THE outcome of the just-concluded Johor state election has been a forgone conclusion right from day 1.
Yes, day 1 was Feb 26, when a record 239 candidates filed their nominations for the 56 State Legislative Assembly seats up for grabs in the snap polls.
The election, which most Malaysians agreed was unnecessary and a waste of public funds with the 15th general election scheduled just over a year from now, was called after the then state government was left with only a razor-thin one-seat majority following the death of assemblyman Datuk Osman Sapian in December.
Why was it a foregone conclusion and a no-brainer to predict the final outcome of a landslide win for Barisan Nasional (BN)?
Umno clinched 33 seats with MCA and MIC four and three respectively, DAP won 10 seats while PKR, Amanah, PAS and Muda secured one each and Bersatu two seats.
While DAP still performed credibly, it was indeed embarrassing for PKR, Bersatu, PAS and Amanah.
Muda, the youth party making its debut in the election, managed to win at least one seat.
While Umno, MCA and MIC contested the polls solidly united under the BN brand, the other non-BN parties went their separate ways.
The most startling move was that parties that defeated the Umno-led BN for the first time in 61 years in the 2018 general election (GE 14) as part of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition decided to abandon that historic winning formula and go it alone.
With these parties, namely DAP, PKR, Bersatu, PAS and Amanah, as well as other parties formed after the collapse of the PH government in 2020 joining the fray, the disenfranchisement was clearly working to the great advantage of the BN.
Bersatu and PAS left the PH pact and formed their own Perikatan Nasional coalition, combining with Umno to take over Putrajaya in March 2020, led by Bersatu president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin as prime minister.
Muhyiddin, who led a sizeable number of members of parliament to cause the collapse of the PH government, himself had to resign in August last year after losing parliamentary support from Umno.
In the first place, Umno despite its very formidable election machinery and financial strength and with Johor being its birthplace, was not unbeatable in the southern state.
Its fortress collapsed in GE14 thanks to a united PH onslaught.
It’s just mind-boggling to political observers why the GE14 winning formula was not put into practice this time around.
Everyone knows that in an election every vote counts but yet the once united PH front opted to cancel one another out by each putting up candidates in most of the 56 constituencies.
It begs the question whether this is due to the inflated egos of their leaders or just their poor mathematics. Or both.
Did they expect the voters to give them enough mandate to form the state government based on the strength of each individual party? If they did, it’s just very unrealistic or crazy daydreaming.
Barely three months ago, neighbouring Malacca, which the BN also lost to a united PH in GE14, held a snap state election, and again disunity among the non-BN parties saw them fighting one another.
This enabled BN to win more than 90% of the state assembly seats despite securing less than 40% of the popular votes.
It has been repeated yet again in the Johor election.
Let us look at the statistics – of the total 1,426,573 votes cast or just 54% of the electorate, BN polled 599,753 votes, much less than the 826,820 garnered by the non-BN parties.
What this clearly means is that the majority voted against the BN, and the outcome would have gone the other way had there been straight fights all the way.
Just to cite one example how disunity backfired on the non-BN parties, take a look at the Sungai Balang constituency results. The BN candidate won the seat with 8,294 ballots while the combined votes polled by three other candidates were 9,577.
If non-BN parties are to entertain any hope of repeating their GE14 historic success, unity is the key.
If parties like DAP, PKR, Bersatu and Amanah need new leaders to take on the BN in GE15, it’s time for them to seriously work on this.