MULTI-CORNERED electoral battles may be a boon to democracy, but could spell disaster for the opposition in Malaysia, analysts said. 

“Having multi-cornered fights is good for democracy but it will be an unfortunate situation for the opposition,” said Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia associate professor Dr Faisal S Hazis during a forum in Kuala Lumpur today.

“It is good for Barisan Nasional (BN) as all they need to win is to divide the voters,” he added. 

Dr Johan Saravanamuttu said multi-cornered fights could be the beginning of post-election coalitions instead of politcal parties entering elections under one banner.

“By having more contests, we can slowly move towards the idea of having post-election coalitions. But this is a bane for electoral balance,” said the political science academic professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Merdeka Center for Opinion Research programme director Ibrahim Suffian was more pessimistic, as he felt the opposition stood to be the biggest losers if they could not come up with something to counter the loss of PAS.

The three were speaking at the “Multi-Cornered Contest: Bane or Boon?” forum organised by Merdeka Center.

The topic came about after PAS and opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan have ruled out working together during the next elections.

PAS has repeatedly said it would field more candidates to cause three-cornered contests in state and federal seats.

PH has blasted PAS for the move, accusing the Islamist party of indirectly aiding BN in the 14th general election (GE14).

Ibrahim said politics in Malaysia was still dictated by communal interests.

“Our political culture still uses race and religion… to mobilise political support,” he said.

Ibrahim said a Merdeka Center survey showed that Malay rights still topped the list of important concerns to a Malay voter.

He said 37.4% of Malays listed Malay rights as important to them, while 17% listed leadership and another 13.1% said economic performance was an important criteria for them during elections.

“Another 32.6% said government and service delivery were important to them.

“On the other hand, only 16.8% of Chinese voters and 16.8% of Indian voters felt so strongly about minority rights.

“Indians (41.5%) and Chinese (39.9%) held government and service delivery to be more important,” he added.

Right-centre narratives

Faisal said having a coalition for opposition parties alone was not enough as they also had to be electorally viable. 

“They must be perceived as having a real chance of victory,” said the head of UKM’s Asian Studies Centre.

“Besides having a coalition, the three factors that will determine success for the opposition are right-centre narratives, party building and new voters.” 

Faisal said although there were breakthroughs in the 2008 and 2013 elections, this did not change certain historical trends.

“Ethno-religious politics remains deeply rooted despite the emergence of new politics. As such, PH needs to marry Malay and centrist narratives.” 

He said the now defunct Pakatan Rakyat had initially incorporated Malay-right policies in its Common Policy Platform (Buku Jingga) in 2011, but abandoned them in its GE13 manifesto.

 Among the policy suggestions in Buku Jingga were the sanctity of the Federal Constitution, Islam as the religion of the Federation, the special position of Malays, respect for the position of the constitutional monarchy and to uphold the use of the Malay language.

 “After they dropped them from their 2013 manifesto, BN took the opportunity to question PR’s position on these issues. Perhaps that’s why Malay support for them went down, although just by 2-3%.”

An opposition without PAS

Voting patterns of ethnic groups have proven to be significantly different, said Ibrahim.

Using GE13 as a example, Ibrahim said the average PAS candidate from Pakatan Rakyat had better support among Malays (44.34%) compared with his counterparts in PKR (34.13%) and DAP (24.01%).

Chinese support for PR was more consistent, at 75.49% for PAS, 83.69% for PKR and 86.53% for DAP.

This meant that PAS had the highest support from Malay voters among the PR parties, said Ibrahim.

“If three-cornered fights occur in every parliament seat, Amanah and Bersatu are unlikely to win, and PAS and PKR will perform badly. PAS and PKR may end up with 4-5 and 13-15 seats respectively. 

“DAP, however, can still win 29 seats in the peninsula as the split among Malay opposition votes has little effect among the Chinese voters.”

Ibrahim said Bersatu and Amanah could do better if PH and PAS managed to negotiate straight fights across the board. 

“Failure for PH and PAS to negotiate will result in massive losses for PAS and PKR, with BN likely to regain a two-thirds majority,” he added.

The session was moderated by Universiti Malaya’s Dr Khoo Ying Hooi. – October 7, 2017.