DAP voting to remain: Perikatan will triple its efforts to pummel it further to prove Its mettle to BN — Phar Kim Beng

 

DAP’s overwhelming decision to remain in the Federal Government should not be interpreted merely as an internal party decision. 

It changes the strategic geometry of Malaysian politics.

At its national congress on August 16, DAP delegates voted decisively to keep the party’s ministers and deputy ministers in government. 

Of the 2,106 valid and spoilt ballots cast, 1,857—or 88.2 per cent—favoured remaining, while only 242 supported withdrawal.

The message is unmistakable. DAP has decided that whatever frustrations it may have with the Unity Government, reform is better pursued from within rather than through self-imposed political exile.

But there is another consequence.

Perikatan Nasional, and particularly a Hadi-led PAS, now has every incentive to triple its attacks on DAP.

The competition is no longer simply between PN and Pakatan Harapan. 

There is an increasingly important secondary contest occurring between PN and BN over who can command the Malay political centre of gravity.

In that competition, attacking DAP becomes political currency.

The first strategic implication is that DAP’s decision removes the possibility of an immediate rupture within the Federal Government. 

This stabilises Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration and deprives PN of the narrative that PH is disintegrating after its electoral setbacks.

The vote therefore gives the government breathing space. It does not, however, give DAP political immunity.

Indeed, remaining in government makes DAP an even more convenient target.

PN can now portray every controversial decision of the Federal Government as evidence of DAP’s supposed influence, irrespective of whether DAP had anything to do with the decision. 

This is an old political technique: personalise an enormously complicated coalition government around one convenient adversary.

The second implication is more consequential. PN needs to demonstrate its usefulness to BN.

The Negeri Sembilan election showed what coordinated electoral behaviour between BN and PN can accomplish. BN won 18 seats, PN seven and PH 11, producing a combined BN-PN supermajority of 25 seats in the 36-seat assembly.

But cooperation in Negeri Sembilan was not necessarily a permanent political marriage. BN leaders had already stressed that cooperation there did not automatically bind BN elsewhere.

This distinction is crucial.

If PN wants the Negeri Sembilan experiment repeated in Melaka, Perlis and eventually at GE16, it has to convince BN that PN brings something valuable to the table.

The easiest way to demonstrate that value is to intensify political pressure on DAP.

PAS can tell BN, implicitly or explicitly: we possess the ideological machinery, grassroots networks and rhetorical firepower capable of weakening DAP and PH among Malay voters. Therefore, BN should cooperate with us rather than PH.

DAP consequently becomes the punching bag through which PN advertises its political usefulness to BN.

Third, this creates a dangerous auction in Malay politics.

The harder PN attacks DAP, the greater the temptation for sections of BN to demonstrate that they too are capable of confronting DAP. 

BN risks being dragged onto terrain selected by PAS rather than UMNO itself.

This is precisely where BN must exercise extreme caution.

UMNO is not PAS. BN is not PN. Their histories, organisational cultures, constituencies and relationships with Sabah and Sarawak are different. BN also contains MCA and MIC. 

A strategy constructed around endlessly demonising DAP could eventually damage BN’s own multiracial foundations.

Fourth, PN faces another problem: Bersatu.

The stronger PAS becomes within the PN ecosystem, the more difficult the internal balance of PN becomes. The Negeri Sembilan results themselves demonstrated this asymmetry. 

PAS performed strongly under PN while Bersatu, contesting separately, failed to secure comparable electoral traction.

Thus PAS has incentives not merely to prove itself to BN but to prove its predominance within the wider opposition space.

Pummelling DAP serves both purposes simultaneously.

It reinforces PAS’s credentials as the principal ideological adversary of PH while strengthening its bargaining position against Bersatu and potentially with BN.

Fifth, DAP should resist the temptation to respond to every provocation.

This is perhaps the most important strategic lesson arising from its decision to remain.

DAP cannot simultaneously claim that remaining in government is necessary for national stability and then allow itself to be dragged daily into rhetorical combat with PAS.

The appropriate response is performance.

Housing, public transportation, wages, investment, education, digitalisation, healthcare, local government efficiency and cost-of-living pressures matter more to ordinary Malaysians than endless exchanges between political parties.

DAP must therefore make its continued presence in government visibly useful.

Sixth, Anwar and the rest of PH must understand that defending DAP does not mean defending every statement made by every DAP leader. 

It means rejecting the proposition that one component party can perpetually be transformed into a communal bogeyman.

Malaysia cannot develop a healthy democracy if elections become competitions over who can demonise another community more effectively.

The irony is therefore considerable.

DAP’s decision to remain strengthens the Federal Government in the immediate term. 

Yet precisely because it has remained, PN now possesses an even greater incentive to attack it.

The objective will not merely be to weaken DAP.

It will be to demonstrate PN’s electoral usefulness to BN.

This means the months ahead could see an intensification rather than diminution of attacks against DAP, particularly as political attention moves towards Melaka, Perlis and ultimately GE16.

DAP must therefore understand what its delegates actually decided on August 16.

They did not merely vote to retain their representation in the Federal Government.

They voted to remain inside the most difficult political arena in Malaysia.

The strategic answer to the attacks that will follow cannot simply be louder counterattacks. It must be governmental competence, coalition discipline and tangible delivery.

PN may triple its efforts to pummel DAP in order to prove its mettle to BN.

DAP’s most effective response is to make those attacks increasingly irrelevant to Malaysians whose principal concerns remain livelihoods, competent government and the future of the country.

That is ultimately how DAP can transform its vote to remain from an act of political survival into a strategy of political recovery. malaymail

•    Phar Kim Beng is a professor of Asean Studies and a director at the Institute of International and Asean Studies, International Islamic University Malaysia.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT