Two biggest Malay parties are in the opposition
HELEN ANG’S BLOG
Sungai Kandis was the Rubicon and Umno has crossed it.
In the general election earlier on May 9, the Harapan candidate had won the Sungai Kandis state seat handily with a majority of 12,480 votes.
In the byelection held there yesterday, the Harapan candidate won with a greatly reduced majority of 5,842 votes.
It can’t be downplayed – even though Harapan is desperately trying to do just that – an inconvenient fact that PKR’s majority in Sungai Kandis suffered a huge drop of 6,638 votes in only three months between GE14 and byelection.
The Umno man’s improved performance is also predictably pooh-poohed by the Hope politicians and their Ubah cybertroopers but nonetheless, the byelection figures showing a strengthened BN is not to be airily dismissed. Yesterday’s result at the polls signalled Umno has, at long last, realized they need to start fighting tooth and nail.
BELOW: The bar graphs show the number of votes obtained in Sungai Kandis by Harapan (light blue) and BN (dark blue) in the general election and byelection respectively; Umno has considerably closed the gap in popular support
9 May 2018
4 Aug 2018
Can Harapan ever leave its hate behind?
Najib Razak did not fight GE14 as if his life depended on it. He should have. Failing to do so, Najib allowed Pakatan Harapan to successfully amp up the hate against himself and his family – all to very destructive levels. Even today Lim Kit Siang is still suffering from Najib Derangement Syndrome.
So now Umno finds itself in the opposition. But what has changed is that the wives of Zahid Hamidi and Mohamad Hasan do not have Rosmah Mansor’s baggage and thus will not make as easy targets for the perpetually humming Harapan hate machine.
Hate politics has been weaponized like a scattershot AK47 by the former opposition Pakatan Harapan. Post GE14, the hate card will not be so easy for them to play anymore against Umno.
The race and religion card, however, will always remain relevant.
