The Rembau Times wants to take a pause from Pakatan Harapan’s relentless campaign and focus a bit on Barisan Nasional.
But before we proceed, let us first consider the optics.
The Election Commission has issued a ruling which has the effect of banning the picture of Tun Dr Mahathir from being displayed on Pakatan Harapan Election Posters. This is yet another undemocratic action by the EC, which no doubt will upset those leaning to Pakatan Harapan even more and cause those who are still 50-50 to begin to doubt the state of the current Government. The most likely answer is that Tun Dr Mahathir has been a Prime Minister before and the ruling Government fear is that ‘the people will be confused to remember with nostalgia a time when their life was better and vote Pakatan Harapan’.
But our focus today is not Pakatan Harapan but on Barisan Nasional.
Let’s review several pictures of the largest political gatherings we could find to date since Najib announced his famous “Putrajaya Misti Dipertahankan Speech”.
Honestly, we had to trawl their twitter accounts to find the best example of the largest crowd gathering for a political rally and this is the best we could find.
The optics again,
- Najib attended a rally for UMNO Veterans in Jerantut, where there appeared to be no food provided and the crowd was dominated by the last bastion of UMNO support – Wanita UMNO. They are extremely conspicuous with their red scarves.
- He then attended a rally in Kuala Lipis where there were more males, but this time there appeared to be food provided.
- If this is the best crowd Najib can muster with only 2 weeks to the election, our guess is that he has to resort to the last segments of his political support base to get a crowd.
Remember, it is now considered an expectation that Pakatan Harapan can go into an UMNO stronghold, whether it is a Felda settlement or part of a rural heartland and easily command a 4,000 strong crowd, with predominant Malay participation. The big difference between this crowd and the previous Pakatan Rakyat crowds is that the people who turn out to show support are Traditional UMNO voters. You can easily tell this by the absence of a predominance of white kopiahs.
The key point is to compare and contrast how Pakatan Harapan is making massive inroads into UMNO’s political base. Pakatan Rakyat never acheived this because they were leveraging on ‘the PAS’ to provide the Malay support base. With ‘the PAS’ staying out of the picture, the Pakatan Harapan leadership was forced to unite and go after the biggest Malay voting market segment out there – the traditional UMNO voters.
For the benefit of readers who are still not convinced that there is a massive widespread change among the Malay community, consider the picture we managed to get of DSAI addressing a ceramah at a Felda Settlement – Palong in Negeri Sembilan in the runup to GE13.
And this is just one of several ceramahs we will focus on involving Pakatan Harapan in 2018 about 2 to 5 weeks before election, when political support has yet to reach its peak, according to any standard diffusion model.
So, it is quite obvious that Pakatan Harapan has made serious inroads into Felda voting bank. This is the bank that Najib cannot afford to lose.
The key reason really has been the unity of the parties , at the top, at the middle and at the bottom. The combination of the Pakatan Harapan united can only be compared to Liverpool firing on all cyclinders. They are now gelling as a team which is what the voters have wanted to see for years. (This was told to me by an ex-Special Branch officer in Johor some years back).
I will say it before, Pakatan Harapan without “the PAS” is a million times more effective. Malay voters have rejected PAS since time immemorial and they will continue to reject PAS. Malay voters want a strong Government with capable leaders who are united. In 2013, they felt threathened and could not find it in their hearts to support Pakatan Rakyat.
However, The current Pakatan Harapan leadership has delivered this and that is why my expectation is that Pakatan Harapan will win and win massively.
(Note: There is an overarching reason for my belief that Tun will once again PM which began in late 2017. This was when Rafizi’s polling numbers still indicated no ‘proof of life’ in a 3 party contest. God willing, I can only reveal this reason to the incoming Prime Minister and the Cabinet. It has nothing to do with having more data or better network, but it is the most important reason that formed my conviction)
Btw no news on JASA boss resignation on MSM. He he he
Market notes:
And yet another day going long Goldman Sachs and getting goosebumps. Updated: Hold the line..
Bonus Notes:
Oh dear..oh dear..oh dear dear.
Did somebody important from Pakatan Harapan just resign and paste his letter on Facebook? Was the news so unimportant that all the #fakestream media channels had an embargo from reporting on this?
Hmmm. No that sounds like these guys right.
Interesting thanks. Any thoughts on the Sabah optics? It seemed more ‘meriah’ than the peninsular’s manifesto launch anyway.
I’ve an analytics on GE14 outcome. Pls contact me at my email and I’ll share with you.
Hi aw, why not send an article to rembautimes@gmail.com and I’ll publish it
Dear sir
You seem to be very optimistic. But I can tell you this, the crowd is not equal to vote. They can come in the thousand but at the end they will vote for the logo they know lah .
In fact my feeling is the repeat of 99 GE. But this time it is the other way round. Non Malays vote PH, Malays vote BN . BN regain majority and take back Selangor and Kelantan . Selangor will be dominated by UMNO with no Chinese/ Indian representation . Penang DAP lost maybe 3-4 seats but still hold on the state government
David Yeap – I agree that BN will regain Kelantan but despite the gerrymandering Selangor looks set to remain with PH who are very popular there.
Kedah will likely fall & Johor looks very shaky for BN. With a high enough turnout and Malay swing in excess of 10%, PH should reap 14-15 seats in Johor, enough to bring down Fortress Johor. Dont underestimate the psychological trauma to Umno if this should happen; even if the GE is won, would they still continue to support their president?
Overall it still looks like an uphill struggle for PH. They may do well in the west coast of Peninsular but will have to make up for all the additional Kelantan & Trengganu seats that BN will pick off from PAS. As much as I really want to believe RT’s optimistic predictions, things still look very tough. BNs structural advantages in terms of seats are massive.
What PH needs is a massive turnout and nation wide Malay swing of at least 10-15%. Most polls show an unusually large segment of undecided voters at 30% or more – which way they will ultimately swing may determine the outcome – so the last couple of days of the election will be critical.
Sabah & Sarawak are an enigma to me including whether they will cooperate with the winner of the Peninsular vote whoever it may turn out to be. Hopefully Warisan can snatch half a dozen seats at least.
KL lite, RT’s prediction reminded me of the predictions made by majority of the professional forecasters during 2016 US presidential election. The likes of fivethirtyeight, upshots, Princeton all professions forecasters, all made correct prediction in the previous US elections before. BUT all predicted wrongly that HRC would win. I will tell you this Najib is the new Trump.
RT, you should remember Trump was also burdened by sexual scandal and many accusations of business /financial malpractices that were even more serious than Najib 1MDB. Despite all this Trump won. Because ethno -religious sentiment made White voters overlooked his shortcomings and voted overwhelmingly in favour of Trump. We will soon find out how ethno religious sentiment will force many Malay voters ignore 1MDB and vote for Najib overwhelmingly
So now ceramahs outside yr immediate constituency are banned except with 10 days notice Desperate measures to stop PH’s momentum in its tracks Will it work? Concurrently TDM has called for rakyat to turn up en masse on nomination day this Saturday; interesting chess play
David Yeap – dont get me wrong, I too think RT’s forecast is too optimistic (although I desperately hope Im miataken), But RT is calling against the market, against consensus opinion. The pollsters and experts who predicted a Hilary victory were the majority view