BN will recapture all Pakatan states, win two-thirds majority, say Umno leaders
Puad said BN has its fingers on the pulse of today’s voters.
Clara Chooi, The Malaysian Insider
Umno is confident of wresting back all four Pakatan Rakyat-led (PR) states and even recapturing its two-thirds parliamentary majority in the coming polls, buoyed by a strong belief that the Najib government’s reformist measures have successfully impressed the Malaysian electorate.
Several leaders told The Malaysian Insider that Umno is now fully prepared to march to the battle lines, having struggled through four years of heavy transformation from the party’s administration to the mindsets of its over three million members.
Emerging fully charged after the second day of the party’s assembly here yesterday, the leaders wasted no breath in declaring that achieving two-thirds is no longer an aspiration for Umno but a comfortable reality.
“Of course,” Umno secretary-general Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said, when asked if the party was confident it would once again occupy two-thirds of Parliament’s 222 seats after the polls.
“I believe that we will win back two-thirds and we will get back at least all the four Pakatan states… including Kelantan and Penang,” he added. Kelantan has been in PAS’s hands since 1990.
Generous estimates of Barisan Nasional’s (BN) chances at the ballot boxes have included Kelantan as a possible casualty for PR but most observers believe that the federal opposition pact will withstand any onslaught in Penang.
Despite this, Tengku Adnan was not alone in his prediction.
Former Perlis Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim appeared to agree that Penang should not be regarded as impossible to recapture.
“We are confident of getting back Kedah, even Kelantan and Selangor… and Perlis, of course. Maybe we have to work harder in Penang,” he said of the state led by DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng.
Umno deputy minister Dr Mohd Puad Zarkashi was equally as confident as his party colleagues of BN’s chances next polls.
“Oh definitely, two-thirds majority. I’m very confident,” he told The Malaysian Insider.
The leaders owed their optimism to what they said was a flagging support for PKR and renewed confidence in the much-changed BN government under the leadership of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who will close the Umno congress later this evening.
The bespectacled son of Malaysia’s second prime minister has already earned himself the title of “Father of Transformation” for his countless transformative initiatives and reform measures that include historic legislative changes.
Key among these was Najib’s decision to pull the Internal Security Act (ISA) from Malaysia’s statute books, a long-time demand of opposition leaders and civil society groups.
The prime minister also enacted a fresh law to regulate mass public gatherings, which was in the past deemed a crime under section 27 of the Police Act.
He even mooted amendments to allow greater media freedom and permit student participation in politics, keeping to his promise to widen civil liberties in Malaysia.
“This is a big example of walking the talk. Najib is clearly serious about making changes and although he ruled without a two-thirds majority, it did not pose as a hurdle to his intention to fulfil his promises,” Puad said.
The deputy education minister added that Najib and BN also have their fingers on the pulse of today’s voters and have acknowledged that it would be the fence sitters, new voters, youths and women who will determine their future at the ballot boxes.
He explained that this was why Najib has been pulling out all the stops in ensuring he remains close to these voter groups by keeping in touch with them constantly and doling out initiatives tailored specifically for them.
As examples, Puad pointed to the BN Youth job fair, the My First Home scheme for young homeowners and even the extension of Bantuan Rakyat 1 Malaysia to the youth group.
But apart from BN’s tireless campaign to shore up support, the Umno leaders pointed out that voters have also begun returning to the ruling pact because they have had time to weigh in on the promises dished out by those in PR.
They repeated old lines of the purported failure by PR member parties to strike a cohesive agreement to iron out key ideological differences which, they said, could prove detrimental if the pact comes to power without resolving these issues.
Over the past few days of the assembly, delegates have been warning of instability in the nation under a PR federal government, largely due to the protracted dispute between PAS and the DAP over the former party’s struggle for an Islamic state and hudud laws.
Shahidan said it was due to BN’s power-sharing formula that Malaysians have managed to enjoy decades of peace among the races, warning that this could be ruptured under PR.
“In Malaysia, if you want a strong government and you do not want a crisis, they you need this formula,” he said.
He said that even though Umno is a race-based party like some of its partners in BN, it was not “racist”.
“But somehow, because we still see some disparity between the races, we have to fight for our respective races… this is important in a sense because one race would know about their community better than others,” he said.
The Malaysian Insider reported in October that BN expects to win more than the 140 federal seats it took in Election 2008 despite the onslaught and talk by PR that it can capture Putrajaya in the next general election.
