THE scale of DAP’s defeat in the Sarawak state elections has taken most analysts and pundits by surprise.

Many have correctly predicted there was an undercurrent of discontent among the Chinese voters against DAP state chairman Chong Chieng Jen.

When news started coming in that the party has lost seats that were considered “strongholds” such as Chong’s former seat of Kota Sentosa, Irene Chang’s former seat of Bukit Assek and David Wong’s former seat of Pelawan where he had held it for two terms, many analysts were taken aback by the scale of anger.

“I did not expect DAP to perform this badly,” Universiti Putra Malaysia’s Jayum Jawan said.

He said the reduction of DAP’s seats in the coming state assembly to only two shows sheer rejection of the party by the Chinese voters.

DAP had seven seats – Pending, Padungan, Kota Sentosa, Bukit Assek, Tanjong Batu, Pelawan and Pujut – prior to the dissolution of the state assembly.

Now it is left with only Pending and Padungan, the seat that Chong had gone to.

University of Tasmania’s analyst James Chin is probably one of the few who read the signs correctly and forecast “DAP cannot keep the seven seats it won in 2016”.

In a posting on his Facebook at noon yesterday, some five hours before the last polling station closed, Chin stated “the undercurrent is so strong that DAP will end up with around three or four seats”.

He also correctly forecasted the party will have no representation in “one major town in the north of Sarawak”, a reference to Miri.

DAP lost in all the three Chinese urban seats in Miri – Pujut, Piasau and Senadin.

Chin said DAP now needs to do a lot of soul searching as “it is clear that one of the reasons for their loss was the public dislike for Chong”.

He said while the popularity of a politician is common in Chinese politics and goes in cycles, this unpopularity of Chong at the moment “is very much a vote against him for his performance during the time when he was a deputy minister”.

“People are not happy about his performance,” he said alluding to Chong’s position as deputy minister of domestic trade and consumer affairs in the short-lived Pakatan Harapan administration under Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

The anger had a drip-down effect on DAP’s other candidates, he said, pointing to Chang in Bukit Assek and Wong in Pelawan as being “victims of this mood against DAP”.

Despite the scale of the anger and the disastrous polls showing, Chin said he does not believe there will be calls for Chong’s head to roll.

“That’s simply because the party does not have any other leaders who can take over his place,” he said.

He also said Chong’s “domineering” in the party has made it difficult for other leaders to rise. – December 19, 2021.