Nik Nazmi: Harapan should not lose support base to win over far-right

 

INTERVIEW | Pakatan Harapan should not abandon its ideals and risk losing the coalition’s core supporters in an attempt to win over far-right opposition voters, according to PKR vice-president Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad.

In an interview with Malaysiakini this week, he said Harapan will never be able to out-Malay its rival Perikatan Nasional.

Taking the upcoming Kuala Kubu Baharu by-election as an example, Nik Nazmi believed the ruling coalition should target fence-sitting voters instead of trying to convert hardcore PN supporters.

“... we need to reach out. I think there are still a lot of people who are fence-sitters who swing from one party to another. And, traditionally, they have been determining who wins or loses in elections.

“So, one is that we don’t want to lose our core, but we need to win over the swing voters whether they are Malay or non-Malay and to address their concerns,” he said.

Difficult balancing act

After the 15th general election, Pakatan Harapan has often been accused of pandering to ultra-conservative Malay and Islamic groups, much to the frustration of its multiracial supporters.

The general criticism against the Harapan leadership was that they seemed to be trying to outdo PN, which now controls a majority of the Malay-majority seats in Peninsular Malaysia.

However, when asked about this, the natural resources and environmental sustainability minister disagreed with such a notion.

Instead, Nik Nazmi said Harapan leaders, especially PKR, have been trying their best to find a balance.

“It’s always a challenging balancing act and I think PKR feels it the most. We get squeezed out in the middle because our constituencies are multiracial.

“For many political parties, they have easy template answers or solutions. But for PKR, we can’t because, you know, we have people who are very, very liberal on one end and you have people who are quite conservative on the other in our constituency,” he said.

Socio-economic strategy

Nik Nazmi said Harapan is not going to let go of its principles to get votes and this has been shown by its leaders through their actions.  

He pointed to recent controversies involving Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek, also from PKR, who was recently criticised over her instruction for school canteens to continue operation during Ramadan and for her remarks about the use of the word “kafir”.

Praising Fadhlina for doing the right thing, Nik Nazmi said Harapan leaders would not bow down to pressure even if it means that they have to “suffer from the conservative base”.

“At the end of the day, we can’t outflank PN in terms of playing the Malay card or the Islamic card, because we know that that is their comparative advantage in a way.”

Adding further, Nik Nazmi said not all the Malays who voted for PN in GE15 did it purely for racial or religious issues.

While it might have looked that way, he believed many had also voted based on socio-economic considerations.

Thus, the PKR leader said, the Harapan government plans to tackle PN voters by addressing the country’s socio-economic issues through economic reforms and ongoing initiatives.

“...those who, for them, the number one (consideration) is still about race and religion, we can’t win them back because it’s very difficult for them to vote for Harapan, right?

“But if the underlying (factor) is still socio-economic, I think we can win them over,” Nik Nazmi said.

Improving communication

Meanwhile, Nik Nazmi believed that Harapan should pick up its communications game, especially with regard to the Malay community.

He admitted that Harapan is now playing catch up with PN in terms of social media messaging despite being in government.

This was in stark difference from the start of the Reformasi era until the early days of Facebook and Twitter, he said, where they had the advantage in cyberspace.

“We definitely need to do better in engaging with the press, with engaging social media, reaching out, even using things like, if you’re talking about the Malay voters, how do you engage with the religious NGOs, with religious institutions, and not just (relying on) Jakim, TV Al Hijrah, and all that because that’s there.

“Yes, that’s for the government but you need to go beyond going to the madrasah, going to the pondok with the pendakwah bebas (independent preachers) and all that.

“How do you reach out? And I think we need to do better with that.” - Mkini