Chinese flight poses general election danger

By Chan Kok Leong, The Edge

The flags and banners have already come down in Hulu Selangor and the billboards will be removed before the end of the week, but the niggling issue of dwindling Chinese support for Barisan Nasional (BN) will persist for some time.

While BN celebrates the boosting of its numbers in parliament to 137 with the admission of MIC’s P Kamalanathan, it cannot ignore the Chinese decline.

Gerakan vice-president Datuk Mah Siew Keong has made an early call for an in-depth study into this matter while president of pressure group Perkasa Datuk Ibrahim Ali has asked the government to rethink its pledges to the Chinese community in Hulu Selangor.

Grinding out a result at Hulu Selangor with more than 10,000 party workers going house-to-house each day and having national leaders including the prime minister visiting polling stations is possible in a by-election, but that will prove impossible during a general election.

Allocations or “development” promises even to the tune of RM100 million can be made to a constituency as big as Hulu Selangor but it will be too big a tab to replicate for the whole nation in a general election.

According to Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research director Ibrahim Sufian, Chinese support for BN has eroded further since the 12th general election in 2008.

“We are still tabulating the Hulu Selangor by-election scoresheets, but preliminary estimates put the Chinese support for BN at around 28% while Malay and Indian support is a little above 60%.

“During the 2008 general election, Chinese backing for BN was around 37% while Malay and Indian was at 55% and 40% respectively,” said Ibrahim on Monday, April 26.