It’s going to be a lightning poll campaign this time - eight days in all, the shortest in Malaysian history. But whatever it is, the result is a foregone conclusion.

Indeed, the going will be tough for the opposition. Even in good times, it would require a superhuman effort to deny the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition its much vaunted two-thirds majority, let alone to dislodge it from power.

And we are not talking about new Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s ‘feel good’ factor, the back-on-track economy and the three Ms in the government’s disposal - money, machinery and the media.

Thanks to the Election Commission (EC), the rules are heavily stacked against the opposition even before the starter gun is fired.

Every eight years or so, the electoral rules are rewritten by the EC - a body tasked with the impartial management of free and fair elections - to make it all the more difficult for the opposition to win.

So it wasn’t surprising that EC officials took it upon themselves to tilt the playing field in BN’s favour in the latest seat redelineation exercise. Once again, the opposition’s goal posts were widened a few more yards.

How Kedah will be lost

Take, for instance, the creation of 26 parliamentary and 63 state seats after the redrawing of the electoral boundaries.

According to Ong Kian Ming, senior political analyst of Gerakan think-tank Sedar Institute, 13 of the new parliamentary seats in the peninsular are safe BN seats while eight are contestable. For new state seats, 37 are safe BN seats while 14 are contestable.

Ong defines a safe seat as those won with more than 10 percent majority based on the 1999 results. Even the contestables - those below 10 percent - most of them favour the ruling coalition.

That is not all. The EC has reworked the boundaries of existing constituencies in such a way that those seats won by the opposition in 1999 are now ‘lost’ seats. Consider the frontline state of Kedah (see chart below).

In the last polls, PAS’ Mahfuz Omar won the Pokok Sena parliamentary seat by a majority of 3,211 votes.

The EC, in an inspired move, sliced off Tanjung Seri - one of Pokok Sena’s three state seats where BN had won by 400 votes. It was replaced by Derga, a state seat from MCA leader Chor Chee Heung’s Alor Setar parliamentary constituency, which BN won by 5,456 votes.

In doing so, Mahfuz would now lose Pokok Sena by a margin of 1,805 votes.

The EC treatment

As for Chor, he can do without Derga as he bagged Alor Setar with a thumping 14,384 majority. With Tanjung Seri now in his constituency, he would still win with a majority of 9,368 votes - something which he is not going to lose too much sleep over.

Meanwhile, two other PAS seats were also given the same EC treatment.

Party secretary-general Nasharuddin Mat Isa’s Jerai parliamentary seat, which was won with a narrow 346 majority, has now turned into a BN seat with a whopping majority of 4,887. This was done by throwing in Gurun - a state seat imported from former finance minister Daim Zainuddin’s Merbok.

For Taib Azimuddin Mohd Taib, he won the Baling parliamentary seat with a 682 majority, but with the inclusion of Kuala Ketil - a state seat from MCA’s Padang Serai parliamentary constituency - it has now become a BN seat with 1,940 majority.

No wonder, PAS is expecting to lose a number of its Kedah parliamentary seats. Given this, the party’s strategy is to focus instead on winning state seats, where less drastic changes were made.



Moreover, for BN seats which were won by a slight majority in the last round, EC officials have since ‘planted’ additional pro-government voters to bolster the ruling coalition’s chances.

One example is Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s Pekan - where he won with a tissue-thin majority of 241 votes in 1999.

This time he has the benefit of additional pro-BN voters ‘planted’ from two neighbouring Umno constituencies - Khalil Yaacob’s Kuantan and Siti Zaharah Sulaiman’s Paya Besar. Being the defence minister, he is also expected to gain from the inclusion of an army camp - which will contribute 2,000-odd postal votes - in his constituency.

Rules rewritten

Here’s another one.

Three days before the EC met to determine the polling day, malaysiakini reported that the nomination day had been set for March 13 and polling day, March 21. Our source was not the EC, but the government.

If the government would not allow the EC the independence to do such a simple task as fixing the dates, don’t expect the commission to have the freedom to do a proper job come the main event.

Which is why, despite that some 43.5 percent - almost half - of voters had rejected BN in 1999, the opposition snared no more than a quarter of the parliamentary seats.

In the coming general election, the opposition will again 'turun padang' with their hands tied. This is, of course, nothing new.

But what’s new is that their opponents have replaced their unpopular captain. The rules, too, have been changed. The referee, however, will remain the same.