That Elusive Rural Support: Pakatan Needs to Think Long Term

Looking through the 2008 General Election results Pakatan Rakyat has to work extremely hard to secure those rural votes. PKR had made a few mistakes in both Sabah and Sarawak. Among the first was the appointment of Azmin Ali (a non-Sabahan) as Sabah PKR chief. Although Azmin quit in 2009, the damage was pretty much done looking at the 2008 election results.

by Al Jafree Md Yusop, Malaysian Digest

Famous American columnist Franklin Pierce Adams once said, "Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody". It is widely agreed that Pakatan Rakyat won big in the last General Election because the people were angry at Barisan Nasional (maybe they still are). But it is also a fact that Pakatan won mostly the urban seats like Kuala Lumpur, Kuching and Kota Knabalu.

The only thing is that most of the constituencies in the rural areas and there’s where support for BN are the strongest. It seems that the hatred for the ruling party exist mostly in the urban areas with the exception of Kota Bharu of course. PAS Deputy president, Mohamad Sabu in an interview with Free Malaysia Todaysaid, "We have to work hard on dismantling Umno’s hold on the rural folk and Felda. Because they have access to the mainstream media, they promote Umno’s ideology. Umno will lose the urban seats, but rural seats… we need to find a way to break through to them. Umno creates a perception that they are the guardians of Malay rights. And it’s very hard to change this because we have no access to people in rural areas."

Looking through the 2008 General Election results Pakatan Rakyat has to work extremely hard to secure those rural votes. PKR had made a few mistakes in both Sabah and Sarawak. Among the first was the appointment of Azmin Ali (a non-Sabahan) as Sabah PKR chief. Although Azmin quit in 2009, the damage was pretty much done looking at the 2008 election results. If that wasn’t bad enough, Anwar’s PKR then blew it again in Sarawak during the state election when the party locked horns with local party SNAP over the allocation of seats between the two parties.

Actually, have money played an important role in any election. Most voters believe that it is within their rights to be given money by election candidates. The main problem is a lot of people in this country also believe that they can get rich very quick. The opportunity is huge. Working hard to earn a decent living is a thing of the past. It’s the constant conflict between quality and quantity and the sad part is when the latter wins. This is reflected in our choice and voting patterns in every election. It’s not long term planning but more like solving the immediate problems without considering its long term effects.

It has always been about how much money we are getting now rather than what will the state of our country economy be in the next 10 to 20 years. We are still importing around 60 percent of our food supplies, considering that the BN government has been ruling the country for 54 years, it is not something we should be proud of. It is to me more about making the people see the obvious apart from uncovering sensational secrets. Many of our politicians are living in extremely expensive mansions, an impossible feat considering their actual incomes are much less than the cost of those mansions. (A good example would be former Selangor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohammad Khir Toyo). I once saw an MP wearing a Patek Philippe Nautilus Perpetual Calendar watch which cost hundreds of thousands of ringgit. It’s the obvious things that we need to see and think about.

A good example would be Belgium. As a result from countless unsuccessful negotiations among the fragmented political parties, the country has been without a government for a year now since their election last year in June. As a matter of fact, Belgium's leaders are not even close to coming to an agreement on a new coalition. Yet everything is running well in Belgium which reflects on the country’s strong and independent administration system. The most interesting fact with the multiethnic societies in the country (6.5 million Dutch speakers in the north and the 4.5 million French speakers in the south) is their national motto "Strength Through Unity", a lesson that the propagators of the '1Malaysia' policy can learn from.

Malaysia is many, many miles from reaching that state but it is something that our politicians can learn from. Instead of working out a strategy to solve the immediate problems, it’s about time we bust our brains to work towards long term planning. We cannot suffer the same fate as the people in Greece, Spain and (eventually) Ireland. The most important thing is to educate the people both in urban and rural areas to see things that could benefit them in long term.

Barisan Nasional got their chance for more than half a century and they blew it. Let’s hope Pakatan Rakyat will not follow their examples. In the meantime, the rural voters must be made to understand that it will not be about who they are angry at but who they really want to represent and lead them for the next political term.