Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Malaysia Decides - The New Political Landscape

On Saturday night, I am into the election fever, expecting the same old result will be again sounding familiar. Things started to change once I started tuning to Bernama radio, its website and Malaysiakini.com. Apparently, many ruling coalition's candidates are way behind the opposition in terms of votes. Words are coming in as leaders like Tan Chai Ho, Sharizzat Jalil, Sammy Velu and even Koh Tsu Koon are in trailing-mode as the vote counting process on-going. That's a surprise!! Many have predicted the revolution and tsunami will hit soon but it never turn out to be like that. Not even the most pessimistic BN leaders nor the most optimistic opposition leaders would have predict this.

On the end of the 10 hours wait, for the full result, the night may turn out to be a sleepless one especially for the ruling coalition. With most of the top guns lose out in one of the biggest surprise ever. Initially I thought it would be hard to BN to not achieving the majority but it turn out to be a tough one. As at 11pm, I remember it was 28 for BN to 1 by Opp, an hour later; 48-12. At 1am, 77-36. The Opposition pack gain the ground so fast with early results tended to be BN way as most of the result are from Sabah and Sarawak.

Barisan National (BN), comprising of 14 component parties, won only 140 parliamentary seats, short of 8 to achieve a strong 2/3 majority. BN won the state legisterative in Perlis (14/15), Terengganu (24/32), Pahang (37/42), Negri Sembilan (21/36), Malacca (23/28), Johore (50/56) and Sabah (59/60). The Opposition block of DAP, PKR and PAS won a total significant 82 seats to deny the majority, with 28, 31 and 23 respectively. They also won state legisterative in Kelantan (39/45), Kedah (22/36), Penang (29/40), Perak (31/59) and Selangor (36/56).

BN had also only won 50.27% of the popular votes, while remaining are for opposition.

Many allegations on why BN suffer this big losses. They didn't see it coming, that is what they claimed!! Price hike, instability development over the last 2 years with many unsettled projects, corruptions (VK Lingam and Zakaria Palace), inefficient local governments, marginalisation of the non-Bumis, NEP or New Economy Policy and many others, contribute to their losses. When people flow into the street to demonstrate their unsatisfactory were end up in the the deaf ear of the government. They failed to provide solutions for many unsettled problems and resolved people's dissatisfaction over things that they called "sensitive" and are not open for discussion.

BN, if you want your glory, pride and most important, the five states...Do consider everyone as like the non-Bumis respect the Bumis' views. Many people will say that they deserve it..But I'll say that there are more things to do now. Let it be this while and see if oppostion can really work or not. At the same time, the BN should continue to serve the people and try to win their heart.

Please stop corruption, marginalisation and unfairness!!!

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