In the aftermath of May 5th (part 13)

While Barisan Nasional was confident it is guaranteed no less than 130 parliamentary seats -- with 145 as an achievable target -- Pakatan Rakyat, in turn, was equally confident it could win 135 parliamentary seats -- the worst-case scenario being at least 120 seats. And, just like Barisan Nasional, Pakatan Rakyat, too, did its maths and had a basis for this confidence.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

The jury is now in. A post mortem has been done on the performance of both Pakatan Rakyat and Barisan Nasional in the recent general election on 5th May 2013 and this is what the jury has decided.

Both Pakatan Rakyat and Barisan Nasional made tactical blunders that cost them seats.

No doubt Barisan Nasional won 133 parliamentary seats, which is higher than Pakatan Rakyat’s 89. However, the worst-case scenario for Barisan Nasional was 130 while the best-case scenario was 145. And Barisan Nasional’s war room had hoped to at least duplicate the 140 seats they won in 2008 even if they cannot touch the best-case scenario of 145. 

The differential in Barisan Nasional’s seven or so parliamentary seats came basically from the Chinese-majority constituencies. Barisan Nasional felt that at best it could garner at least 10% of the Chinese vote. So all it needed to do was to get an additional 5% to make this 15%. Then, with the increase in Malay and Indians votes, they can get close to 140 parliamentary seats.

Barisan Nasional was shocked that it not only did not get the 10% of the Chinese vote it thought it would, or increase this by another 5% that it hoped could happen, the Chinese vote was as low as 2-3%. This stunned Barisan Nasional to speechlessness.

Barisan Nasional’s strategy was to break the war into a few battles with different generals for each battle. The 31 parliamentary seats in Sarawak would be left to Taib Mahmud to manage. The 26 parliamentary seats in Sabah/Labuan would be left to Musa Aman to manage. Pusat would not interfere in those two East Malaysian states. Then the 165 parliamentary seats in West Malaysia would be divided into rural and urban. The rural seats would be fought on the ground via perjumpaan kelompok, ceramah and rapat umum while the urban seats would be fought on the Internet via the social media and Blogs.

Barisan Nasional now admits that while the battle in Sarawak, Sabah and the rural areas of West Malaysia were to a certain degree successful, they failed in the urban battle on the Internet and in the social media. They admit that Pakatan Rakyat was just too good for them and they underestimated the opposition’s strength.

And this is going to be Khairy Jamaluddins’ job for the next five years, to win the battle of the hearts and minds of the youth, the Internet- and social media-savvy population of Malaysia. How he is going to achieve this would, of course, be something we find out later. However, by calling Bloggers monkeys would certainly not be one of the strategies to adopt.

While Barisan Nasional was confident it is guaranteed no less than 130 parliamentary seats -- with 145 as an achievable target -- Pakatan Rakyat, in turn, was equally confident it could win 135 parliamentary seats -- the worst-case scenario being at least 120 seats. And, just like Barisan Nasional, Pakatan Rakyat, too, did its maths and had a basis for this confidence.

And that was why Anwar Ibrahim dared issue the promise that if Pakatan Rakyat does not win the election he would retire and go back to teaching. He was confident he would not need to carry out this promise.

This reminds me of Samy Vellu’s promise during the Lunas by-election in November 2000 where he said that if MIC does not win he will never go back to Kuala Lumpur. Well, MIC lost and Samy quietly sneaked back to Kuala Lumpur.

Barisan Nasional found out the hard way regarding Pakatan Rakyat’s strength in psywar and in the Internet war. Even before the election, Pakatan Rakyat’s cyber troopers already said the 5th May 2013 general election was going to be the mother of all battles plus the dirtiest election in Malaysian history. The fact they said the same thing in 2008, 2004, 1999, and so on, escaped many people’s attention.

Every general election, according to the opposition, is the mother of all battles plus the dirtiest election in history. Yet every election (except in 2004) the opposition does better and better. Ah, yes, but if there had not been any cheating then they would have done even better still.

This was well planted in the minds of many Malaysians and Barisan Nasional failed to counter that argument. Hence Pakatan Rakyat won the hearts and minds of the urban voters while Barisan Nasional lost.

Then, as early as 7.00pm on Polling Day, even as the votes were still being counted and no one really knew the full result yet, Anwar announced that he had already won the election.

Again, Barisan Nasional did not counter this and, again, Pakatan Rakyat won that round.

Then Pakatan Rakyat announced that there were blackouts all over Malaysia plus extra ballot boxes were being brought into the counting centres. And that was why at 7.00pm Pakatan Rakyat won the election but three or four hours later Barisan Nasional won instead.

And, yet again, Barisan Nasional did not counter this and, yet again, Pakatan Rakyat won that round. The fact that the counting centres that had blackouts plus extra ballot boxes smuggled into them were never named escaped many people’s attention. And none of the Pakatan Rakyat PACA ever came forward to name the counting centres that they were on duty at when all this happened.

Then Anwar announces that his exit from politics and his retirement will have to be put on hold since he does not accept the election results. He also said he will campaign non-stop all over Malaysia until he gets what he wants. 

He did not, however, say exactly what he wants.

Does he want certain seats (he said Pakatan Rakyat had won 30 seats, which were ‘stolen’) to get declared null and void and for new elections to be held for those seats? Does he want the Election Commission to ‘call off’ the entire election and hold a new general election?

In that case, what will happen to Penang, Selangor and Kelantan where Pakatan Rakyat has already been sworn in as the government? Would the Pakatan Rakyat governments of these states all resign and would new elections be held in those states as well?

Pakatan Rakyat never explained and Barisan Nasional never asked or countered. So one more round for Pakatan Rakyat!

Barisan Nasional is so sloppy. No wonder they lost the urban vote. Maybe that is where Khairy should look for the monkeys -- amongst the Umno cyber troopers. Aiyoh! Send them for training lah. The DAP cyber troopers make them look like fools.