Interrupting my continuous update to my blog here of my on-going road trip to cover a breaking news! My country, Malaysia hold its 15th General Election yesterday on 19th November 2022 with three main coalition parties battling it out to form the next federal government. I was not around again this time (currently in New Zealand for my road trip) and hence I didn’t manage to vote. My single vote didn’t matter much though as my voting constituency is a stronghold for Pakatan and yes, it does win again with large majority.
The three main coalition parties are Pakatan Harapan/PH (led by PKR President Anwar Ibrahim and includes DAP, Amanah, Muda), Barisan Nasional/BN (led by current caretaker Prime Minister Ismail Sabri from UMNO and includes MCA, MIC) and Perikatan Nasional/PN (led by former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin from Bersatu and includes PAS, Gerakan). There are one other coalition party which is Gerakan Tanah Air/GTA (led by former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir from Pejuang and includes NGOs) but people don’t really put much attention or expectation on this one.
In the end, not a single coalition party manage to secure a simple majority (clinching at least 111 or 112 seats). Pakatan is the largest bloc after the election’s outcome with 82 seats. Following closely behind is Perikatan with 73 seats. Barisan won 30 seats. GTA failed to win any. Some heavyweight candidates lost their seat; Tun Mahathir and his son Mukhriz, Anwar’s daughter Nurul Izzah, famous PKR defector Azmin Ali that caused downfall of previous Pakatan government in 2020, MIC president, and former MCA presidents. Now, Perikatan and Harapan are scrambling their way to get support from other winning parties (particularly from Sabah and Sarawak) to secure a majority (will post the update of this development in my coming post).
What’s shocking to me is the uprising of support for Perikatan Nasional from the election’s outcome. After poor showing in the past state elections in Johor and Malacca (which saw strong turnover of support back to BN), I didn’t foresee huge number of seats to be won by PN. However, PN did win big. It clearly shows that majority of Malays have rejected BN and switched to PN rather than PH. Although saying no to corruption of which BN is tainted by, these group sticked to their principles of prioritizing religion and race which is disappointing.
Apology for being too direct but I have to say that they are still so naive and afraid of DAP who they always have in their mind that the Chinese-dominant party will ruin their race and Islam. PAS which plays racial card in politics all the time and knows nothing for the growth of the country instead becomes the largest winning party in this election. That’s real shocking. For me, PAS shouldn’t even exist due to their agendas of Islamization in Malaysia which is a multi-racial country, hudud law enforcement proposal, heavily racist stands, poor governance, and many more.
I do sincerely hope Pakatan is able to form the government with the support of Sabah and Sarawak’s bloc. However, I think this is unlikely as the bloc from Borneo is more friendly towards PN. Pakatan loses in this way as it has no friend; unfortunately no one to share the same vision with PH of seeing Malaysia rising to greater height. Anwar has sacrificed so much and put so much effort to try to lead the country and become Prime Minister for all but couldn’t gain sufficient Malay votes all these while. Majority of Malays just can’t see far enough (DAP must be coming into their mind again). Haiz…
Now, Malaysia sees a hung parliament for first time in history which leads to unstable government. BN is going down the drain after being over confident on this election and no longer has the hold of the coveted Prime Minister’s post. Its chairman and UMNO President, Zahid Hamidi (who is currently embroiled in money laundering cases) is likely to step down after this very poor performance. PN is back with more power after previously being labelled as backdoor government after the fall of Pakatan government in 2020. Likely scenario now is that PH will remain as the main opposition bloc. When will these Malaysians who voted for BN and PN be awake and sincerely hoping for the best of the country? No. Then, we all will be rolling further downhill together. The country we love is now more divided than ever.
(Images in this post are from various online sources)
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