THE decision to steer clear of ethnic politics helped Pakatan Harapan win 26 parliamentary seats in East Malaysia, a political scientist told a forum last night. 

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s Helen Ting said pundits had not expected Sabah and Sarawak voters to shift away from Barisan Nasional.

“The unexpected change was in East Malaysia because very little attention was paid there. PH thought it was a gone case. The hope was that PH’s strength in Peninsular Malaysia would make up the difference,” she said at the forum, Hope, Realities and the Road Ahead – Post-GE14 Christian Reflections, in Petaling Jaya, last night.

“The very important thing about the PH campaign was that it sidestepped ethnic politics and focused on bread-and-butter issues and Najib and corruption. They skllfully did that.”

The other speakers at the forum at the Church of St Francis Xavier were Reverend Father Clarence Devadass, director of the Catholic Research Centre in Kuala Lumpur, and Kairos Dialogue Network exco Eugene Yapp.

Warisan and PH won 14 seats in Sabah, up from three previously, while Sarawak saw opposition seats in Parliament double from six to 12.  

Ting warned that while it was tempting to see the May 9 results as proof that ethnic politics and division were a thing of the past, decades of “divisive ethnic policies” had given rise to groups with a vested interest in their perpetuation 

“They are going to be there to defend the status quo.”

Yapp said PH, in particular DAP, should have not underestimated PAS. The Islamist party won 18 seats in the elections, down three from 21 in 2013. This time around, the Islamist party retained Kelantan and won Terengganu.

“The DAP politicians say the decrease (in seats) was because they were weakened. But this time around, PAS stood on its own. That’s the reality of it,” Yap said.

PAS broke ranks with PH to form Gagasan Sejahtera, a loose coalition of opposition parties with a common Islamist agenda.

“PAS is projecting a certain image that the Islam of Umno is not so pure anymore. That there’s a lot of corruption.

“As for the Islam of Amanah, they are (depicted as) sharing power with the kafir… coupled with the fact that many of the Amanah leaders are seen as too liberal. 

“And so the PAS version of Islam is the ‘purest’. Of course a vote for DAP is out of the question. So it’s not so hard to imagine why a voter in Terengganu or Kelantan would vote for PAS,” Yapp said. – May 31, 2018.