ALMOST ZERO Chinese votes for BN at GE13?

KUALA LUMPUR, — For Barisan Nasional (BN) the Chinese vote appears a lost cause in Election 2013, as old fears about race riots and political instability have given way to equal access to business and education opportunities.

Prominent businessman Stanley Thai is just one of many Chinese businessmen — a traditional vote bank for BN — who have thrown their weight behind the community’s support for Pakatan Rakyat (PR) parties.

“Everyone said, ‘Wow, the time has come,’” he told international news wire Bloomberg in an interview published this week, when referring to the results of Election 2008.

“Why are the Chinese against the government — it’s simple,” Thai, 53, owner of medical glove-maker Supermax Corp. (SUCB), said.

“We don’t want our children to suffer what we suffered, deprived from education, from career opportunities, from business opportunities.”

“We have been brainwashed from Day 1. We were born and bred with fear and threats by our own government.”

The Bloomberg report noted that the May 13, 1969 race riots helped convince many Chinese to back BN, as they accepted racial preferences for Malays as the cost of peace.

Anwar Ibrahim’s PR is pushing for an end to race-based policies. BN under Datuk Seri Najib Razak is also planning an end to such policies albeit at a more gradual pace to ensure political stability.

“It’s a contest ultimately about visions — do you believe the country is Malay-centred or a state of all its citizens?” Clive Kessler, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, told Bloomberg.

Kessler has estimated that BN no longer had enough non-Malay votes in the bank to ensure victory, and would need to win about two-thirds of Malay votes.

Bloomberg pointed out that while Najib has tweaked the policy for publicly traded firms and extended benefits to poorer members of all races, many other elements remain intact.

“We don’t play the racial card — we play a moderate Malaysia, an inclusive Malaysia and we’re talking about power sharing,” Najib said in an April 17 interview.

“That’s the kind of storyboard that we are trying to convince the Malaysian Chinese.”

According to the Bloomberg report businessman Thai, whose father fled China in 1949 during the Communist takeover, is dubious.

After growing up on a farm with 13 siblings in Johor, he failed to gain entry to a university where Malays received priority and moved to Canada to get a college degree.

On his return, he built a business aimed at exporting rubber gloves to avoid restrictions on selling within Malaysia.

Supermax, the nation’s third-largest medical glove-maker, now exports 24 billion gloves a year, said Thai, whose holdings in the company are worth about US$93 million (RM282 million), according to Bloomberg.

Thai is not the only Chinese businessman backing the opposition.

Chinese business interests have been actively making financial donations to PR parties, particularly the DAP, in recent years, boosting the opposition’s ability to campaign in Election 2013.

“The Chinese feel that the government has not done enough for them, but the same can be said of the Indians and the Malays,” said Wilfred Yap, an official with the Chinese- majority Sarawak United People’s Party, which is part of BN’s coalition.

He said Malays and Indians “are still complaining that the Chinese still control a big chunk of the economy.”

PR, by emulating BN, is promoting policies that seek to unite the different races, the DAP’s Liew Chin Tong was quoted as saying in the same report.

“They (BN) are suffering now because they are only focusing on the Malay votes,” Liew said in an interview last month.

“With Mahathir playing the racist card, they are speaking to only the Malay audience in the hope to push the Malay vote up to 65 per cent.”

-themalaysianinsider.com