Walaupun BN memenangi lebih dari 2/3 kerusi parlimen, tetapi dari peratus
keseluruhan undi, BN cuma dapat 56.51%. Itu belum tolak pengundi hantu, undi
pos yang terpaksa dalam rela, pengundi yang layak mengundi tapi tak dapat
mengundi, dll.
Berkemungkinan undi untuk BN yang tulin tak sampai 50% pun...
Ini bermakna secara keseluruhannya, hampir 50 peratus penduduk Malaysia yang
layak mengundi sudah hilang kepercayaan kepada BN dan juga Dr. M.
Sunday, December 5, 1999
Prof: Drop in BN's popular vote
PETALING JAYA: The Barisan Nasional's popular votes for parliamentary seats
in the recent general election dropped by nearly nine percentage points,
compared to the previous polls.
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia political scientist Prof P. Ramasamy said
this was despite the Barisan coalition having sucessfully won a two-thirds
majority in Parliament.
"In the 1995 general election, Barisan Nasional managed to attract 65.14% of
the popular votes in contrast to the Opposition, which only managed 34.86%.
"This time, however, Barisan managed to get 56.51% of the popular votes
while those for the Opposition rose to 43.49%.
"In certain constituencies as well, battles between the Barisan and
Opposition candidates were won on very narrow majorities.
"The drop of almost nine percentage points for the Barisan is quite huge,"
he said in an interview here yesterday.
Although the winner of the general election was determined by a simple
majority in both Parliament and state assemblies, Prof Ramasamy added,
popular votes were a measure of any party's popularity with the rakyat.
"For this general election, Umno seems to be losing support compared to the
other component parties and it must now be prepared to do a lot of
soul-searching.
"In the Opposition, PAS has taken the major lead over DAP in terms of
popular votes by a jump of 14 percentage points.
"Rather than purely blame this on the electoral pact with PAS, it is
probably due to the lack of Chinese cultural issues that DAP can exploit in
days leading to the elections," he said (refer to chart).
Prof Ramasamy said the decline of popular votes for Umno was not surprising,
considering the split in the Malay voters ahead of this general election.
"It could also be interesting to examine the high percentage of spoilt votes
during this general election, especially in areas where these could have
made a difference.
"Does this mean the people are fed up with the choice of candidates,
regardless of parties?" he said.
International Islamic University communications department Prof Syed Arabi
Idid said PAS had also made a "very good entry" into Pahang.
"There has always been a hold over Terengganu by PAS. Umno cannot take
things for granted or it can risk losing Pahang to PAS.
"PAS used to be seen as being based in Kelantan. But this time, it is
spreading. It only shows that PAS is the major gainer in any political
crisis, rather than Keadilan," he said.
For parties like Parti Rakyat Malaysia, Prof Syed Arabi blamed their poor
performance on a lack of election machinery and failure to recruit new
members.
"Keadilan performed better than PRM even though it has only been recently
established," he said.
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