A minor setback but the battle wages on!

I'm hugely disappointed that Pakatan lost the closely-fought Hulu Selangor by-election yesterday. The BN/UMNO candidate, Kamalanathan, won by a slim majority of 1,725 votes. I really feel for Zaid Ibrahim's loss as he's one of the few truly respectable and principled politicians in Malaysia. A win for Zaid Ibrahim would have been a win for all Malaysians who believe in justice and equality that transcend race, religion and ethicity. It would have been a win against the deeply entrenched corruption and abuse of power by the ruling BN regime. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be.

I'm still waiting to find out what is the by-election's voting breakdown according to races. Yes, it's really sad and pathetic to use the racial calculus in this modern-day election but that's the hard reality here in Malaysia. Hulu Selangor parliamentary district is a mixed constituency with 53% Malays, 26% Chinese, 19% Indians and less than 2% Orang Asli. It's almost a microcosm of the Malaysian racial demographics as a whole except that Hulu Selangor is mainly rural and semi-urban.

From what I've gleaned in the media so far it seems like the voting had gone as predicted except for some minor shifts that allowed BN/UMNO to eke out a victory. The Chinese voters, as expected, vote overwhelmingly for Pakatan (between 70%-80%), which means that the shift happened within the Indian and Malay communities. Despite the dispute in candidate selection between UMNO and MIC, I think a lot of Indians decided to back the Indian candidate, at least more than the percentage that elected the late Pakatan candidate in the 2008 election, whose death triggered this by-election. As for the Malay voters, since this a rural and semi-urban communities, the development and Islamic (read: moral) issues played a big role in shaping their minds.

Indian voters have been shown to be gradually leaning toward BN/UMNO in the past couple of years especially in the Bagan Pinang by-election October last year. I can't really pinpoint the exact reasons for this shift but one can always venture a guess: wealth of goodies showered by BN before the election; the impression that the PM, Najib Razak, is more amendable to the needs of the Indians; the refusal of Hindraf to play ball with Pakatan; and the false belief that their pressing needs would be best served by the government in power rather than the Opposition.

Malay voters, especially in the least developed areas, have always formed the backbone of UMNO support base. Without these Malay voters BN/UMNO would have lost the Peninsular Malaysia to Pakatan in the last election. The common strategy used by BN/UMNO to manipulate the rural Malays is two-prong: promise of development goodies and exploiting their unfounded fears of the non-Malay dominance or other racial and/or religious issues. In the Hulu Selangor's case BN/UMNO resorted to accuse Zaid Ibrahim of being "kaki botol" or an alcoholic by doctoring a picture of him cradling a bottle of Jack Daniel's whiskey. It was a despicable tactic, politics at its worst, but its objective was to strike at the moral and religious nerve of the rural Malays. Its implication was such that it could be perceived to create some kind of a personal distrust, be it class difference (Zaid was portrayed as an urban Malay elite who was out-of-touch with the rural Malays) or conflict of religious values (Zaid is not a good Muslim because he drinks alcohol) or both.

I'm not sure if this mud-slinging tactic actually worked but in a closely-fought election every bit of advantage helps. My take would be the development goodies and money that played a bigger role in ensuring BN/UMNO's majority support in the Malay communities. The RM 50,000 paid to each of the Malay Felda settlers in Sungai Buaya for the debt owed to them by government was probably the final nudge needed to push BN/UMNO over the finish file. It was a blatantly corrupt money politics, pure and simple!

All told BN/UMNO had spent RM 64 million (USD 20 million) in the past few weeks trying to win, or should I say buy, this election. It's impossible for Pakatan to match this staggering amount of campaign war chest. This is not including the gross manipulation of Federal agencies such as the Election Commissions, the police, Jabatan Hal-Ehwal Orang Asli (Aboriginal Affairs Department), FELDA and others to secure the votes on behalf of the ruling government. Still, a clear lesson one can take from the Hulu Selangor by-election is this: bread-and-butter local issues still take precedence over national scandals and controversies especially when the constituents are less sophisticated and don't have much access to alternative media and news sources. In this respect BN/UMNO has the advantage because it can immediately release its money tap and shower these communities with various development goodies. If the battle had been fought purely on the ideological arena Pakatan would have won handily as BN/UMNO has been proven time and again to be ideologically and morally bankrupt. Unfortunately material and emotional (racial and religious) issues still resonate strongly among many voters.

I wonder when the Malaysian electorate in general will be mature and educated enough to move beyond their own individual and communal needs for the sake of a more democratic and just Malaysia? Nevertheless Pakatan can take heart that it had managed to acquire an increase of over 4,000 votes compared to the 2008 election, which shows that it still has plenty of support on the ground and the loss has not been in vain. Now it's time to pick itself up again and work hard to win the ultimate prize, Putra Jaya, in the upcoming 13th general election. A battle is lost but the war goes on!