‘There won’t be a hung parliament’

The 13th general election will deliver a clear winner simply because that's what Malaysians 'would prefer'.

COMMENT

Former Umno vice-president Rahim Tamby Chik has opined that the 13th general election will deliver a hung parliament. I beg to differ. I don’t think we are going to have a hung parliament.

I think it will be a clear cut win either way. Malaysians would prefer a clear cut victory one way or the other.

So here’s my prognosis.

Will the opposition coalition, Pakatan Rakyat, lose its current 82 seats? Very unlikely.

Infact the seats which they lost when some people jumped ship, post-2008, will become theirs again.

What we will see this time around is PKR removing its ‘fluid’ candidates and selecting candidates with firmer constitution. So we won’t see the likes of Zahrain and his types in parliament again.

PKR won 31 seats in the 2008 elections. This time around I see them walking into parliament after the next election with 33-35 seats including wins in Sarawak.

PKR will swipe seats currently held by Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party and Parti Rakyat Sarawak.

More wins for PAS

Lets look at PAS. PAS currently has 23 seats in parliament.

It will retain the many seats it now has in Kelantan. I foresee PAS gaining more seats in Terengganu. PAS will wrest Terengganu from Umno-Barisan Nasional.

PAS will also grab more seats in Kedah. It will win-over seats currently held by MCA and Umno.

PAS can win because it’s organized and is motivated by convictions. This is what sets it apart from Umno.

They are not out for personal glory and gratification. PAS has a number of secular liberals in the party who can attract younger Malay voters.

They will attract the serious thinkers among the younger Malay crowd, excluding those who don’t tweet about football or about Elton John variety.

So my guess is they will increase their parliamentary seats by another seven or eight. PAS will enter the next parliament with around 30-31 seats.

DAP will roar

And now let’s look DAP. DAP will more or less pummel MCA to the ground.

DAP has gained substantial ground with Chinese voters. Chinese voters identify more with DAP than with MCA.

They don’t want a sissy party perceived as easily compromised, intimidated or even bought over to represent them.

They will stake their future in a party that best represents the ‘independence’ streak. DAP is their preferred choice.

So, DAP will take most of the 15 seats the MCA won in the 2008 elections. At the very best, MCA can retain three seats. At worst they will win nothing.

The DAP which now has 28 seats in parliament will increase this by another 12 in the peninsula Malaysia.

Add another eight to nine seats in Sarawak and you have DAP roaring into parliamentary with probably 46-48 seats.

No hung parliament

The newer and younger DAP leadership is taking on Malaysian politics with more finesse and it doesn’t now intimidate modern thinking Malays as the older generation of DAP leaders once did.

And it has shed its umbilical connections with the PAP.

So now, if there are attempts for example to link DAP as a stool or Trojan horse to Singapore’s PAP, such attempts will be laughed at.

Looking at the potential scenario, what we have is a possibility of DAP, PAS and PKR winning 46 seats, 30 and 33 seats respectively. The opposition will now have 109 seats – three seats short of a majority.

And we haven’t included Sabah in this discussion. My believe is that there won’t be a hung parliament.

The writer is a former Umno state assemblyman and a FMT columnist.