IF you ask me whether Pakatan Harapan (PH) will win the Malacca elections, my immediate response would be “I don’t know.” A more nuanced response would be “depends on voter turnout.” It is down to the wire.

My team and I have been in Malacca for most parts of the week, and will continue to be this week until polling day on Saturday. It has been a very difficult campaign as candidates and campaigners are barred from physical campaigning.

It is also difficult for Umno, a party that used to claim to have 3.5 million members, which is nearly 20% of Malaysia’s adult population. One would think that such a number would translate into a huge number of votes.

However, many adults, including Umno supporters, are not registered as voters and even if they were, they had not been voting. That is going to change with Undi18 and automatic registration of voters, which hopefully will become a reality by March.

In the meantime, the Sarawak government is rushing for a year-end December state elections because it doesn’t want to deal with the uncertainty new voters would bring.

The ancien regime, whether in the peninsula or in Sarawak, prefers to have only its hardcore supporters and party members as voters. Essentially, Umno and its Sarawak coalition partner, Gabungan Parti Sarawak, thrive on suppressing voter registration and voter turnout.

Hence, before Undi18 and automatic registration of voters are implemented, we will have to contend with this Malacca elections.

Most seats have fewer than 20,000 voters each and feedback from most indicate voter turnout is expected to be low, in part because of disappointment with politics in general, with Perikatan Nasional (PN), Barisan Nasional (BN) and PH and fear of new Covid-19 wave.

Tight races 

I don’t think anyone could easily predict the outcome of these elections as the result hinges very much on voter turnout. The more voters – young and first-timers, outstation Malays, and non-Malays – come out to vote, the less weightage the Umno vote bank would have.

In the 2018 general election, PH won on the back of huge turnout from among young voters, Malay outstation voters and non-Malay voters whereas Umno depended on its older, hardcore voters who mostly resided in Malacca.

In that GE14, Umno won six marginal seats with fewer than 1,000 votes each, or a total of 3,080 votes. In other words, 3,080 fewer votes for Umno in the right place would cause the party to win only seven seats in GE14 instead of the 13 seats it had.

Umno seats:

• Merlimau (130 majority, 5,290/13,810 total)
• Asahan (275 majority, 5,942/16,011 total)
• Rim (536 majority, 5,301/13,689 total)
• Lendu (627 majority, 4,016/10,350 total)
• Taboh Naning (740 majority, 3,329/8,743 total)
• Pantai Kundor (772 majority, 5,773/15,686 total)

PH also won three seats with fewer than 1,000 votes:

• Gadek (DAP – 307 majority, 4,392/12,922 total)
• Durian Tunggal (Amanah – 763 majority, 5,213/13,076 total)
• Klebang (PKR – 789 majority, 7,648/20,166 total)

A general rule of thumb is that PH probably has eight to 10 seats in its column while Umno has another eight to 10 seats on its side of the ledger. Of the total 28 seats in Malacca, a small swing in 10 to 20 battleground seats would decide the outcome.

This simply means every vote counts.

The BN vs Perikatan era

While the eerily quiet no-ceramah campaign in Malacca is ongoing, out of the blue, Bersatu president Muhyiddin Yassin, who is also PN leader, slammed his former Umno colleague Shahrir Samad, calling him bodoh (stupid).

Malaysia has entered a period in which the old dominant party Umno has lost its way. The quarrel between Umno-led BN and Bersatu-led PN is damaging both coalitions’ chances in Malacca.

Umno doesn’t have a new leadership to offer Malaysians. The party is very much stuck with Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and Najib Razak, both heavily tainted with corruption charges.

Leaders such as Mohamad Hasan and Mohamed Khaled Nordin are also stuck with the old mentality, defending Umno’s big brother role in politics.

Both believe Malaysia needs a paternalistic core party in government despite such an idea being rejected by majority of Malaysians in GE14. Malaysians no longer need the arrogant hegemony that is Umno.

These Umno leaders still fail to realise that the source of political instability in the past three years stemmed from the idea that Umno must be the taiko, the only ruling party, even if it had lost the general election.

It did exactly that after losing GE14. Umno aligned itself with PAS to fan Malay sentiments and burn the house down.

It worked, for a short while. PH was toppled by the Sheraton coup but Umno engulfed itself in a battle with Muhyiddin’s Bersatu as well as PAS, and an endless internal feud, including bringing down its own government in Malacca. 

So far, Umno seems to have the upper hand in the state elections but Bersatu and PAS may be able to eat into some of Umno’s vote share.

Voters are also witnessing strange things coming from both Umno and Bersatu. Muhyiddin is talking about anti-corruption pledge while Malacca Umno’s poor reputation on good governance stinks in the minds of the voters across ethnic lines.   

Najib has become Umno’s mascot in this election while the Bersatu is gambling on Muhyiddin’s Abah image. I am told that Bersatu is basing its decision on some survey that Muhyiddin is still popular among the rural community.

The best CM candidate

Why would Umno and Bersatu use the image of a convicted former prime minister as well as failed ex-PM, respectively? The answer is simple – both parties are having problems with their state leadership.

BN has named Sulaiman Md Ali as its chief minister candidate. But I heard that Ab Rauf Yusoh, the Malacca Umno chairman, has been promised the post after GE15. This means Sulaiman would have to contest a parliamentary seat by then.

Rauf is not popular among Malacca voters. In a Bernama TV interview last Thursday, he had to clarify that he was neither a dragon, crocodile, lion nor tiger of Malacca – which was not a term of endearment for him, of course – as accused by his detractors, including those from within Umno.  

PN has a similar problem. It has yet to announce its chief minister candidate but two names keep popping up – the controversial Mohd Rafiq Naizamohideen and the more palatable and popular female politician Mas Ermieyati Samsudin, who is also a federal deputy minister.  

This is where PH’s chief minister candidate Adly Zahari stands tall among all other hopefuls. As the former Malacca chief minister before his government was toppled last year with the help of turncoats such as Rafiq and a few others, Adly is likeable and popular with the grassroots.

If he could convince the swing voters with his credentials and clean records, he may well be PH’s best chance in the final lap of the campaign this week. – November 15, 2021.

* Liew Chin Tong is DAP’s political education director.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.