The most difficult election outcome to predict

The 15th general election (GE15) is turning out to be the toughest to predict on which coalition will helm the government.

This is mainly because for the past four years, Malaysians have had the experience of being ruled by three different coalition governments, all with a tenuous majority whose achievements were seen by the majority of the people as far from satisfactory.

When Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced the dissolution of Parliament on Oct 10, many analysts said the real contest would be among the three political coalitions – Barisan Nasional (BN), Perikatan Nasional (PN) and Pakatan Harapan (PH).

According to most analysts, BN with Umno as its lynchpin would have the edge in winning the election, albeit with a wafer-thin majority.

While PH did not perform well in the Sabah and Sarawak state elections, BN experienced a resounding triumph in the Melaka and Johor state elections.

The argument that it would be difficult for BN to win GE15 due to Umno leaders being tainted with corruption charges seemed not to hold water, judging from the coalition's landslide victory in the two state elections, and despite corruption being made the central issue by its political opponents. 

By the time the Election Commission met on Oct 20 to announce nomination and polling day, some analysts were saying BN would lose before even the battle began for calling an election during the monsoon season.

But time and again, the PN government led by an Umno prime minister showed its readiness to cope with the floods by assuring the people that it had a solid plan to mitigate the worst effects of a devastating flood, should it occur during GE15.

Moreover, it has come to the point where the people have accepted the inevitability of an election during the monsoon season as uppermost in their minds is having their say via the ballot box, come rain or shine, to end the tenure of a government with a tenuous majority.

To them, it seems, enough is enough with the idea of three governments with a tenuous majority in the last four years because this has been the root cause of political and economic instability in the country, which made them suffer so much.

All of the coalitions including BN are calling on their supporters and fence sitters to come out in droves to vote.

When it comes to electing a stable government with a handsome majority, Umno was the first to use it with resounding success as an election slogan during the Melaka and Johor state elections.

This clearly resonated with what the voters wanted and thus, it is no surprise that Umno/BN continues to use the catchphrase of "Stability and Prosperity" for its slogan in GE15.

Meanwhile, PH’s slogan of "Kita Boleh" is nothing more than the Malay translation of former US president Barack Obama’s successful campaign slogan in the 2008 US presidential election, "We Can!"
 
It is also quite similar to the "Malaysia Boleh!" slogan associated with the achievements of Malaysia during Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s first tenure as prime minister from 1981 to 2003.

Unlike the BN slogan, which was proven to have resonated with the voters in the Melaka and Johor elections, it remains to be seen whether the PH slogan will resonate with voters.

Moreover, netizens have grown tired of the "Boleh" ("Can") element of the slogan, sarcastically mocking the country as "Bolehland" with the negative implication of anything goes in Malaysia.

But sloganeering is a small component of success in a general election. What matters are the issues which are at the heart of the voters’ preoccupation, that will motivate them to vote for a certain coalition that seems to show empathy in these issues.

In this regard, there are two equally important issues at the heart of the matter. 

The first issue is related to the economy – bread-and-butter issues like the high cost of living, affordable housing and healthcare, eradicating absolute and relative poverty, enhancing social protection and social security, and increasing the national pie so that each citizen will have relatively more to enjoy life in a developed and high-income nation.

Although quite materialistic, these are very important issues because humankind is created in such a way that they have to fulfil their material needs before they can effectively and efficiently fulfil their non-material needs or idealisms.

The second issue that is equally important are the abstract and institutional matters (idealism) that revolve around abolishing corruption, inculcating good governance, and providing equal access to opportunities (equity), fairness and social justice.

These are very important issues, too, because of the adage that man does not live by bread alone.

But as GE14, and the Melaka and Johor state elections showed, at different times the two issues will resonate differently with the voters. 

At GE14, it was the abstract and institutional issues that carried the day and caused a milestone in the form of an unexpected victory for PH, the first time in the history of Malaysia that there was a regime change through the ballot box.

In the Melaka and Johor state elections, it was the bread-and-butter issues that resonated and gained primacy with the voters, overtaking issues such as busting corruption and good governance.

This could be due to the fact that the nation then was suffering from the severe impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the material well-being of the people severely affected. So, bread-and-butter issues became the singular and uppermost thing in the minds of the voters.

Another reason could be the perception that, when given the chance to rule the country, PH proved no better than BN. 

It could not solve some of the bread-and-butter issues that it promised to solve in its GE14 manifesto, while the higher cost of living and affordable housing encapsulated in the phenomenon of the perut (tummy) economy remained core problems.

As for the abstract and institutional issues which brought PH to victory, the moment it was in power, all charges against Lim Guan Eng were dropped when his court hearing was already near the tail-end.

And despite the PH manifesto clearly spelling out that the appointments of very senior government officials were to be made in consultation with a parliamentary select committee, and that a politician must not head the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), a PH prime minister conveniently went on to appoint a politician as the head of MACC without even having the courtesy to consult his Cabinet.

But this is not to say that BN will have a smooth path to an easy victory, albeit with a tenuous majority, as most analysts think.

This could have been true before Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi announced the list of BN candidates. 

On Nov 1, the Umno president committed political hara-kiri when, in announcing the list of candidates, many incumbent Umno ministers were missing from the line-up.

By doing so, Zahid again raised the spectre of infighting within Umno between the court cluster and Cabinet cluster, which will definitely weaken Umno/BN in GE15.

So much for his claim that there won’t be any vindictiveness on his part in choosing Umno candidates. Now the talk of the town is that he is allegedly aiming for the prime minister's post should Umno win. 

Infighting within Umno will not only destroy Umno but will also cause the people to suffer if Umno helms the government, much in the same way that the people suffered when the PH government was destroyed from within over the infighting over when Mahathir should hand over the premiership to Anwar Ibrahim, that became a prelude to the Sheraton Move.

So it looks like Umno/BN's days are numbered, as there is also the complaint among its members that BN failed to field women as at least 30% of its candidates, as pledged. 

But that does not make the prediction easier on which coalition will win. Political analysts and observers will have their work cut out for them to predict the winning coalition.

PN might just end up as the dark horse in GE15, just like its supremo, Muhyiddin Yassin, was a dark horse that became the eighth prime minister of Malaysia.

To begin with, its slogan for GE15 is about right: "Prihatin, Bersih dan Stabil" ("Caring, Clean and Stable") where both the bread-and-butter, and abstract and institutional issues, are harmoniously balanced and addressed. 

The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of MalaysiaNow.