Pakatan Harapan (PH) is reeling because of its Cameron Highlands by-election defeat. Now the leaders are worried if this will be repeated in the next by-election – Semenyih – on March 2.
In Cameron Highlands, PH won the Chinese and Indians over but lost almost the entire Malay votes. Their leaders accused Umno and PAS of playing the racial card.
But that’s not new. PH should have known that race and religion have always been Umno and PAS’ fodder.
PH must look into itself and determine what had caused its defeat.
Many reasons why PH lost – failed promises, blundering candidate, an Umno-PAS combination that steamrolled through the Malay constituents to the complete exclusion of PH and former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s winning ways with the Orang Asli and Felda settlers.
Now, the Najib factor is very interesting simply because here is one man who has been made to look like he was no longer wanted – that he is good only for solitary confinement in a cell with a tiny hole to allow just enough air to keep him alive.
But in Cameron Highlands he overshadowed everyone else, without those red carpets and protocols. He towered over Lim Kit Siang, his direct opponent in the Cameron Highlands campaign trail who won the Indians and Chinese over with his vitriol against Najib.
But the Malays and Orang Asli despised him for that.
Many Sarawakians lauded the PH defeat in Cameron Highlands, the reason being many Sarawakians are supporters of Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS).
All along they have felt uneasy about PH, thus the defeat is welcome news. The hope is that the anti-PH virus in Cameron Highlands will get transported across the South China Sea to infect enough folk to see through the GE14 PH propaganda.
In GE14 Sarawakians were bombarded with endless information, mostly disinformation – of 20 percent vs 5 percent O&G royalty; of power of taxation vs begging for allocation; of full power in education to build own schools, hire own teachers etc.; of full power in healthcare; and that Sarawak would have full autonomy if PH captured Putrajaya.
Now we know all that is a pack of lies. They who propagated those lies are the very people who are now sabotaging the efforts of GPS at devolution of power.
PH was number one in cyberwar game, where it had successfully created a kleptomaniac, a corrupt government, a national debt of RM1 trillion, and most of all a Malaysian saving grace in PH.
But in Cameron Highlands, PH lost in its own game. Najib beat all of them soundly simply because he is a phenomenon in the Malaysian cyberspace. The Star writer Jocelyn Tan says this of him:
“He has somehow mastered the art of social media and his FB postings can draw as many as 25,000 likes within hours as well as thousands of comments.
“A video of him driving a jeep through the rushing waters of a river got more than 53,000 views.
“He has four million followers on Twitter, 3.7 million on Facebook and 556,000 on Instagram.”
If GPS can’t do a Najib in the way Najib did it, the state ruling coalition must still do something substantial. Remember, “cash is king” did not work. What seems to be king now is information – boundless, borderless, live-streaming and at-the-finger-tip information.
Netizens are going after PH now – for its many U-turns, blame-game and hate politics directed at individuals but without clear-cut and specific policies beneficial to the rakyat, especially the B40. It’s GPS’ opportunity to show it is better than PH.
Sarawakians need to be told why MA63 is getting nowhere. They need to know why there is still no money for dilapidated schools, and why commodities like oil palm and rubber are selling painfully cheap but goods are getting expensive by the day.
And while GPS looks into addressing all these issues, don’t forget some of your “Yang Berhormats” are still old-fashioned, don’t have a WhatsApp account, care very little about FB and have yet to pick up the habit of reading the news online.
If this situation persists until the next state election, most Sarawakians will not get the Cameron Highlands bug to develop enough immunity against compulsive and shameless lying.
