UMNO, which rules Johor with a tenuous majority, must be very confident of winning big in the forthcoming state elections for it to have dissolved assembly on January 22.

Many analysts said it was the momentum of Barisan Nasional’s landslide victory in the Malacca elections combined with the weak performance of opposition Pakatan Harapan (PH) in both the Malacca and Sarawak elections that has generated this confidence.

Others said it is the bad blood between Umno and Bersatu that has prompted Umno to go for the jugular, sensing the timing is right to make Bersatu irrelevant in Johor, and thus embarrassing for Bersatu leader and former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin, a native of Johor.

Another opinion put forth by analysts for these early elections is to pressure the government led by Umno vice president Ismail Sabri Yaakob to hold a general election sooner rather than later, either this year or next year.

What’s more, the Court of Appeal upholding Najib Razak’s conviction in the SRC case on December 8, and the High Court on January 24 ordering Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi to enter his defence on all 47 corruption charges.

Therefore, it has become more urgent than ever to pressure the prime minister to hold an election as soon as possible after a highly anticipated convincing win for Umno in Johor.

It is only when Umno won by a landslide in Malacca that some people begin to postulate a convincing win in a state election is a barometer to gauge the party’s performance in the next general election.

In the past, this barometer used to be by-elections, and even then to conclude that a good performance in a general election required good prior performance in more than two by-elections.

In the run-up to the last election, for instance, there were two simultaneous by-elections in 2016: one in Sungai Besar, Selangor, and the other in Kuala Kangsar, Perak.

Despite the 1MDB issue used as fodder in the two by-elections, the two Umno candidates won with a relatively greater majority than their previous deceased incumbents.

These results were later confidently used by Umno to mean they could easily win the general elections, as it had done so many times in the past 60 years.

However, come the election, Umno/BN was mercilessly trounced by PH.

During PH’s short rule, there were 10 by-elections – five at state level and five parliamentary seats.

While the coalition won three at state level, BN and PAS won also three at federal level, leading to the talk, backed by many empirical studies, that should a national poll be held, BN would win resoundingly.

With regards to BN/Umno now, we can’t say with certainty that if a general election is held today, BN would win convincingly just on the basis of a convincing win in one state election.

Umno did not do that well in the Sabah election and did not participate in Sarawak. So, the most we can say is with that one convincing victory in Malacca is that BN/Umno has the edge if a general election is held today.

However, it is a mistake by Umno to assume it is a given that BN/Umno is going to win big in Johor and the next national poll.

Moreover, it made the decision to dissolve the assembly without consulting its coalition partners.

Umno seems to have forgotten its fall from power in 2018 was because of its arrogance – real or perceived – in ruling the country.

This was even admitted by senior Umno leaders when discussing why it lost in 2018.

True, Umno is not required to consult its coalition partners but it is meant to listen to what coalition partners have to say, with the final decision still in its hand.

While some say that since Umno is a Malay-Muslim party, it should not turn its back on the value of consultation, which Islam has put on a high pedestal, others commented this could result in the loss of barakah (blessings of Allah) in the form of Umno losing badly in Johor and then nationwide.

If the upcoming state election returns Umno with the most seats but still with a tenuous majority, it will be back to full circle again as far as unstable government is concerned.

There are three surprises that may just frustrate or disrupt Umno’s plan to win big, from the perspective of strategic foresight – a discipline that gathers and processes information about future operating environment – which are:

Black swan events with low probabilities, high impact surprises and have no precedent, hence so unlikely to happen that you discount the very possibility. Yet they could happen, and if they did you would be sunk.

Blind spot surprises in places where you’re not looking because our assumptions and perceptual filters unconsciously ignore some signals around us and pick up on others. 

Wildcards, random events that you could not be expected to have anticipated. These are scenarios we can imagine that have a very low probability of occurring.

In the case of Johor, the blind spots events are the probability of the spread of the Omicron variant and the possibility of the second wave of the worst flood happening.

If the people find themselves in a situation of extreme hardship in coping with mitigation efforts on Omicron and the floods, and worse, if the blind spots events occur while in the midst of campaigning, these will translate into heavy losses for Umno/BN.

One wildcard event is if Bersatu proceeds with its intention to gain the Malay vote while predicting Chinese votes would be split between BN (MCA) and PH (DAP), which was tried in Malacca at Bemban.

PN made an audacious move by contesting under Bersatu despite having the option to field Gerakan, resulting in a razor-thin majority of 328 votes ahead of MCA.

This is significant since Chinese MPs representing MCA or DAP have always won the seat, despite ethnic Malays constituting 60% of Bemban’s electorate.

However, the main wildcard event is Undi18, which set the minimum voting age to 18 instead of 21, with Johor being the first test of this huge voting bloc.

Youth being youth, in politics the majority of them would either exhibit an anti-establishment or an apathetic stance – both a minus point to a landslide victory for Umno/BN.

Former chief justice Abdul Hamid Mohamad has painted a scenario of the return of a PH government in Johor, if Umno/BN fails to shed the taint of corruption linked to Najib and Zahid, since words like “corruption”, “abuse of power” and “integrity” will influence young voters.

This would entail a black swan event because PH is not expected to win. It is getting traction when a prominent member of Amanah, Mazlan Aliman, has urged PH to widen its scope of co-operation for the Johor election by including PN in its list of allies.

He warned if PH decided to go to the polls in its current shape, it would again face defeat similar to that of Malacca.

Aside from which, the danger Umno’s victory in Johor could see the return of kleptocrats that would pave its way for the next general election and its goal of winning a two-thirds majority in Parliament in order to realise its agenda.

“Does PH and the public at large wish to return to a kleptocratic episode as was the case before?” asked Mazlan, adding that co-operation with Bersatu and PAS would create “the biggest coalition”.

* Jamari Mohtar is the editor of Let’s Talk!, a newsletter on current affairs. – January 29, 2022.

* 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.