No Chinese take-away for Umno
(The Malaysian Insider) AUG 26 — The surprising thing about yesterday’s Permatang Pasir by-election isn’t PAS retaining the seat or its scale of victory
The surprising thing was Barisan Nasional (BN) candidate Rohaizat Othman’s disappointment at the lack of Chinese votes for him.
“I am saddened by the fact that the Chinese community here have failed to fulfill their vows of support.,” Rohaizat said when results were announced, adding they failed to understand BN’s concept of development.
Despite being portrayed as a hardline Islamist party, PAS won in all Chinese dominated areas in the seat — Sama Gagah, Cross Street and Permatang Pauh — thumping Umno with clear majorities.
Rohaizat and his Umno colleagues should not be surprised that the Chinese are not voting for them. They belong to a party that has ratcheted racialist rhetoric over the past few months, focusing on the Malay vote bank over all others.
The Umno-dominated BN remains a shell of an idea with other component parties in the Malay peninsula fraying with internal strife and unable to put a stout defence of a coalition that gives lip-service to the 1 Malaysia mantra of chairman Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
BN’s campaigning materials depicted had PAS as an extremist group; focusing on Chinese-sensitive issues like the pig abattoir closure in Kedah and beer sales in Selangor to regain much of the lost Chinese votes that went to Pakatan Rakyat in last year’s general election.
On the other hand, they have painted PAS as a puppet of the DAP, which rules Penang with PKR, asking the Malays to unite under Umno — be it directly or obliquely through its media — to fight off unreasonable claims by other citizens of the country.
Read more at: No Chinese take-away for Umno — The Malaysian Insider
