5th May

Hence to use the crowd turnout as the yardstick to gauge your chances of success is not always the right way to go. Many general elections and by-elections have proven this. The opposition ceramah attract crowds in the tens of thousands while the Barisan Nasional ceramah can’t even attract 100 people. But when the votes are counted, Barisan Nasional wins and with a large majority on top of that.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

EVENTS OF 5TH MAY

1260             Kublai Khan becomes ruler of the Mongol Empire

1430             Jews are expelled from Speyer Germany

1646             King Charles I surrenders at Scotland

1762             Russia and Prussia sign peace treaty

1809             Citizenship is denied to Jews of Canton of Aargau Switzerland

1881             Anti-Jewish rioting in Kiev Ukraine

1893             Panic of 1893: Great crash on the New York Stock Exchange

1920             German-Latvian peace treaty signed

1932             Japan and China sign a peace treaty

1936             Italian troops occupy Addis Ababa

1940             Norwegian government in exile forms in London

1941             Emperor Haile Selassie returns to Addis Ababa

1944             Gandhi freed from prison

1945             Netherlands and Denmark liberated from Nazi control

1948             Belgian government of Spaak resigns

1954             Military coup by general Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay

1955             India's parliament accepts hindu-divorce

1957             Adolf Scharf elected president of Austria

1964             Separatists riot in Quebec

1965             1st large-scale U.S. Army ground units arrive in South Vietnam

1971             Race riot in Brownsville section of Brooklyn (New York City)

1980             Siege at Iranian Embassy in London ends; British commandos and police stormed the building

1994             Labour beats Conservatives in British local elections

2011             In Brazil, the Supreme Federal Court rules that same-sex couples receive the same rights of existing civil unions

2013             (Yet to happen)

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Barisan Nasional is extremely worried. They are not confident of winning the coming general election on 5th May 2013. They are not even sure whether if they do win it’s going to be so narrow a win that Malaysia will see a hung parliament.

That is good. This is going to be so tight a race you need to be scared. Furthermore, if Barisan Nasional does win, and if they win with a very slim majority, they would be so frantic that they will make sure that this will never happen again.

And the only way that that can happen would be if they were to perform and reform and deliver what the rakyatwants. If not, then the next time around they are going to be out for sure since even more young people will be voting in the 14th General Election in five year’s time.

Pakatan Rakyat is very confident. They are so confident they are already practically celebrating their success and fighting over who should be the Prime Minister and whether the Islamic Sharia law of Hudud will or will not be implemented.

And that is bad. This is going to be so tight a race you can’t afford to be overconfident and sound arrogant and take the voters for granted. The voters have many times in the past surprised us all. Just when we thought they were going one way they suddenly swing the other way.

No doubt the opposition ceramah (rallies) attract large crowds while the Barisan Nasional ceramah are practically deserted. This has always been the case since I first attended election rallies back in 1969. And I have always said since 1999 that crowds do not translate to votes. This has been proven time and again.

Hence to use the crowd turnout as the yardstick to gauge your chances of success is not always the right way to go. Many general elections and by-elections have proven this. The opposition ceramah attract crowds in the tens of thousands while the Barisan Nasional ceramah can’t even attract 100 people. But when the votes are counted, Barisan Nasional wins and with a large majority on top of that.

But then it can also work the other way. Because your rallies are huge, the fence sitters may actually be influenced or psyched into voting opposition. People always want to be associated with the winner. No one wants to run with the loser. Hence, since you are giving the perception of success due to your large crowd turnout, people may actually vote for you.

Anyway, I believe that most people have already made up their minds as to whom to vote for. Normally I would use the not so accurate 30:40:30 rule-of-thumb (ruling party versus undecided versus opposition). For this election we can safely assume it is 45:10:45.

So this means both sides have a margin of only 10% to play with. And since it is a tight race and the winner will see a less than 10% margin over the loser, this 10% is very large. This 10% will decide who gets to form the federal government. That is how close it is going to be.

At this stage of the race, every vote counts. And both sides are going to squeeze every single vote they can get. A mere 5% of the votes will decide who is going to be the government. Hence 10% is a matter of life and death.

Anyway, for the superstitious who look at dates as something very significant, I have listed above some of the significant events that happened on 5th May over the last 750 years or so. Consider that my election trivia.

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IF A PICTURE IS WORTH 1,000 WORDS