It was the people's anger that did it

VERY few people indeed, if any at all, can say that they expected the Barisan Nasional to be so humbled in this general election just after the country celebrated 50 years of independence under its rule.

The BN not only lost its two-thirds majority in Parliament, its measure of its invincibility, strength and pride, but was also
ousted in Penang, Kedah, Perak and Selangor. Of course, many may be right about Kelantan.

So complete was the BN dominance that few dared suggest it would ever lose its two-thirds majority, the long-time target and objective of all major opposition parties or coalition of parties.

Thus many sniggered rather loudly when PAS vice-president Datuk Husam Musa suggested a week ago at a gathering of
Kelantanese living in the Klang Valley that the PKR-DAP-PAS combination was close to winning over 116 parliamentary constituencies.

He seemed to be the only one on record as having said that the BN’s magical two-thirds would be breached, and that it was possible for the coalition to be defeated or brought to the threshold of defeat.

His statement also suggested the depth of the cooperation among the three parties where the DAP is publicly coy about being seen together with PAS. But the dynamics of the campaign saw them cooperating and at some DAP rallies, PAS flags were also displayed.

Of course the BN itself never for a moment doubted that it would maintain its hold on two-thirds of the seats in the Dewan Rakyat, come what may.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, while admitting that the coalition he leads would not be performing as well as in 2004, had said the BN would maintain its two-thirds majority.

Shortly after casting his vote in Pekan, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak told RTM that the BN would win more than two-thirds of the Dewan Rakyat seats. Some overconfident officials even said the BN would repeat its 2004 performance.

So what happened? Why did the voters deliver such a punishing verdict?

It is apparent that the BN leaders had misread the mood of the people. After ruling for half a century, it believed in its invincibility and refused to acknowledge that the people were angry with some of its policies, decisions and actions.

They thought the street demonstrations in Terengganu and Kuala Lumpur were nothing more than the occasional show of
defiance and dissatisfaction over simple bread-and-butter issues.

The BN leaders refused to accept the fact that people were now more intelligent than they were 50 years ago. That they were willing to come out and demonstrate, showed that they were really angry and want their grouses to be quickly attended to.

Instead, the leaders belittled the demonstrations as something initiated by the opposition parties. This annoyed many people and when BN leaders said demonstrations are not part of the Malaysian culture, someone wrote to remind them that “Umno was born out of demonstrations against the Malayan Union”.

Besides simple bread-and-butter issues like the rise in prices of consumer items, anger had built up from frustrations with the government’s seeming inability to deal with the increase in crime rate, its refusal to acknowledge the on-going Islamisation, its refusal to deal with complaints of neglect of minority races and its insistence to continue with the NEP.

They were also angry at the level of corruption and the seeming unwillingness of the government to root out the problem, but were instead seen as condoning some of the abuses that were becoming widespread.

Unable to demonstrate to get their grouses heard, they shouted out their protest and anger through the only avenue available to them – in fact, the only recourse encouraged by the government – through the ballot box.

It was their anger that did it. They wanted to show that they matter and are not a mere doormat. What PKR, DAP and PAS did was merely to harness that anger into votes for them or against the BN and they were quite surprised how easy it was for them to do it.

To his credit, de facto PKR leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, because of his determined efforts to cobble together some form of cooperation between his party, DAP and PAS, emerged as an opposition icon, something the BN leaders had not counted on, as to them he was already “irrelevant”.

His ceramahs became rallies, and thousands flocked to his meet-the-people sessions throughout the country. His rallying call for people to vote Opposition regardless of the party and as long as they did not vote BN was effective.

For instance, in the state constituency of Bukit Selambau in Kedah the voters rejected the MIC candidate and instead voted for the only other non-BN candidate, an Independent, also an Indian. The result was a surprise as more than half of the voters were Malays and demonstrated that the anger transcends race.

Thus it is possible that attempts made to discredit Anwar through the media by calling attention to what he did and did not do and what he said while he was deputy prime minister during the last week of campaign backfired.

To the opposition parties, without proper access to the mainstream media, the rallies helped them get their arguments across to the people. In this the police helped by “closing one eye” to the rules on ceramahs.

There is no doubt that despite its unpopularity, especially after its move in withdrawing the use of the indelible ink, the Election Commission is somewhat vindicated when the Opposition was able to make such huge gains.

For the BN it is time for reflection and reassessment. It must come to grips with itself and find out how, after winning such a massive mandate in 2004, it squandered the goodwill in less than four years.

It must if it is not to become irrelevant.

The Sun