BN sure of bagging 15 extra seats as opposition squabbles
(ST) – Malaysia’s ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) is confident of reaping a bonus of 15 federal seats due to infighting in the opposition camp, bringing the total it can win from 160 to 175 seats, according to coalition information chief Ahmad Maslan.
Mr Ahmad claimed party intelligence indicated multi-cornered fights in the 15 parliamentary constituencies where opposition alliance Pakatan Rakyat (PR) component parties have ostensibly failed to resolve the deadlocks in its seat allocation talks, the Malaysian Insider reported.
“Our latest intel is indicating that we could add 11 more seats where Pakatan have failed to resolve the negotiations so there is a huge possibility that we would have multi-cornered fights there.
“On the same note, we can also win four more in Sabah and Sarawak,” he told a press conference at Umno’s headquarters here on Saturday.
Mr Ahmad had previously said BN was confident of restoring its parliamentary supermajority by winning 160 seats. The coalition won 140 of the 222 federal seats it contested in 2008. It needed just eight more to take two-thirds control of the House.
He said BN was confident of recapturing 5 seats each from the Democratic Action Party (DAP) and Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS), which together won 51 seats, while it expects to retake 10 of the 31 seats PKR won in Election 2008.
“The 140 seats we won were during the ‘political tsunami’. As I said before, the tsunami has ended. It was stopped by Najib’s many initiatives like BR1M, PR1M, KR1M and many more,” he said, referring to the programmes benefiting the lower income group initiated by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who chairs the BN.
In the last election 2008, which was dubbed Malaysia’s “political tsunami”, saw BN lose its customary two-thirds parliamentary majority and cede four more states – Perak, Penang, Kedah and Selangor – to the loose opposition pact of PKR, PAS and the DAP that later formed Pakatan Rakyat (PR). PAS had also retained Kelantan.
Earlier this week, former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said he expects BN to score a bigger parliamentary majority in Election 2013 than in 2008 with the “possibility” of the ruling coalition regaining a supermajority.
He also said in an interview with Malay-language broadsheet Utusan Malaysia published on Saturday that BN had a 50-50 chance of retaking Kelantan and Penang, and slightly higher chances at 55-45 in winning back Kedah and Selangor in the 13th general election.
Mr Ahmad’s statement comes as PR component parties are struggling to settle differences on seat-sharing for the May 5 election.
In one instance of this, the Insider report said, Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was forced to cancel the announcement of PKR’s candidates list for Sabah, a state key to PR’s push for federal power.
