With relations between DAP and PAS at an all-time low, an analyst forecasts that the next general election may see a trend of three-cornered fights, with BN winning with less than 50 percent of the votes.

Merdeka Center director Ibrahim Suffian said that in Malaysian politics where elections are “free but not fair”, opposition parties need to work harder and ensure straight fights in order to secure victory.

“Given that the Islamic party has decided not to cooperate with DAP and the fact that this renders the opposition coalition defunct, there is no longer a reliable opposition coalition that can ensure straight fights in many of the seats.

“So, what will potentially happen is that we will see many of the Sabah-type of contests taking place in many parts of the country, where BN may win with less than 50 percent of the popular vote because the Malay vote would be split three-ways: Umno, PAS, and potentially PKR or another party,” Ibrahim said.

Ibrahim was speaking at a two-day conference on the 13th general election in Kuala Lumpur today.

Earlier, he had presented his analysis showing that although election candidates not aligned with either BN or Pakatan Rakyat garnered few votes in the election, they were able to sway election results in seven parliamentary seats decisively.

Popular vote

Six of these seats fell in BN’s favour, while another went to PKR. Most of these three-cornered or multi-cornered fights had taken place in Sabah, due to the involvement of non-aligned Sabah-based political parties.

These seven seats are Tenom, Cameron Highlands, Kota Marudu, Pensiangan, Keningau, Alor Setar, and Mas Gading, of which only Alor Setar went to PKR.

 

In each case, the winning party had less than half the popular vote, even as low as 41.1 percent in the case of Kota Murudu.

 

Overall at the national level, these non-aligned candidates only managed to garner 1.54 percent of the popular vote.