For general elections before 1999, it was taken for granted that the votes of military personnel, civilian supporting staff and their family members would go only to the Umno-dominated Barisan Nasional.

In constituencies where there were sizable number of military personnel, civilian supporting staff and their family members, opposition parties would be assumed to lose for sure.

Most political strategists on both sides of the political divide and non-partisan observers seemed to have good reasons for making this assumption.

One, military personnel, civilian supporting staff and their family members have always been predominated by Malay/Muslims who were, in turn, assumed to be almost absolute in their voting loyalty to Umno and the ruling coalition it dominates.

Two, pre-1999 opposition parties were mainly based on Chinese or Indian-predominated entities and personalities like the DAP, or left wing ideologies which were often alleged to be 'communist" or 'pro-communist.' and 'anti-establishment' Muslims like PAS, and those realities or images constituted what were said and believed to be threats to national security.

Three, during the Cold War years which also coincided with the early days of Malaysia's independence and the attempts to define the territorial, political and ideological basis of the polity, the collective and multidimensional threats to national security, whether real or perceived or contrived, were so strongly felt that personal welfare of individuals or institutional well being were seen to be less pressing.

Four, since the votes of serving military personnel were, and still are, mostly cast in closed barracks or in postal ballots, and those of their family members are concentrated in physically identifiable areas, it was believed that not many would vote for the opposition for fear of being identified and punished for 'disloyalty or disobedience.'

But the basis of making these assumptions seems to have been changing since the 1999 polls with some signs, however vague, that show that there were indeed a not insignificant amount of votes of military personnel, civilian supporting staff and their family members cast for the opposition, especially for Malay/Muslim-predominated PAS and Keadilan.

Contributory votes

For example, in the 1999 polls at the parliamentary constituency of Lumut in Perak where a large Royal Malaysian Navy base is located, the opposition candidate from Keadilan, Zamanhuri Samsudin, obtained 20,056 votes, only to be narrowly defeated by the BN candidate, Kong Cho Ha, by a margin of 605 votes.

The ethnic makeup of the Lumut parliamentary constituency in 1999 was 41.91% Malays, Chinese at 46.63%, Indians at 10.91% and others at 0.55%. In the 1995 general election, BN candidate, Yap Yit Thong, won the seat with a huge majority of 12,543 votes.

In Kuantan, Pahang where a Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) base is maintained, Keadilan's women's wing chief, Fuziah Salleh polled 21,136 votes, while the victor - Umno secretary-general Khalil Yaacob - obtained 28,479 votes in 1999. His majority was 7,361 votes.

However, in1995, the BN candidate for the seat, Fauzi Abdul Rahman, defeated the opposition with a huge majority of 23,096 votes. Fauzi was publicly known to have been close to then deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim.

The ethnic makeup of the Kuantan parliamentary constituency in 1999 was Malays at 54.50%, Chinese at 38.67%, Indians at 6.65% and others at 0.18%. It is reasonable to assume that in 1999, while the non-Malay support for Keadilan was still weak, the contributory votes to the huge pool of support for Zamanhuri and Fuziah must have come from the Malays

According to KS Balakrishnan, a lecturer in strategic and defence studies at University Malaya, although it is still difficult to quantify in numerical terms the political inclination of military personnel, civilian supporting staff and their family members, there has been "a clear division between those who are pro-BN and pro-opposition" since 1999.

" I get this impression from my personal contacts and encounters," he said.

Doctrinal training

Balakrisnan also told malaysiakini that the two main reasons for the rise of essentially pro-PAS and, to a certain extent, pro-Keadilan sentiments in this category of voters were namely the Anwar Ibrahim saga and the rise of pro-Islam consciousness. However, according to the lecturer, the political mood also swings when reflecting larger societal sentiments.

He said concerns about personal well being and welfare were not really important factors for this electorate because the government has taken "rather good care" of the community.

Another political observer who is in close touch with the political sentiment of military personnel agrees that " the rediscovery of religion in life " may be the most important cause for the relative rise in pro-opposition sentiment among them.

However, he told malaysiakini, military doctrinal training is still stronger than the social values and opinions that currently hold sway in the Malay/Muslim community.

The political and voting sentiments of military personnel, civilian supporting staff and their family members have recently generated quiet interests among observers of Malaysian politics because of the publicity given by PAS over nine retired military officers who joined the party.

One of them Brig-General (Rt) Zakaria Dahlan who has now been nominated by PAS to contest the coming polls against deputy prime minister and defence minister, Najib Tun Razak in his marginal constituency of Pekan.

In the 1999 polls, Najib beat an almost unknown PAS candidate by a razor-thin majority of 241. After the post-1999 re-delineation of constituencies, an army barrack has now been included in Pekan with some 2000 'military votes.'

Seen in this context, it will be interesting to see if Najib will benefit from the army barrack votes in face of the challenge mounted by the retired general of the army.

Organic parties

The interest in the voting sentiment of military personnel has been further strengthened by Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) chief Gen Abdullah Ahmad's exhortation urging his personnel to vote for Barisan Nasional in the coming election and "not to bite the hand that feeds them."

Abdullah was also quoted as saying that there were "internal as well as external elements" which were ready to "poison the mind" of air force staff to persuade them to vote for the opposition.

Asked why ex-military leaders were now no longer hesitant of joining opposition parties like, a sociologist opined that the Malay-predominated parties of PAS and Keadilan are not seen as anti-establishment but rather as an 'alternative establishment.'

"Unlike DAP, PRM or other opposition parties, PAS and Keadilan are organic in the sense that their leadership and membership have many social, personal and family relations with military personnel of all ranks.

"They are opposition but not seen as anti-establishment in the negative sense of the term," she observed.

JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia (SAM). Wong is a former member of Parliament for Kampar (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily (now Sin Chew Daily). He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. While in Sin Chew, he and a team of journalists won the top awards of Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) for 1998 and 1999.