were playing political drama, they were not interested. They wanted DAP to convince Mahathir to recognise the Unified Examination Certificate and to tell the old premier to stop playing politics of racism and discrimination, not to mention to fix the economy so that more business opportunities and employment could be created.

DAP Lim Kit Siang and PPBM Bersatu Mahathir Mohamad

Now that Mahathir’s own party has suffered an embarrassing defeat, the prime minister has essentially lost his bargaining power, if there was indeed a secret and evil plan to create a new “Malay-only” coalition government with factions from UMNO, PKR, PPBM and PAS. Will the opposition still give any face to Mahathir now that they know his party is crumbling and vulnerable?

 

Yes, thanks to the arrogant 94-year-old premier, his party has now lost one parliamentary seat. Effectively, the ruling Pakatan coalition government has also lost one critical seat. Mahathir stubbornly uses racial and religious extremism to attract Malays to his party, only to backfire spectacularly. Perhaps it’s true that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

 

Other Articles That May Interest You …



Pin It

FinanceTwitter SignOff
If you enjoyed this post, what shall you do next? Consider:



Like FinanceTwitter Tweet FinanceTwitter Subscribe Newsletter   Leave Comment Share With Others


Comments

I really hope DAP can finally wake up and voice up in this Pakatan Harapan coalition – especially that they are one of the biggest major ‘stakeholder’.

Where is vocal the Lim Kit Siang that we used to know? I’m sure the late Karpal Singh wouldn’t have let this happen.

Also, someone has been secretly brewing and allow the tension – if you go to social media, many Malay like to call DAP as DAPig.

Perhaps that’s why DAP chose to be quiet – because they are afraid to anger the so called ‘majority people’ in this country and lose power as a result.

But the irony is, MCA was a lapdog as a minority stakeholder in BN but DAP is a lapdog even though they are a majority stakeholder in Pakatan Harapan.

The big picture is that TDM wants to go back to the good old days. He wants the majority parliament seats. Most importantly, he wants the Billions stashed away by UMNO. With this Billions, he control the political narrative.

DAP was hoping to be an equal partner under PH but TDM sees and treats them as his he use to treat MCA, like a pet.

If DAP doesn’t wake up and see this, then the money truly has blinded them.

LGE in messing with UTAR really pissed off the Chinese voters. MCA is not exactly their favourite choice but UTAR is too damn close to most Chinese’s heart. Making the poor to pay more for education in UTAR is a big mistake done by LGE. The finance minister is more willing to help the developer is selling their unsold units than helping to maintain the cost of tuition in UTAR low. Pushing the holding of grant to UTAR to MCA is just an excuse. I am certainly glad PH lost by a big margin in TP.

I dont think you can make such conclusion just based on one election. There are many other factors that contributed to the loss of PH in this election. Amongst other factors are PH candidate, campaign strategy, the attitude of Chibese voters, the bad perception created by opposition regarding PH government, weaknesses of PH government to counter all the false allegation, immaturity and ineffectiveness of some PH ministers and not to forget about the possibility of subotage act from within.

Leave a Reply

(required)

(required)(will not be published)