The 16 by-elections since March 2008 have shown that Pakatan Rakyat can’t depend on just one race. It can’t even make it with two races. It needs all the races to vote for it for Pakatan Rakyat to be able to win the election.
THE CORRIDORS OF POWER
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Since the March 2008 general election, Malaysia has had 16 by-elections. Eight of those by-elections were won by the opposition coalition, Pakatan Rakyat, and eight by the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional.
You do not have to be an expert or a political analyst to figure out why Pakatan Rakyat won only eight seats while Barisan Nasional managed to deny Pakatan Rakyat the other eight.
In seats where the Malays, Chinese and Indians (or natives of East Malaysia) were all united against Barisan Nasional, Pakatan Rakyat won. In seats where one of the races (sometimes two) voted against Pakatan Rakyat, Barisan Nasional won.
It does not matter whether the Malays are the majority and the Indians, Chinese and ‘others’ are the minority. As long as all the races do not vote for Pakatan Rakyat then Barisan Nasional will win.
The 16 by-elections have shown that Pakatan Rakyat can’t depend on just one race. It can’t even make it with two races. It needs all the races to vote for it for Pakatan Rakyat to be able to win the election.
As long as Pakatan Rakyat can’t win the support of all the races it will never be able to win enough seats to form the next government. At best Pakatan Rakyat will be able to deny Barisan Nasional a two-thirds majority in Parliament. It may even be able to form the government in a couple of states, three or four at best. But it can never be the next federal government.
Pakatan Rakyat is aware of this, not that it is not. It knows it needs the support of Malaysians across the board and that it can’t make it with the support of just one of the communities.
The question here is, while Pakatan Rakyat knows this, does it have a plan on what to do about it?
Blaming the loss of the elections on gerrymandering, fraud, phantom voters, postal votes, and so on, is one issue. No doubt all this exists and Pakatan Rakyat needs to win maybe one million votes just to become par with Barisan Nasional. Therefore, to win by just one vote Pakatan Rakyat needs to garner 1,000,001 votes.
Nevertheless, it still can be done like what happened in March 2008. Only that Pakatan Rakyat needs to run twice as fast because of these handicaps. But if one of the races abandons Pakatan Rakyat and swings over to Barisan Nasional -- even if it is the smallest community like the Indians -- then Pakatan Rakyat has no hope in hell of forming the next federal government.
