Ibrahim: ‘Worst is over for BN’
By Clara Chooi, The Malaysian Insider
KUALA LUMPUR, March 7 — Datuk Ibrahim Ali declared today that last night’s Kerdau and Merlimau results showed that the “worst is over for BN (Barisan Nasional)”, predicting that the ruling coalition would retain all its seats in coming polls.
The feisty Perkasa chief also painted a bleak picture for Pakatan Rakyat (PR) and claimed that Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s scramble for Putrajaya was now a “gone issue”.
“If you look at areas where BN won before (Election 2008), the worst is over for BN.
“Meaning, in areas where BN won in 2008 during the tsunami, today, they can increase their votes. So this means the worst is over for BN,” he told reporters in Parliament today.
The only question now, added the independent MP for Pasir Mas, was how many seats BN could wrest back from the opposition.
“Can they capture Selangor, Kedah, Penang or Kelantan? Or can they regain their two-thirds majority in Parliament? This is the only issue now,” he said.
Ibrahim claimed that if BN could successfully avoid angering the electorate with sensitive issues like hikes in essential goods prices or “saman ekor” (postal summonses) and implement mechanisms that could keep them happy, it would likely perform well in the coming polls.
The coalition, he predicted, may even be able to recapture all the seats it had lost during Election 2008.
In March 8, 2008, BN lost 82 Parliament seats and four more state governments to the loose political pact led by Anwar, a stark difference from the previous polls in 2004 when it scored its biggest electoral victory ever by winning 91 per cent of the parliamentary seats and all states except Kelantan, which PAS has kept since 1990.
