Battle for the Malay vote

Zubaidah Abu Bakar, New Straits Times

POLITICAL parties competing for Malay votes are scrambling to solidify their traditional support banks ahead of the coming general election. Winning over voters in the traditional Malay heartland has become the focus even of non-Malay-based parties and non-governmental organisations.

Of late, issues sensitive to the Malays are being cautiously handled by the governments of both sides of the political divide for fear of losing the support of the community.

Although much wooing of Chinese support has taken place in the past three years, particularly by Barisan Nasional, political realities have shifted the attention of both blocs to Malay voters.

Malays make up 65 per cent of the population. Of the country’s 222 parliamentary constituencies, only 46 are Chinese-majority and none has an Indian majority.

While BN linchpin Umno continues to be the key player in the ruling coalition, the multiracial Parti Keadilan Rakyat and secularist Chinese-majority DAP have joined forces with Pas to cover the Malay ground.

A movement called Asalkan Bukan Umno (Anyone But Umno) has arisen but it is too early to tell if such bodies can make any impact on voting patterns at the next polls. What is certain is that Umno, Pas and PKR have all stepped up their posturing as defenders of the Malay/Muslim vote, while DAP is seeking to alleviate concerns that the Malay community’s rights would be at risk under opposition rule.

DAP and PKR are courting the urban Malays, mostly young, educated and liberal, many of whom had opted out of the electoral process.

But in Penang, where DAP’s main foe is Umno, Malay votes, according to analyses by Persatuan Anak Jati Melayu Pulau Pinang (Pajim), could swing to Umno while the DAP hangs on to the lion’s share of the Chinese electorate.

PKR and Pas are out to cut Umno’s influence on rural Malays, especially in the Felda schemes.

The opposition partners have accepted that Pas, on its own, is unlikely to be able to maintain the Malay support it enjoyed in the 2008 general election.

Pas’ internal surveys show that it will have difficulty even defending its seats in the Malay heartland, including federal seats in Kelantan, the state that has been under Pas rule for the past 20 years.

The Islamist party is facing the stark possibility of declining Malay support if it remains in league with PKR and DAP. It may indeed be fighting a losing battle with Umno.

The chances are there of Pas’ traditional supporters moving away from the party they feel has deviated from its core values for the sake of expediency.

Pas knows that in order to attract new supporters among the Malays, it will have to satisfy the community that it champions, the Malays and Islam, a task that needs careful juggling with the opposition’s multiracial commitments.

Malays would be less inclined towards Pas if they see the party as simply caving in to its allies.

Insiders said PKR, Pas and DAP took serious note of a finding by political analyst Dr Wong Chin Huat, a lecturer at Monash University, that revealed at a Pas convention in February that the opposition alliance could lose as many as 34 parliamentary seats if Pas did not regain its Malay support base.

Pas did well in non-Malay areas in 2008. It won 82 seats on the back of support from all races but has seen between seven and 10 per cent of Malays swinging back to BN in recent by-elections.

The erosion of Malay support, proven in the string of Umno’s by-election victories and its intensified attacks on opposition parties lately, including during the recently concluded Umno general assembly, is causing jitters in the opposition front.

Opposition leaders have since embarked on a mission to persuade the Malays that the four states under opposition rule have implemented policies to guarantee the community would not be sidelined.

Among the opposition’s counter-measures is an intense chasing of the Felda vote by fanning distrust against BN over alleged irregularities and mismanagement.

Roughly two million people are directly or indirectly involved in Felda, about 1.2 million of whom are voters.

Discontent could thus affect the delivery of votes in the 54 parliamentary and 92 state seats that contain Felda land schemes.

There are more than 400 Felda land schemes with more than 113,000 settlers nationwide, mostly in Pahang, Johor and Negri Sembilan, making Felda settlers an important political force.

They are traditionally Umno loyalists and up to 2008, only an average of 10 per cent favoured Pas. Pas now claims as much as 25 to 30 per cent support in some Felda schemes.

Pas and PKR have intensified campaigning and recruitment drives with the help of non-governmental organisations to win Felda votes. Umno has responded with its own array of partisans.

Although no conclusive evidence has been adduced, it is widely held that a number of civil servants — a previously secure BN vote bank — have switched to becoming fence-sitters.

One thing is for sure, the battle for the Malay vote will, until the next general election, be fierce, especially for the fence-sitters.