THREE-CORNERED fights will not cause Pakatan Harapan (PH) to lose Selangor to Barisan Nasional, said DAP election strategy director Dr Ong Kian Ming.

Ong said Selangor voters were practical and would choose the party that had delivered on its promise of good governance, instead of falling for mainstream media propaganda and .

“The performance of the Selangor government, though not perfect, is positively felt by the voters in the state through many of the welfare programmes under the ‘Inisiatif Peduli Rakyat’ umbrella, including free medical cards for low-income families and individuals and free buses in each of the districts and municipalities in the state,” the Serdang MP  said in a statement today.

“Investments and jobs continue to pour into Selangor. The high popularity of Selangor Menteri Besar Azmin Ali stands in stark contrast to that of Prime Minister Najib Razak,” he said.

PH is highly likely to meet Barisan Nasional and former ally PAS in the next general election.

PAS broke political ties with DAP in 2015 and with PKR in May. The Islamist party recently announced that it would contest 42 out of 56 seats in Selangor, meaning that it would be gunning seats currently held by PKR, leading to three-cornered fights.

PAS election director in Selangor, Roslan Shahir Mohd Shahir, however, had said there was still room for cooperation with PKR.

Political observers have noted that Umno and BN stand to gain from three-cornered fights, which will split the opposition vote.

However, Ong said there were over two million voters in Selangor who were not “attached” to any political party as they had moved to Selangor for better job and educational opportunities.

“Many of these voters also have better access to information including social and online media. They are not ‘brainwashed’ by the mainstream media,” he said, adding that the voters also had higher income and education profiles compared to other states.

He also noted that Selangor had the highest number of newly-registered voters than other states.

Looking at the voting trend in Selangor in previous elections from 1990 to 2013, support for BN was the most unpredictable, compared with states such as Kedah, Kelantan, Terengganu, Penang, and Perak.

“BN support in Selangor is the most volatile among all these frontline states. For example, the BN support in Selangor increased from 54.8% to 72.4%, a massive spike, due to the high economic growth enjoyed by the country during the ‘East Asian’ miracle years from the early 1990s until just before the Asian economic crisis of 1997.
 
“Support for BN in Selangor fell to 54.8% during the 1999 Reformasi elections. It then increased to 62.8% in 2004 during the Pak Lah ‘tsunami’ before falling to 43.4% in the 2008 BN backlash elections and falling to 38.4% in the 2013 polls,” he said.

The opposition coalition then known as Pakatan Rakyat took Selangor in the 2008 and 2013 general elections.

Selangor BN chief Nor Omar recently said the state’s three former menteris besar – Muhammad Muhammad Taib, Abu Hassan Omar and Dr Khir Toyo – have been roped in to help BN take back Selangor, the richest state in Malaysia, in the coming elections.

However, Ong said Selangor voters have no reason to hand the state back to BN.

“There is nothing in BN’s track record and leadership to indicate that voters in Selangor will reward it in the next general election, especially when the best the BN can do is to parade a line-up of three ex-menteris besar, one of whom was convicted of corruption and another who was found carrying a suitcase full of cash to Australia.” – September 26, 2017.