The Rakyat Have Spoken, Pakatan Wins Simple Majority But Might Face Difficult Times Ahead
(Malaysian Digest) – As the full results are in and the dust has settled over the 14th General Election (GE14), Pakatan Harapan (PH) sent shockwaves throughout the country when they managed to wrangle a simple majority to form a new government in Putrajaya.
This time around, PH managed to pull their weight and won 121 Parliamentary seats, which is 32 seats more than the 89 they won in GE13.
The battle for PH winning the election was not without its surprises, considering them taking over the government is a surprise in and of itself, as they also pulled a surprising win over popular BN candidates such as Datuk Seri Salleh Said Keruak, Datuk Seri Razali Ibrahim, Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai and Datuk Seri S. Subramaniam.
While there are more that can be dissected from the election results, the more pressing issue is, what happens next?
Gloomy Economic Outlook For PH
On the economic front, Macquarie Research forecasted huge uncertainties for corporate Malaysia that is used to political predictability that Malaysia has enjoyed for the past 60 years.
“The market will, at the macro level, take its cue from the PH manifesto while, re equity-specific impacts, focus on potential negative fallout for companies and sectors which are overly-dependent on government contracts and concessions, a grouping which would include a sizeable number of GLCs, as well as companies/sectors which could be taxed to bridge the fiscal revenue gap from abolishing GST,” the report reads.
The report also noted that there will be a sharp increase in fiscal deficit due to the abolishing of GST and this will cause a heavy selling in the Ringgit that will weaken the Ringgit.
Economic analyst Prof Datuk Dr Amir Hussin Baharuddin opined that we will be looking at a very disturbed economy because the market would not know how to behave and what to expect.
“This is the transition that the newly elected must be careful of because the expectation factor is very negative due to the lack of track record as they have never done it before,” he said.
He explained that the uncertainties surrounding PH, especially when looking through their manifesto, would hurt businesses because they would not know how the economy would be like.
“They will not only be dealing with the head of ministries but heads of corporations getting worried, replacing GST with SST without having the change laid out, waiving the PTPTN, owners of toll roads not getting what they should have and free education.
“These needs to be fulfilled in 100 days and whether they can or cannot manage it will be in the minds of people. There are too many changes required and needs to be done, and that will make everything uncertain.
“This will hurt the economy because the people do not like drastic changes in the government.
“Business in uncertainty is not good and it will not be easy for whoever wins in that kind of situation,” he opined.
Cabinet Could See A Return Of Old And Familiar Faces
This shocking outcome will also bring about drastic changes as political analyst Prof Dr Ahmad Atory Hussain said that the PH government will have the power to do a lot of things even though they did not win two thirds majority.
“I think they will change a lot of policies as well as rolling back or changing anything that Datuk Seri Najib Razak has done all this while,” he said.
He also noted that other drastic changes they will make that can be found in PH’s manifesto include limiting the terms in office for the Prime Minister and introducing a new procedure to appoint individuals into several positions.
Old and familiar faces are also expected to return as Prof Atory predicts several Umno veterans will be making their way back to Cabinet.
“Tun Dr Mahathir will be helped by many of his old friends such as Tun Daim Zainuddin, Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz and Tan Sri Dr Rais Yatim,” he said.
With their win, it will be seen whether PH will be able to implement their 100 days promise which include abolishing GST, introducing targeted petrol subsidies and postponing PTPTN repayments, apart from implementing their GE14 manifesto.
While it’s still too early to predict what the actual sentiment of the people would be, Prof Atory believes that PH supporters will be satisfied with the results because their goal was to topple BN.
“They were aiming for a simple majority so that they could make changes and introduce new policies even though it would be difficult for them to amend the constitution, so I think they would be satisfied with the results,” he said.
