Why Camerons wasn’t the litmus test for PH

(Bernama pic)

One victory for Barisan Nasional (BN) in Cameron Highlands, and already the prophets of doom are at their keyboards. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, be it the victorious BN or the vanquished Pakatan Harapan (PH) and their supporters.

But before anyone gets carried away by the hype of this by-election result, remember this: Cameron Highlands is in Pahang which remains a BN stronghold. It has always been and will continue to be just that.

PH did not lose the seat this time around. It wasn’t their seat in the first place and never had been in the past three general elections when they went up against BN.

It would have been a feather in the cap for PH had they wrested the seat from BN, but it didn’t happen. The voters have spoken and it’s best to move on from here.

Making up excuses for the defeat does nothing at all for PH.

You could look for every excuse to justify it, including the result of the opposition playing up the broken promises made by PH at GE14, or the choice of candidate, to the rising cost of living. You could even put it down to the same old ruse of using race and religion to win, but what good does it do for the vanquished PH?

It would be better to be magnanimous in defeat and get on with the business of governing the country. You have four years plus to convince voters of your ability to govern the country efficiently. You still have time to prove that you are a clean government and will make fighting corruption your number one priority.

As for the victorious BN, they can certainly gloat over this win and make the most of it by claiming that this is the start of better things to come for the Umno-led BN. They can even start believing that Cameron Highlands is the launching pad for BN’s return to power come GE15. That would be their right. Whether it is nothing more than wishful thinking, merely a fool’s paradise, we shall see.

But one thing is for certain. The popularity of the PH government in their stronghold of Selangor will be put to the test shortly in the Semenyih by-election. Lose in this by-election and you can no longer claim you were up against a ruling state government as with the case of Cameron Highlands in Pahang, nor can you look for any excuse whatsoever.

A win for BN will add to their momentum and solidify their belief that together with PAS and with a minute role by MCA and MIC, they are well on the road to becoming a returning government come GE15.

They could even be counting their chickens before they are hatched. That, again, would be their right. It is the hope they must provide to their supporters and followers to keep their spirits up. Hope is all they have to get by for now, nothing else. Like dreams, hopes are also free.

Politics, it is said, is the art of the impossible. Dr Mahathir Mohamad is living proof of this. It was simply unthinkable that someday he would work with his nemesis Lim Kit Siang and return as our seventh prime minister. But it happened.

By the same token, we could also see the return of Najib Razak, Zahid Hamidi, Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor and the likes, not forgetting MCA and MIC. Nothing is cast in stone and no one can really tell the future. Only time will tell. But before anyone rushes off with yet another salvo of PH being a one-term government, there is a question that must be put to the voters at large.

The answer, I believe, lies in the song by the Spice Girls: “Is this what you want, what you really, really want?”

Clement Stanley is an FMT reader