'Failure to take on criticism spelled Kedah PAS downfall'

The inability to take criticisms on board and the lack of a high-performing menteri besar were a few of the factors which led to the fall of the PAS-led Kedah government to the BN.

According to Universiti Malaya Centre for Election and Democracy Studies (Umcedel) director Mohammad Redzuan Othman (left), this was most evident if compared to Kelantan where PAS had retained power.

"To win, you can't just keep saying that we are a strong party which has worked hard for a long time.

"PAS in Kedah is not like PAS in Kelantan. In Kelantan, out of eight surveyed, four will support PAS, three BN, but all eight will say they will vote in support of (former Kelantan MB) Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat," he said.

"I don't want to elaborate too much as (former Kedah MB) Azizan Abdul Razak is now in the hospital, but we all know what the results were."

Speaking at a forum to discuss the outcome of the polls, he said the same effect was seen in Selangor, where Abdul Khalid Ibrahim was a main factor for the win there.

"His ratings were upwards of 60 percent throughout the state and that is very high in statistical terms.

"Many who supported Khalid (right) were civil servants and government-linked company workers," he added.

Conversely, he noted, BN's failure to name a Selangor MB candidate contributed significantly to their loss.

"Voters are now better informed and are not just basing their votes on a party or the candidate in their voting constituency, but on an administration's performance," he stressed.

Mohammad Redzuan said that PAS in Kedah was also among the more resistant to findings which are not favourable to the party.

"Kelantan had accepted our findings and worked on improvements, but Kedah could not accept it and insisted that they were forerunners in the race...

"When we concluded that PAS had problems in Negri Sembilan and Kedah, the respective deputy commissioners slammed us," he said at the full-house event.

He noted that the Pakatan Rakyat cooperation in Kedah also paled in comparison to other states won by the coalition in 2008.

"DAP was not given a chance right to the end in Kedah," he said.

Urban and rural Malays vote differently

To a question from the floor, the senior academic said that one cannot truly answer the question of what the average Malay voter wants as there exists no homogeneous Malay voter.

He said that Malays - like others in the rural areas who have less access to information - voted for the BN, while a large bulk of their brethren in the urban areas backed Pakatan.

"(In the rural areas,) I believe Malays vote for continuity and are taken in by budi(good deeds).

"People we met tell us, "Look, they gave us RM500 so it's not too much to ask for us to vote for them"," he said, referring to the 1Malaysia People’s Aid (BR1M) payouts that were found to have had a significant impact on the votes.

Those who have better access to information, however, were found to have different considerations.

He said that the centre's mapping of voting patterns found that areas which supported Pakatan were consistent with Internet broadband penetration.

Umcedel also found that Pakatan won 33 out of 16 seats where institutions of higher learning are located, such as Universiti Malaya which is located in PKR-held Lembah Pantai.

In Lembah Pantai, he said, BR1M was found to have impacted only about half of the voters polled, unlike among the rural Malays in Johor where 87 percent had been influenced by the BR1M.