Drawing the Political Lines – a PAS-UMNO role reversal
Art Harun
The General Election of 1999 saw UMNO being whitewashed in Kelantan and Trengganu, losing the 2 states to PAS. In Kelantan, UMNO had a dismal run where it only managed to secure just 1 parliamentary seat out of 14 and 2 state seats out of a total of 43. In Trengganu, UMNO led Barisan Nasional to only 4 state seats out of a total 32. All 8 parliamentary seats in Trengganu went to the opposition.
The full result is here.
Held just after the calamitous Anwar Ibrahim’s unceremonious sacking from his Deputy Premiership, his subsequent ISA detention, black eye incident and the infamous mattress-and-sodomy-at-a-condominium-which-did-not-exist trial, the 10th general election saw the Malay electoral citizenry being split in a fashion not seen before.
The split in UMNO and the backlash from the Anwar episode, coupled with the 1997 currency crisis badly affected the Barsian Nasional’s performance. This was evident when KeAdilan, a party which was formed by the “Anwaristas” and contesting for the first time in a general election even managed to secure 5 parliamentary seats and 4 state seats. Overall, UMNO secured only 72 parliamentary seats, reduced from the 94 seats it had from the previous general election.
The real gainer however was PAS. Capitalising on the UMNO split caused by the Anwar issue, PAS went for the jugular in this election. In the Anwar issue, PAS had evidence that UMNO was only about one man, namely, Dr Mahathir. In the currency crisis, PAS had a financial mismanagement issue. And to top it up, PAS had its perennial political love dolls providing endless political wet dreams to all its supporters. And that was the promise of an Islamic state.
