Pakatan Rakyat’s 3 state targets in next general elections
By Lim Kit Siang
Pakatan Rakyat has three targets for the states in the next general elections, viz:
- To retain the four Pakatan Rakyat states of Penang, Kedah, Selangor and Kelantan;
- To win back Perak state government which was illegally, unconstitutionally and undemocratically robbed from the people and the Pakatan Rakyat; and
- To form the state government in the six states of Negri Sembilan, Johore, Malacca, Pahang, Terengganu and Perlis.
The forthcoming 13th General Election will be the battle of the century as at stake will not only be the state governments of all the 11 states in Peninsular Malaysia but federal power in Putrajaya as well.
The Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak is fully aware of the highest stakes involved in the next general elections, which is why he is so indecisive on the dates for the national polls, setting off repeated speculations as to when the next general elections would be held.
I think we can rule out the possibility of general elections in the third quarter of this year. The next general elections will be either at the end of this year or next year.
The 13th General Elections will be unprecedented, as it will be the first general election in the nation’s history where the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional under UMNO hegemony, will be facing a life-and-death battle.
In the last 12 general elections from 1959 to 2008, UMNO and the ruling coalition had gone into the hustings with supreme confidence, not only about retaining power but doing so with a great margin of victory.
In fact, there was not a single general election in the past five decades where UMNO had not contested with supreme confidence that it would be able to win power with comfortable two-thirds parliamentary majority.
Until the 308 “political tsunami” of the 2008 general elections when UMNO and Barisan Nasional suffered their worst electoral debacle, losing two-thirds parliamentary majority and clinging precariously to power thanks to the two “fixed deposit” states of Sabah and Sarawak.
Umno and BN will be fighting a “life-and-death” battle in the 13th General Election, not just about whether they can regain two-thirds parliamentary majority lost in 2008, but whether they could be returned to power or would have to occupy the Opposition benches for the first time in their experience.
