Strategising ABU

My friend, Ong Kian Ming, at a forum a couple of days ago, proffered a view that BN will win the 13th GE, albeit without restoring its 2/3 majority in Parliament.

Kian Ming reckons that there will not be such a tsunami of such proportions as will sweep BN out of Putrajaya.

You can read the rest of what he said, as reported in Malaysiakini, HERE.

Is Kian Ming spot on, or way off the mark?

Before I give my 2 sen worth on this poser, let’s take stock of where we are now.

We have 222 parliamentary seats.

Immediately after the 12th GE, the divide was 140 seats to BN, and 82 to opposition.

With 6 PKR members declaring themselves independent but, by their actions, decidedly BN-friendly, together with Ibrahim Ali, the divide now is BN still 140, opposition 75 and 7 BN-friendly independent MPs.

That’s where we are now.

We’ve done our homework, and identified the vulnerable BN seats that can be taken and the vulnerable opposition seats that need to be defended.

In Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak.

For obvious reasons, I’m not going to detail those seats I’ve just mentioned.

Suffice to say that, if we can prise those vulnerable seats away from BN, and successfully defend the existing opposition seats, we should take Putrajaya with a total of 141 seats.

Now, I want to clarify here that by ‘we’, I do not mean Pakatan Rakyat.

I mean the 3 Pakatan parties, working cohesively with the many other non-BN parties in Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak.

And us, the rakyat.

Lets be very, very clear about this.

Pakatan Rakyat cannot and will not be able to bring BN to its knees by itself.

Its going to require the combined force of all these parties working towards 1 goal : ABU.

And that will require them to bury party egos, adopt a give and take attitude and work it so  that we offer only 1 candidate in every constituency.

Never mind that BN will try to crowd the contest with their own planted independent candidates.

Now, am I therefore saying that Kian Ming has erred in his assessment?

Well, yes and no.

Let’s look again at Kian Ming’s rationale.

He reckons that there will be only localised tsunamis in Johor, Sabah and Sarawak.

This is where I differ with him.

In Malaya, the task before us is to take the ABU message into the Malay heartlands.

Do this effectively, and I am confident that we will witness mini tsunamis in many of the other states as well.

Enough to see a new regime in Putrajaya post the 13th GE?

Yes, but only if we can contain the wholesale cheating and fraud that BN will inflict upon us.

And without the reforms that we have demanded on 709 being first implemented before we go to the polls, containing the cheating is going to be near impossible.

Malaysiakini yesterday reported Anwar as disclosing that “Pakatan had detected an unusual surge of voters since the last general election in certain Parliamentary constituencies won by its component parties” .

Subang (PKR), up 35 percent from 84,000 to 114,000.

Kota Raja (PAS), up 29.5 percent.

Puchong (DAP), up 25 percent.

Last week, I was informed of another semi-rural Pakatan constituency where the number of registered voters has increased  by 22 percent, bucking the rural to urban migration trend.

Mimos cleaning up the electoral roll?

Hundreds of thousands of voters overseas, as well as Sabahans and Sarawakians working in Malaya, all clearly disenchanted with BN, will be disenfranchised by the refusal to recognise them as absent voters and thus entitled to vote by post.

Yes, we’ve done our homework on how to take the vulnerable BN seats and defend the existing opposition seats.

Kian Ming’s spot on, though, if we don’t stop BN cheating.

My 2 sen.

- The People's Parliament