Why BN will win the next general election

By MT Webmaster Last updated Mar 22, 2016

Well, let’s see how good Umno and BN are over the next two years in convincing the Malay voters that Umno and its partners represent kepentingan Melayu dan Islam while DAP and PH represent kepentingan Cina dan musuh Islam.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Why do I say Barisan Nasional (BN) will win the next general election expected two years or so from now in 2018?

Well, first of all, both sides of the political divide admit that Sabah and Sarawak are BN’s ‘fixed deposits’. And that is why the Sarawak State Election that is around the corner is very crucial. Whoever wins the Sarawak State Election will more or less be assured of winning the general election in Sarawak two years later, and hence in Sabah as well.

You are not going to see a situation where the voters give the state to one party and then vote parliament for the other party. Normally they will vote state and parliament for the same party.

Chinese in Penang, however, have been known to vote state for one party and parliament for the other party. They are capable of giving the state seat votes to Barisan Nasional and the parliament seat votes to the opposition. This is called hedging your bets.

One Penang chap told me in the early 1990s that this is so that they can keep the state under the ruling government and send the opposition MPs to parliament to fight. Don’t fight in Penang. Go fight in Kuala Lumpur.

The Penang Chinese have turned ‘eating your cake and getting to keep it too’ into an art form that the Malays should learn from. There is a Chinese saying: why drink one cup of tea when you can drink two? And even the MCA and Gerakan members and leaders in Penang play this game of giving the state to DAP while making sure that BN still controls Parliament.

Anyway, most non-Chinese do not do that. So if they vote state for one party then you can expect them to vote parliament for the same party as well. Hence the Sarawak State Election will be a reflection of the parliamentary election as well and we will more or less know very soon whether BN will still be the government in 2018.

The second reason why BN will win the next general election is due to the news item below. Race, and for the Malays religion as well, will very much determine how Malaysians vote.

When you talk to the Chinese they will talk about the economy and matters related to money (abuse of power, corruption, cronyism, nepotism, 1MDB, the RM2.6 billion donation, the NEP, etc.) as the main factors that will influence them.

Some Malays will speak exactly like how the Chinese talk, in particular those liberal Malays and Malays who think they are liberal. But at the end of the day, never mind how liberal they may think they are, they are still very much Melayu and Muslim in their mind.

In short, you can take the Malay out of the kampung but you can never take the kampung out of the Malay.

If you don’t think so then why not we do a test? The next time you are invited to the home of one of your liberal Malay friends for dinner or for Hari Raya bring your pet dog along and let it run around the house. Also bring a few bottles of wine and open the wine bottle and start passing it around. Let’s see whether your so-called liberal Malay friend is still liberal or will he or she start acting Malay-Muslim and take offense.

And don’t just shake hands or salam. Hug and kiss your liberal Malay friend’s wife and ask your wife to do the same to the husband. You will find that the Malay couple you thought were liberal are not really that liberal after all. Better still, bring your gay friend and his/her gay partner along and introduce them to your liberal Malay couple friend. And make sure the gay couple shows how lovey-dovey they are with passionate kisses in between the satay and rendang.

You will find that ‘liberal’ Malays do not exist except for maybe 5% or so of the population. The rest are very much Malay-Muslim in mentality. And that is how they are going to vote in the general election — as Malays-Muslims.

Yes, some Malays will vote for DAP. But then only if DAP is in Pakatan Harapan (PH) together with PKR and Amanah. If DAP were all alone outside what is being presented as a ‘Malay-led’ coalition then you might as well stop dreaming about the Malay votes.

DAP will need PKR and Amanah to con the Malays into voting for PH. And the Malays will vote for PH not because of DAP but because of PKR and Amanah. But they will have to use the platform of abuse of power, corruption, cronyism, nepotism, 1MDB, the RM2.6 billion donation, the NEP, and so on, to convince the Malays that PH is the better and noble choice.

And that is precisely what they are doing. Hence the importance of the 1MDB and the RM2.6 billion donation issues to the PH cause. Without that PH will have no song and dance show.

In other words, a vote for BN is a vote for bad. A vote for PH is a vote for good. So if you want good then you need to vote for PH. But will the majority of the Malays choose ‘good’ over kepentingan Melayu dan Islam?

That is the RM2.6 billion question.

And Umno does not need to work too hard on this because DAP has more or less shot itself in its own foot at demonstrating it is the enemy of the Malays and Islam. And if enough Malays are convinced of this then Umno and BN are still going to be in office come 2018.

Anyone want to place bets on this?

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Racial politics still effective, survey shows

(FMT) – A survey commissioned by the Centre for a Better Tomorrow (Cenbet) has shown that racial political rhetoric can still sway more than half of the population of Peninsular Malaysia.

The survey was carried out on a random sampling of 1,056 respondents from both urban and rural areas, with interviews conducted face-to-face using a questionnaire in several languages. While 40 per cent of the respondents openly admitted to being racist, 18 per cent denied being racist but said they would vote only for candidates of their own race.

When the respondents were asked whether they believed that race-based policies were still relevant, 34 per cent of them agreed, while 54 per cent disagreed. The remaining 12 per cent said they were unsure.

Speaking at a press conference here today, Cenbet Co-President Gan Ping Sieu said the reason politicians were still using racial-based strategies was that it had proven to be effective.

“If you want politicians to move away from race-based parties and politics, then the people need to show that they do not want it,” he said. “Based on this survey, it’s apparent that race-based strategies still work.”

He pointed out that the Malaysian population was largely made up of citizens below the age of 25. He said this meant that the findings of the survey were reflective of the aspirations of the younger generation.

When asked why the survey was conducted only in Peninsular Malaysia, Gan said racial tension had always been more prevalent in the peninsula than in Sabah and Sarawak.

Raja Petra Kamarudin RPK