Voters your masters, PAS tells Ahmad Said after ‘stingy’ rebuke

(The Malay Mail) – The BN administration in the east coast state is now clinging on by one seat in the 32-spot assembly, after it won just 17 seats to Pakatan Rakyat’s (PR) 15 in Election 2013

Datuk Seri Ahmad Said was today reminded  that the government was subservient to voters rather than the opposite, a day after the Terengganu mentri besar chided the state’s voters for being “stingy” in their support for Barisan Nasional (BN).

While launching a low-cost housing project yesterday, Ahmad Said had categorised Terengganu voters as ungrateful despite the aid that he said has been lavished upon them.

“Please look at your own performance before you blame the people … It is not acceptable to blame the people in a democracy, since the people are the masters,” PAS’s Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad told reporters here today.

The PAS central working committee member said that BN’s dismal performance in the 13th general election was an indicator of the people’s disenchantment.

The BN administration in the east coast state is now clinging on by one seat in the 32-spot assembly, after it won just 17 seats to Pakatan Rakyat’s (PR) 15 in Election 2013. One of its assemblymen died last month, triggering the July 24 by-election that will determine if the government stands or falls.

Today, PAS vice-president Salahuddin Ayub highlighted the fluid nature of Terengganu voters, pointing out that BN had previously managed to win the 2004 and 2008 general elections comfortably.

BN had wrested Terengganu back from PAS’s short-lived rule in 2004 under the leadership of former mentri besar Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh. BN won 28 seats compared to PR’s four.

Despite keeping Terengganu in 2008, BN had won fewer seats, taking 24 to PR’s eight.

This later fell to the precarious 17-seat win in 2013, for which Ahmad reprimanded Terengganu residents yesterday, blaming them for leaving his administration at risk of what could be Malaysia’s first-ever hung assembly.

“The government has never tricked the people … But the people are actually too ‘kedekut’ (stingy) to give their votes to BN,” Ahmad said during the launch of a low-cost housing project here.

“Sometimes the Terengganu folks, I don’t know, when you promise them the moon, the stars, the heavens, they forget the deeds of BN.”

Kuala Besut is considered an Umno stronghold, as it has won there by over 2,000 votes in the previous two elections. But the party and the larger BN coalition are sparing no effort to ensure that it does not fall into PR’s hands.

BN’s Tengku Zaihan Che Ku Abdul Rahman will face local boy from PAS, Azlan Yusof, for the Terengganu state seat in the July 24 by-election which was called following the death of Dr A. Rahman Mokhtar on June 26 from lung cancer.

In Election 2013, Dr Rahman had defeated PAS’s Napisah Ismail with a comfortable 2,434-vote majority. The state seat has 17,679 registered voters, of which 98 per cent are Malays.