Tun Mahathir As Chairman of Pakatan Harapan: Will it make Any Difference in the 14th GE?

It is rather confusing  to read comments from well known political analysts how to make of it. Raja Petra Kamaruddin of Malaysia Today, as expected,  brushed it aside as desperate moves by two desperate people, Mahathir and Anwar, to topple the reigning Prime Minister, when they both failed to do it within UMNO  itself.  On this account, older political observers would still remember Anwar’s own failure to unseat Mahathir himself some twenty years ago. But Anwar is still at it in spite of the twenty years that have passed, most of which spent in prison.

Jocelyn Tan of The Star, a respected political analyst, is more guarded in her analysis and posed more questions than answers. As she correctly pointed out Pakatan now has a big Malay name to bring it to the Malay heartland, especially the Felda Schemes which holds a total of 60 parliamentary seats.

Can Mahathir shake the Malay heartland? We shall see afterwards with my own  analysis of electoral data over the last 18 years since the 1999 General Election when Anwar himself attempted the same feat to topple Mahathir the PM at that time,  but only to be thwarted by a strong support from the Chinese and Indian voters for Barisan Nasional. Of course in this earlier scenario, racial politics did not feature very much as  Chinese and Indian voters mainly followed their established political affiliation, while Malay sentiment was  least racial but more consumed by hatred for Mahathir for the way he kicked out Anwar from the Cabinet and UMNO and later threw him into prison.

Another respected analyst, Yang Razali Kassim, senior fellow with RSIS, Nanyang Technology University, Singapore said the alliance  promises a formidable line-up to challenge the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) led by Najib’s UMNO in the coming general election to be called after September but before June next year. With this, the analyst stated the prospect of dethroning Najib is no longer a distant one, given the political crisis triggered by the 1MDB scandal. Suspicion of Mahathir, however, remained deep; Najib has exploited this distrust by running down the Mahathir-Anwar reconciliation as doomed to fail from the start.

Malay Voting Behavior : 1999 to 2013 General Election Scenario

The Malay voters are conservative in their political approach. They are loyal to their parties, especially to political parties that fight for their race or religion, hence UMNO and PAS have remained the two most dominant Malay Parties since the time of the nation’s birth. Many offshoot of these two parties came in the past but all disappeared after sometime. The current offshoot PKR so far survived mainly on Chinese and Indian votes aided only by the minority Malay opposition voters. Mahathir’s newly founded party and PAN the recent offshot of PAS are yet to prove themselves.

It is natural for the Malays being the majority  race in a multiracial country to demonstrate such a tendency because of the needs to protect their racial interest. This is more so against the Chinese who are perceived to be greedy and non-compromising and in control of the nation’s economy. Naturally the  Malays feel that politic is the last bastion of defence for their future survival in their own country.

The most extreme test of Malay political loyalty  occurred  in the General Election of  1999. In the events that preceded the election, there was widespread anger among the Malays against Mahathir for the way he kicked out Anwar and later jailed him. UMNO  could not survive in the predominantly two Malay states Kelantan and Trengganu and lost badly there. The other states however remained in BN’s hands with the help of Indian  and Chinese  votes who still remained loyal to the ruling party at that time, in spite of whatever sympathy they have for Anwar.

A regression analysis of  Parliamentary data for Peninsular Malaysia done for the 1999 general election indicated  66% of support for BN  were based  on voters’  racial profile. This  high percentage was a reflection of Malay negative sentiment but positive ones for the Chinese and Indian and this had large influence on the election outcome. The role of BN voters’s party loyalty was less significant at 16% as there were fairly significant number of voters who  cast their ballot differing from their normal party line.

As regards the General Election of 2008 where BN faced a strong challenge from the opposition, only 54% of support  was based on racial profile as the voters tended to be less racial in their voting pattern with the advent of Anwar vigourously  promoting a multiracial front. However, party loyalty  for BN at  31% became a significant factor that saved the BN government.

In the 2013 General Election, voting by racial profile  at   69% was the highest ever recorded against a background of a more racial awareness of both the Malays and the Chinese though in opposite directions. The Chinese voters were obviously galvanised by “ini kalilah” a strange sounded Malay battle cry upon realising emerging opportunity for Pakatan Rakyat to win and for DAP to lead the new government.  However, BN Voter Support  by party loyalty at 22% was also high, implying other factors only influence 9% of the voters during the 2013 General Election. These saved the BN government.

Likely Scenario for  14th General Election 

In the 14th General Election  the focus will be on racial issues spearheaded by the Barisan Nasional as the Malays and Chinese are becoming more  racially polarised. This is a trend traceable since the General Election 1999 when racial profile accounted for more than 66% in the variation of votes, except for GE 2008 due  to the full impact of Reformasi Movement. In that year Racial profile dropped to 54%.

With the above scenario, it is expected that  Malays, as in GE 2013, will remain united behind Barisan Nasional in the 14th General Election irrespective of the onslaught by Tun Mahathir in attempting to steal votes away.  Najib would likely continue to strengthen his resolve to focus on Bumiputera centric programs as well as  counter allegations of mishandlings in some Bumiputera institutions. In fact this is more politically fruitful since Bumiputera would likely respond positively. I suggest that he also continues  with his Indian centric programs since Indians generally appreciate it.

As for the Chinese community, Najib should go easy with it and avoid undue efforts to please them since such efforts may backfire  as they don’t normally appreciate it but, on the other hand would likely interpret it as a sign of a desperate beggar.

As for the other significant factor, Party loyalty to BN also remained strong in the 2013 General Election where it accounted for 22% variations in votes. T Value of 17 for this factor is the highest since 1999 indicating a  much strengthened loyalty to BN.

Will  the level of party loyalty   remain high in the 14th general Election in the face of potentially strong challenge  from PPBM? Mahathir may slightly chip away into  this well entrenched factor, which at T Value of 17 is considered extremely significant statistically. The bulk of the Malay heartland may not budge, but  The bulk of Chinese voters will likely continue to vote for DAP and Pakatan Harapan parties but this  would not likely worsen the outcome of the General Election since their support already reached saturation level in the 13th General Election. In other words, they have already thrown away 90% of their cards against BN  in the last, and probably in this election too.

Regards, wallahu a’lam wassalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh,

DAH IKHWAN

                                                                                                            Appendix

Methodology

As usual, the data was analysed  by means of regression analysis of  data obtained from the past general elections. For illustration purposes, I describe below how it was done in developing two equations for the 2013 General Election, one for the equation based on racial profile only and the other with the equation based on racial profile and party loyalty involving data from 165 Parliamentary constituencies in Semenanjung Malaysia. The results are as follows:

Model 1 Results

Constant                                            0
R squared                                     0.69
Number of Observations            165
Degree of Freedom                      162

X Coefficient             0.5776             0.2045                0.4039
T Value                       43.8323          7.8361                 4.6754
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Malay             Chinese              Indian

Model 2 Results

Constant                                           -17592.91
R Squared                                         0.91
Number of Observation                  163
Degree of Freedom                          158
X Coefficient              0.5044               0.2121             0.3952             362.67
T Value                        34.4775              10.6565          7.3746              16.8133
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Malay                 Chinese          Indian              BN(08+04)/2

R Squared Model 2    –     R Squared Model 1   =   BN Party loyalty factor   =   22%
BN party loyalty factor is represented by BN(08+04)/2 in the above equation, which is made up of votes BN obtained in the constituency during general election year 2004 and 2008.

General Equation derived for BN votes(2013) = 69% by racial profile + 22% by party loyalty +9% other factors.