Counter-intuitively, Harapan voters may affect viability of Umno-PAS pact

 

I am not going to predict the outcome of the Negeri Sembilan state election.

However, I would like to suggest a counter-intuitive impact of the state election on national politics: Pakatan Harapan voters may affect the viability of the Umno-PAS pact if they staunchly stick with Harapan, even if Umno and PAS can perfectly pool their votes.

How many peninsula seats needed for Putrajaya?

While Malaysia has 222 parliamentary seats, government formation would be determined in the peninsula, where 165 seats and 83 percent of voters are located, as the dominant parties are automatically guaranteed seats in the federal cabinet.

Sabah and Sarawak parties would have no problem embracing even a PAS prime minister if they are given a good deal of autonomy.

How many Peninsular Malaysia seats are then needed for any of the three national coalitions to dominate the next coalition government in Putrajaya? It does not need an absolute majority, ie, 83 seats, which is not possible anyway.

On the other end, it cannot be just one seat more than the first-runner, 56 seats, which barely exceeds the evenly split three-way average (55).

I would put the magic number at 70, 13 seats lower than the max and 14 seats more than the minimum. This is based on the GE15 outcome: both Harapan+Muda and Perikatan Nasional won 71 seats, while BN trailed at 23 seats.

Anything above or close to 70 can put the leading coalition in the driver’s seat; while moving further away from 70, there is an increasing likelihood for its two rivals to team up and upsurge the outcome. For BN, this means 47 seats to conquer.

The calculations to stay top in a three-corner

How can BN increase its seats by nearly three times from 23 to 70?

It has two possible options. The first is to take on both Harapan and PN, if BN is strong. If BN is not so strong, but both Harapan and PN appear to be equal in electoral strength, and there is no ideological ground for a team-up with either, then BN would still go solo.

If a rival appears weaker than the other, then the second option emerges: teaming up with the stronger rival to attack the weaker rival.

This does not require any love or brotherhood between BN and its chosen ally. They can fight each other another day. The immediate aim is to collapse the tripartite rivalry into a straight fight.

While PN suffers from Bersatu’s split and appears slightly weaker than in GE15, Harapan is clearly weaker than PN in holding its base. This was confirmed in Sabah (where both GRS and BN both avoided a clash with Harapan, incidentally, benefiting Warisan) and Johor (where not only did Harapan lose voters, a sizeable portion of its lost votes swung to BN).

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Two necessary factors for Umno-PAS pact

Here, it is important to separate the two factors that make the Umno-PAS pact profitable for both.

The first factor is simply the transferability of votes between BN and PN. The second factor is the collapse of Harapan’s base to provide enough spoils for a win-win deal between Umno and PAS.

The first factor is controlled by BN and PN leaders and base, while the second factor is controlled by those of Harapan, which few analysts appear to recognise.

If BN and PN can pool together their votes in GE15, all things being equal, they can flip 28 parliamentary seats which Harapan won with a plurality.

This would immediately reduce Harapan’s parliamentary strength from 71 to 43, consigning it to either the opposition bench or as a junior partner in the next coalition government.

As long as Umno and PAS can command the BN and PN base to pool their votes together, there is nothing much Harapan can do on the first factor.

Can there be win-win between Umno and PAS?

While a perfect transferability of BN and PN votes can wrest away 28 parliamentary seats from Harapan, can this be enough for a win-win between Umno and PAS?

If PN is so generous to concede all the 28 seats (including 15 seats where PN was stronger) to BN, then BN could double its peninsula seats from 23 to 51, but PN would dwarf it if it keeps all 71 seats won in GE15.

Would Umno be happy to be overtaken by PAS for the second time? While PAS may promise to back an Umno prime minister, can Umno trust PAS? After all, PAS has two prime ministerial candidates, Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar and Hamzah Zainudin, in its hands.

Why would PAS pass the top job to Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, or worse, the younger and more dynamic Khairy Jamaluddin, or Johari Abdul Ghani who succeeds or forces out Zahid mid-term?

Umno-PAS pact needs Harapan collapse

As Umno and PAS constituencies are heavily overlapped, it would be worse for Umno to be PAS’ junior partner than as Harapan’s junior partner. As two tigers cannot co-exist in the same mountain, which PAS bitterly learned in Kelantan in 1977, Umno risks being salami-sliced into oblivion by PAS.

To resolve or postpone the Umno-PAS conflict, PN must concede some seats for BN. Given the Bersatu split and the PN’s relative decline, PAS won’t mind sacrificing some Bersatu seats for PAS and Hamzah’s Parti Wawasan Negara won’t stand in the way.

Hence, a potential deal might be a full pact in GE16 with 100 seats to be contested for BN and the remaining 65 for PN, with six seats won by Bersatu given to Umno.

But would this suffice for BN to emerge on top? The arithmetic is simple: having its current 23 seats and six Bersatu seats conceded by PN, BN would still need to wrest 41 seats from Harapan to attain the magic number of 70.

With only perfect transferability of BN-PN votes, BN can at most take 28 seats. To wrest the extra 13 seats from Harapan, a collapse of Harapan support is necessary. Here, Johor is a good indicator – if the voting pattern in the state election is repeated in GE16, Harapan’s parliamentary seats in Johor would plummet from 15 (out of 26) to just one.

So, this is why Harapan voters hold the card for the Umno-PAS pact. If the coalition can hold its ground around 43 peninsula seats (where it won a majority or almost a majority) or more – or a more mixed scenario in which some seats change hands to Bersama – Umno might become a tool for PAS’ dominance. This is the second factor which Harapan leaders and voters control.

Negeri Sembilan is therefore a bellwether for GE16. If Harapan loses only the five seats where BN-PN votes exceeded Harapan’s in the 2023 state polls, then it is just the first factor at work: the BN-PN pact works, but Umno is not necessarily the winner in GE16.

If Harapan loses more than that, then it shows signs of its base collapse; Umno can safely go into a pact with PAS. On the other hand, if Harapan manages to pull off some surprise wins over BN-PN, then the Malay-Muslim nationalist pact’s national benefits to BN would be called into question even if the state power changes hands.

Expect more culture war episodes

Beyond what meets the eye, Harapan voters have greater political agency than most analyses recognise.

The declassification of the royal commission of inquiry on the Tabung Haji scandal and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s apologies to the Indian community over his “kuil haram” comment suggest Harapan’s recognition of the need to rally its base. Whatever the outcome in Negeri Sembilan, this offensive would continue.

Anwar Ibrahim

Of course, BN-PN would not sit idly. Expect more episodes of culture war like those Dr Akmal Saleh and others have orchestrated to drum up Malay unity.

In Johor and Negeri Sembilan, two chief ministers have supplemented that with textbook examples of “enemy framing”.

In a crass way, Kedah Menteri Besar Sanusi Nor asserted that Malaysia is Tanah Melayu and belongs only to the Malays. In a more sophisticated style, Johor Menteri Besar Onn Hafiz Ghazi framed DAP as such an outcast that he would rather relinquish his chief ministership than share a table with DAP.

If culture war and communalism can frustrate enough Harapan voters to stay at home, the BN-PN pact would have a better prospect. - Mkini

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WONG CHIN HUAT is a political scientist at Sunway University and a member of Project Stability and Accountability for Malaysia (Projek Sama).

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.