Really?
Yup!
And how the DAP warlords are panicking.
Caption update: Harapan decided to pick the Indian guy to contest Rantau
DAP’s belligerent war talk
Now that Umno and PAS are a happily married couple, they will not be repeating their mistake* (see footnote) of GE14. Instead, by adopting a new strategy of straight fights, GE15 is in the bag for Team Perpaduan Ummah – as the Camerons and Semenyih by-elections have shown.
And this fact is what sent DAP into panic mode.
DAP sec-gen Lim Guan Eng considers the Umno-PAS union a casus belli and “declaration of war” (below) against non Malays.
DAP deputy sec-gen Nga Kor Ming was reported on Friday as saying joint rule by PAS-Umno will send Malaysia reeling down the road of an Afghanistan-like Taliban state and beyond the “point of no return”.
’Scorched earth’ was and is DAP’s own policy
Meanwhile, DAP political education director Liew Chin Tong accused Umno and PAS of a deploying a “scorched earth policy” which he explains as “deliberately destroying everything in an attempt to win at all costs”.
Liew, the deputy defence minister, fears that his Harapan government will soon “have to deal with angry ethnic fires fanned from both the Malay front and the non-Malay side”.
“Everything will be framed in racial binary terms,” he stated. In reality, ‘everything’ is already dichotomized and DAP is the party largely responsible for creating this dichotomy.
What is most revealing from Liew is his inadvertent admission how “demands from both [racial] sides will be contradictory, hostile and explosive”.
The demands of PAS and Umno are not contradictory to each other. PAS wants the sovereignty of Islam over our land. Umno does not object. Umno wants the Malay special position to be upheld. PAS does not object. It is only DAP that’s screaming “Taliban”!
On the other hand, the demands of DAP and Pribumi are at opposite ends of the pole, e.g. UEC recognition which the Perkasa types in Pribumi decry as threatening the status of BM as the national language. “Hostile and explosive” was the reaction to ICERD from the Malay front, including the Pribumi and PAN people.
Harapan a ticking timebomb waiting to implode
Liew also claims that the opposition aims to break Harapan’s multi-ethnic coalition from within “as the center may not hold due to contradictory demands from the flanks”.
Well, he should know as it was DAP’s successful blueprint for attack – breaking BN through implosion when Umno and MCA/Sabah-Sarawak native Christians pulled in different directions.
Furthermore according to Liew, now Umno “no longer need to pretend to be centrist”.
Therefore “in this setting, there is no way that Pakatan Harapan can ‘out-Malay’ Umno, ‘out-Islam’ PAS, ‘out-Chinese’ MCA and ‘out-Indian’ MIC”, he added. (Tahu pun.)
Liew’s hypothesis itself makes the case as to why Harapan will lose the next election: Pribumi will not be able to out-Malay Umno, PAN will not be able to out-Islam PAS, and DAP will not be able to out-Chinese MCA.
The poor Indians are, as usual, left marginalized on the sidelines with little bargaining power.
ABOVE: Mahathir’s protege makes history as Malaysia’s youngest dancing cabinet
What use is Pribumi to Harapan?
Pribumi brings little value add to Harapan. Mahathir’s party is clearly unable to corral the Malay votes, similar to how MCA is unable to deliver Chinese votes.
Even Mahathir’s appearance on the stump in Semenyih failed to boost his party candidate. It was estimated by Bridget Welsh that Malay support for Harapan in Semenyih was a mere 29 percent – see bar chart below.
In fact, any Malay votes that went to Pribumi in GE14 could’ve been just as easily obtained by Harapan if PKR had stood a Malay candidate. Remember, Pribumi only won 12 parliament seats on its own steam.
But today Pribumi has 27 MPs. Fifteen of them are frogs from Umno. In the next election, Malays in these 15 seats would still be voting Umno.
Joceline Tan, in her Feb 17 Star column, nailed it when she wrote:
”Of course, many think that accepting crossovers from an enemy party does not equate to clout or strength. The Chinese have a saying for this sort of borrowed strength – it is known as taking someone else’s backside to put on your face”.
Pribumi is the weak link. It has more Umno-mandated MPs (15) than its own original ticket MPs (12).
ALL three of the ministers embroiled in the dubious or missing bachelor’s degree scandal are from Pribumi – Deputy Foreign Minister Marzuki ‘Cambridge’ Yahya, Perak Menteri Besar Ahmad Faizal Azumu and Johor Menteri Besar Osman Sapian.
Yet the most cohesive and solid Harapan party DAP is kowtowing to the pact’s weakest party Pribumi. Harapan makes a joke of the ‘meritocracy’ concept.
There’s no way Harapan can last more than one term in Putrajaya.
And going by merit, there will be no Chinese representation in the next upcoming Umno-PAS federal government. The poor little rich Chinese will be, quite unusually, left marginalized on the sidelines with no bargaining power.
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
END NOTE:
* Analysis by both sides of the political divide agree that Harapan would not have been able to form the GE14 federal government if PAS and Umno had combined their strength instead of splitting the Malay votes.
There is also a consensus by analysts of either political persuasions that Umno and PAS together commanded three-quarters of the Malay electorate.
Doubtless this 75 percent Malay support for Umno-PAS is not distributed evenly across the peninsula. Harapan fared its best – between 39 and 42 percent support – among Malays in the Klang Valley whereas PAS and Umno had made a clean sweep of Kelantan and Terengganu parliament as well as DUNs, meaning it’s impossible for PAN and Pribumi to make inroads into the Green Crescent.
Helen Ang 
Expected result of umnopas teamup, but can you foresee who would lead the team in governing and how the teamup effects sabah/sarawak? Would umno want to labelled rigid mullahs too? Everybody knows umno needs pas. Let’s hope umno accepts pas reigning them. BTW, if it is fear that you are trying to instill, you gotta try harder. Smart people do not succumb to fear, they find a solution.
>>And going by merit, there will be no Chinese representation in the next upcoming Umno-PAS federal government
Future UMNO-PAS gomen can always appoint a token senator from a large pool of rejected MCA/ Gerakan politicians to represent (or to spite) the Chinese. Call it something like “Minister of Chinese Affairs”. No worries.
i like the word ” merit “.
A lot ppl will lose their job if this society is based on ” merits ” 😂😂😂😂😂
Malaysia is going through a major re-alignment and re-consolidation of political forces and blocs and how it turns out is left to be seen.
However many UMNO MPs jump ship, come GE15, new blood will come forth from the rank and file to contest seats and coupled with prices which have remained high, Mahathir’s talk of privatisation of sections of the civil service, talk of letting go of MAS (to whom dunno), reports of slowing business, ban on smoking in restaurants, failure to honor election pledge with regards PTPTN loans, etc., it looks likely that Pakatan Harapan will be a one-term government.
I believe that a key factor which helped Pakatan win enough seats to win is the inclusion of Pribumi and Mahathir into the Pakatan pact, which brought along with it, votes which would otherwise gone to UMNO or BN but it looks like this effect is wearing off and a swing of votes back to UMNO-PAS will likely tip the scales the other way again in GE15, whether that’s called at the end of this year as some predict, after Mahathir steps down as promised in mid-2020 after two years or in 2023 when a fresh election is due.
Meanwhile, Pakatan should take Prof. Tajuddin Rasdi’s warning seriously.
https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2019/03/10/the-end-is-near-for-ph-unless/
1Term is not going to get permanent mileage out of its 1MDB mantra.
Won’t be a surprise out of the ceaseless mantra-reciting and no success at jailing him, Najib overtakes the pious mantra reciters on his stolen bike, returns for another term!