Bagan Pinang buy-election: the old UMNO to the fore?

By Sim Kwang Yang

The Bagan Pinang by-election will surely be won by UMNO, and give them a reprieve from the long record of seven losses in West Malaysia in the past year and six months.

Bagan Pinang is quite a mixed seat, with nearly 70% Malay votes, 10.5 %  Chinese votes, and 19.9% Indian votes.  By right, it should be a good seat for Pakatan Rakyat to win handsomely.

But there are 5000 postal votes in Bagan Pinang, and we all know about postal votes.

When I used to contest many elections long ago, I would be visited in my office by some uniformed personnel still wearing their uniforms.  They told me that they have been offered RM100 per vote by my BN opponent, but they would happily vote for me for RM30 only.

I would as a habit asked them to take the RM100 from BN, but I did not report them.  That whole system of postal voting is so corrupt that there is no point catching a few small fish.

One of the things we should pray for is that when the Pakatan Rakyat takes over government at the federal level, they will initiate major reform to our electoral laws, including the ones on postal voting.

All I can expect is for the Pakatan Rakyat candidate to slash down the BN majority, and we can call it a victory.  The PR share of Chinese votes should go up given the rising fortune of the DAP, and there should be more Indian support in the wake of the cow head incident.

Read more at: Bagan Pinang buy-election: the old UMNO to the fore?