Realignments Transform Malaysian Political Landscape
Political commentators have almost unanimously spelled out doom for Malaysia’s stumbling Pakatan Rakyat government from the three by-elections the coalition has lost since it took power from the Barisan Nasional a year ago.
Murray Hunter, The Asia Sentinel
But although the results in the federal constituency of Cameron Highlands and the state constituencies of Semenyih in Selangor and the more recent Rantau in Negeri Sembilan haven’t been great for a so-called reform government, Pakatan arguably had little or no chance of winning two of the three constituencies. Cameron Highlands and Rantau can be considered traditionally safe Barisan Nasional seats. In fact, Pakatan actually very slightly increased its vote percentage in Cameron Highlands and Rantau.
What is certain from the last few by-elections is that Malaysia is seeing a transformation of the political landscape on both sides. The alliance between the United Malays National Organization, which led the Barisan Nasional to defeat in national elections last May 9, and the rural-based Parti Islam se-Malaysia is working to UMNO’s advantage rather than PAS’s. UMNO’s failure to garner Chinese votes is molding their strategy towards Malay-nationalist narratives, which is where UMNO and PAS see the battlefield for power.
UMNO was the benefactor of the new alliance in Cameron Highlands, with its percentage of the vote rising by almost 14 percent, making this constituency an extremely safe seat come GE15. In Rantau, the gap between Pakatan and Barisan was so wide that there was never any contest anyway, especially with the Barisan nominating the locally-popular three-term chief minister and caretaker UMNO leader Mohamed Hasan as its candidate, raising questions why Pakatan even bothered wasting resources and time to seriously contest the seat even though Mohamad was discovered to have paid RM10 million (US$2.43 million at current exchange rates) for a London flat 10 years ago.
The real casualty for Pakatan was the Semenyih by-election. Any popular government should have been able to hold onto the constituency. However, a massive swing of almost 25 percent went to the opposition. Much of this swing was made up from votes the Barisan gained from its alliance with PAS, rather than the Barisan rising Phoenix-like from the ashes as so many pundits have claimed.
