LETTER | Is Johor election a bellwether for Harapan?

LETTER | As widely projected, the Umno-led coalition is expected to win the election in Johor, which will take place on March 12. It is only the margin of victory that is uncertain. Will it be three in the trot following the Sarawak and Malacca elections?

After almost 24 months from the time when they were unceremoniously removed from Putrajaya, it is clear to the voting public that Pakatan Harapan contributed and was responsible for the collapse and their own ouster as the government.

The writing was already on the wall one year into their reign when Merdeka Center, in a survey, revealed that support for Harapan fell from 79 percent on the night of May 9, 2018, to just 39 percent.

The drop was a culmination of what the voters perceived to be Harapan’s failure to deliver on what the coalition themselves promised to the voters in return for their votes. Importantly, Harapan failed to deliver the vital promises made in their manifesto.

Twenty-two months into their reign, the drop in support for them from the public led to one of their own coalition partners doing a coup d’etat when they pulled out from the coalition and cobbled together, support from the opposition parties then, to form a new government.

Yes, those who voted for Harapan in May 2018 were angry. If not for the unplanned interruption and respite from the pandemic which kept and diverted the people’s attention from the power grab in February 2020, this anger could have had possibly panned out differently politically.

In 2018, the excesses of the Umno/BN government contributed significantly to the widespread dissatisfaction of a lot of voters. The voters just wanted to kick out the Umno/BN government for their arrogance. The over-the-moon promises from Harapan were merely the icing on the cake.

Party hopping

What happened 22 months later would always be remembered as a watershed moment where politics in Malaysia changed, a trend likely to be carried in future elections despite the introduction of the anti-hopping law.

In February 2020, voters witnessed and saw it doesn’t matter to them who they support and vote for in an election. The candidate they voted for has no qualms of switching their allegiance to another party whose policies that he or she vehemently opposed prior to the election once they are elected – betraying and completely disregarding the trust given to them by the voters.

For the last 24 months, Harapan has repeatedly reminded the public that they were betrayed, a reminder repeated so often that it is now akin to the fable of the boy crying wolf.

The public failed to see Harapan undertaking any major reorganisation to strengthen and reinforce its membership and leadership framework within each of the parties in the coalition during the last 24 months.

What the public witnessed was the lynchpin for Harapan underwent immolation where a substantial number of their members left with no serious efforts undertaken to replace them and continue with the work to woo and convince their supporters to remain supporting them.

While the country wallowed from the ravages of the pandemic and the flood, voters who continued to support them failed to hear or read about plans from Harapan on how they planned to revive the economy, how the coalition will stop their elected representatives from hopping to other parties post an election.

The voters are no longer taken in by any commitments from the political parties and the politicians, bearing in mind none of their previous assertions, eg elected representatives signing undated resignation letters and agreeing to pay a penalty of RM1 million to the party in the event he or she leaves the party while they are still a representative of the people, resulting in any of the elected representatives who switched allegiance vacating their seats.

What the voting public heard and saw was the once too often repeated claim by Harapan leader that he has the support of enough MPs to support a motion for him to lead a new government to replace the present ruling coalition, only for his claims to be debunked as a false start every time.

Undi18

As the coalition that initiated the Undi18 legislation, Harapan did not even act or undertake any inclusivity acts to bring young people into the fold. It was left to the young people who organise and undertake the legal challenge to force through the legislation that was left out in the cold when Harapan was ejected from Putrajaya.

Even when these young people created their own political party, parties in Harapan still kept a distance but only started engaging them when the Warisan party from Sabah started courting the young people actively.

As a result of the inaction by Harapan, young people formed their own parties and movements, making it harder now for any one of them to capture voters’ attention.

It was obvious that Pakatan’s brief time in power left a major scar.

In the several by-elections since 2018 and the elections held in Malacca, which saw a turnout of 65 percent and 61 percent in Sarawak, it appears that the Umno/BN coalition benefit from voter apathy. When it lost the popular vote in 2014, voter turnout was approximately 85 percent while in 2018 when it lost power, the turnout was 82 percent.

Why the apathy? Aside from the pandemic, those who voted for them in 2018 don’t see what Harapann can offer them. In Malacca and now in Johor, there was nothing new from Harapan who continued to use the same call echoed in 2018 – keep the kleptocrats away.

Secret to Umno/BN success

There is not much of a secret to Umno/BN’s success.

They have been so successful because of one thing that does bind Umno members together - money. And this will keep Umno going much longer than any of its current members' lives, its ability to raise and channel political contributions.

The single-core concept that keeps Umno together is the concern for how much money it will take to win the next election. Making speeches, attending events and appearing at weddings and funerals are all well and good, as long as the speeches keep the money coming in.

This appeared to be a culture and practice of Umno which apparently started from the day when housewives donated their jewellery to fund the trip of the country’s first prime minister to the UK to sign the Independence Treaty for the Federation of Malaya in 1956.

Secondly, the Umno/BN coalition benefits immensely from a low turnout of voters in an election. Because of their massive organizational structure linking a network of communities with the locals, they can ensure that a sizable chunk of the voting age population will always be there casting ballots for them and their candidates no matter what.

Given the increasingly short campaign periods in every successive election - in the 2018 general election, candidates were given only 11 days to campaign - candidates, especially those newbie or candidates parachute into the constituency to contest will find it difficult in areas where the locals enjoyed strong patronage from Umno/BN whose candidate will be able to win just based on recognition of the party name only as compared to voters who will find it difficult, given the short period, to learn about a particular candidate’s ideas or policy preferences.

Under these circumstances, elections tend to boil down either to party loyalty or the answer to one fundamental question: Do I stand to gain or lose from the incumbent retaining the seat?

And thus, it is sad to note that even though parties within Harapan knows that their short-term voter registration drives and busing voters to the polls on polling day can never match the massive organisational and network of communities that Umno has built over the last 60 years that consistently brings voters to polling stations for every single vote, no serious attempts were made to build a similar organisational network within the Harapan coalition.

It will be a daunting task for Harapan to take on and try to build an entire nationwide coalition. But if parties in Harapan are not prepared or unwilling to do so, their election strategy for every election, be it a by-election or a state or general election remains unchanged and stagnant - exhort the voters to come out to the polls in big numbers.

Then the same rigmarole - they will present and explain to the voters how much better the country will be with them in power and how much worse things are under Umno/BN control.

What is Harapan offering?

Now with the Johor election round the corner, Harapan, again, is exhorting the voters to come out in droves to support them and to ensure that the Umno-led coalition BN does not dominate the state election, which Harapan feared will be a harbinger for Umno to return and lead the federal government in the 15th general election, rumoured to be held by this year.

So, what is Harapan offering to the voters in return for them to come out and vote for them other than to keep Umno and the BN coalition from returning to lead the state government and eventually the federal government?

The leader of a component party even went on record to justify that Harapan’s 22 months was a success and not a failure as touted by the public, calling those who claimed it was a failure as dishonest.

This party leader forgot that the voting public did not ask for those promises. It was made and promised by Harapan for the voters to vote for them in May 2018.

Did the voters expect change to happen overnight? Probably yes. But the voters did not ask nor request for change. In fact, those who voted for Harapan did not ask for any change at all.

If Harapan intends to be a dominant alternative, it has to start building an organisational network of communities that rivalled those of the Umno/BN coalition and elected representatives are identifiable and known to the locals in the areas they are contesting and not some outsiders who are only visible during the 11 days of campaigning.

And to truly challenge and win the votes long given to the Umno/BN coalition, it needs to reinvigorate and not be dictated by the strategy of just replacing the Umno/BN-led coalition.

What is fatal and will consign Harapan to be in the opposition forever are not the doubters and negative comments but its inability to be brave in its imaginative thinking and charting a new political strategy that dares to break through and take risks away from the politics of old.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.