What the outcome of Penanti by-election means
Many political analysts and party machinery were taken aback as they had expected a turnout of between 60 to 70 per cent, but instead it turned out to be “the lowest voter turnout in election history”.
Bernama
The result was expected but not the voter turnout.
As expected Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) candidate Dr Mansor Othman won the Penanti by-election after getting 6,052 votes, defeating three independent candidates – Aminah Abdullah, Nai Khan Ari and Kamarul Ramizu Idris with a majority of 5,558 votes.
What was unexpected was the turnout at the end of the polling period which stood at only 46.15 per cent. Only 7,100 of the 15,384 voters came out to vote in the by-election – a sharp fall from the 82.1 per cent voter turnout recorded during the last general election.
Many political analysts and party machinery were taken aback as they had expected a turnout of between 60 to 70 per cent, but instead it turned out to be “the lowest voter turnout in election history”.
Political analyst Dr Sivamurugan Pandian of the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) said the outcome showed that PKR hardcore supporters came out in full force to vote, confirming recent studies which suggested that both PKR and UMNO had between 30 to 35 percent hardcore support in the constituency.
“Although it is not good for the election process (lower turnout) and PKR did not achieve the target voter turnout of between 65 to 70 per cent, the higher majority they got did indicate that their supporters came out in full force to vote as compared to the last general election,” he said.
Also, though the Barisan Nasional (BN) did not contest the by-election, it had to study and learn from it, such as how PKR could effectively mobilise their supporters to come out to vote and continue with their offensive campaigning, even when their main contender was not contesting.
The BN decided not to contest the by-election because it felt that the vacancy was due to flippant reasons.
“BN has to evaluate the strategy used by PKR, who managed to bring out their hardcore supporters in bigger numbers compared to before. During the last election, PKR had won the state seat partly due to the swing from the BN supporters to it, which gave Fairus (Mohammad Fairus Khairuddin), its candidate then, almost a 2,000 majority. In this election, however, it is clear that the votes were from their own hardcore supporters,” he said.
Another political analyst, Dr Oh Ei Sun, said the outcome of the by-election was less meaningful as basically it was a walkover as the major opposing force did not take part.
“To some degree there was a contest, but basically it’s a walkover. Both the Pakatan and BN can interpret it any way they want but basically it is meaningless,” he said.
Dr Oh said PKR would interpret the winning in more ways while the BN could say the low turnout showed that the people were not in favour of such by-elections.
The only interesting point in this by-election, he said was that despite the three independent candidates losing their deposit, they still managed to garner a combined total of five per cent of the votes.
“We thought that they were insignificant all this while, but they did manage to get some votes. This has raised some questions and showed that PKR needs to have better coordination between their national, state and local leaders and look at internal party sentiments,” he said.
On the other hand, several political leaders, especially from BN argued that the high majority obtained by the PKR candidate could not be used as a yardstick as he had won it against independents.
“In today’s politics, independents actually have no place, unless they are very much liked by the people. Independents by-large are politics of yesterday and if you win against them, it actually doesn’t mean anything,” said Penang Gerakan chairman Datuk Dr Teng Hock Nan.
