Bukits for PR, Batang for BN – What does it Means?

Newly crowned PM Najib Razak, his deputy Muhyiddin Yassin, his three knights Vice Presidents (cousin Hishammuddin Hussein, Zahid Hamidi and Shafie Apdal) and his mentor Mahathir Mohamad must be scratching their heads till now on what went wrong with their strategies. It was a great relieve *yippee!!!* that the opposition PR (Pakatan Rakyat) retains their seats at Bukit Gantang and Bukit Selambau. It was a greater relieve for BN to finally score their first victory since the 2008 General Election when it retains its Batang Ai seat, not that it could lose it in the first place considering the dirty tricks by transporting boxes of votes from 14 polling stations to tally center in Lubok Antu by helicopter without being accompanied by any agents or observers. Surely the Election Commission won’t cheat, would they?

Najib and Muhyiddin must have thought that by delegating the task of leading the three seats each to his new Vice Presidents the past nightmares of Kuala Terengganu and Permatang Pauh would not repeat. Furthermore Mahathir was attracting huge numbers of audience as if he was Justin Timberlake so the wind of change was blowing. Well, it didn’t work and the top team fresh from the UMNO oven didn’t manage to pull the rabbit out from the hat. It also prove once and for all that Mahathir’s “midas touch” has lost it’s shine although I’m sure his flip-flop about UMNO managed to swing a handful of veteran voters aligned to UMNO previously. Guess that Murphy Law has taken part in these by-elections as well. But the greatest compliment should goes to the hard-working supporters and volunteers from the still-mighty PKR-DAP-PAS coalition.

It was reported busloads of phantom voters were being monitored and stopped by PKR-DAP-PAS members. There’s no doubt PR’s machineries were fully deployed to both Bukits while Batang Ai was too taxing a seat to focus. Fortunately PR didn’t let their initial over-confidence on winning Bukit Gantang and Bukit Selambau to blind them. It was a sweet revenge for Nizar to win Bukit Gantang with increased majority of 2,789 votes against 1,566 votes during 2008 general election. Now Nizar has the silver bullet to tell the Sultan of Perak and the BN government that the people has voice their preference – the PR is the legitimate government and the backdoor coup architected by Najib Razak was unacceptable. Of course BN can still scream that their votes have increased from 18,449 (2008 general election) to 19,071 now so the people are not actually rejecting them. Whether the increased of 622 votes were actually from phantom voters or were the result from last minute swing to BN due to Mahathir’s effect remains unknown.

It would be nice if Nizar could win by more than 5,000 majority votes *smack me for dreaming* because that would send the BN government into panic mode. But a win is still a win. The result also shows that the Chinese voters are still fuming mad with MCA or Gerakan or whoever from BN. Interestingly they are now comfortable with PAS especially with Nizar when the mention of PAS would have send them into hiding not many moons ago. When the heavyweights of UMNO Vice President, Deputy President and former PM Mahathir were sent to fight against Nizar but lose, it’s time for UMNO to remove their arrogance mask and denial syndrome. Most importantly it also shows that the people, at least the Perakians, despise a tainted leader no matter how many times he swore on the Quran. The referendum is crystal clear that UMNO or BN is too corrupt to fool the people with the exception of Sarawakians. You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Although the majority scored in Bukit Selambau was almost unchanged compared to the previous 2008 general election the signal sent by the people was specifically clear for MIC – you’re still not wanted. Nobody could imagine the MIC candidate (apa nama?) would dare to declare he was actually Malaysia’s Obama *yuck*. It’s both comical and laughable but then that was MIC’s specialization since the day Samy Vellu leads the party. It would be fun to see if Najib would appoint Samy Vellu as senator in order to qualify him for a minister-ship in his Cabinet reshuffle. After all Samy was Mahathir’s best buddy *grin*. The joke was the PR actually won all the three seats – the Batang was actually the “middle-finger” for BN. It would be cruel to win all and not leave some left-over for your opponent especially when your enemy is known to be easily provoked and would run amok.

Anyway BN should be grateful that they won the Batang – at least it’s better than won some rocks when the Singapore won an island *grin*. It’s a win-win situation, no? On the fun note, probably Najib can put the blames on his men for the losses since he's not leading the battles this time.