PETALING JAYA, 22 Mar: As the support for Pakatan Rakyat (PR) in Sabah and Sarawak continues to increase, support for BN in the upcoming 13th General Elections (GE-13) is expected to decline.
The expectation is made based on the phenomenon of stronger winds of change that is sweeping cross the two Borneo states and previous results of election statics.
According to the Head of the Department of Politics and International Studies at University Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Dr Faisal Hazis, popular votes for BN is declining among the people in Sabah and Sarawak since the 2004 elections.
Research carried out by Dr Faisal found that the popular votes obtained by BN in Sabah have decreased from 64.0 percent in the 2004 elections to 61.72 percent in the 2008 elections.
The most significant change occurred in seats dominated by Chinese, from 54.37 percent in 2004 to 35.62 percent in 2008.
“In Sabah, the factors of the IC Project, illegal immigrants, the autonomy of the State Government, abuse of power among BN elites, Datuk Seri Musa Aman in particular, will play a role.
“The opposition strategy package together with their campaign will especially affect the Borneo Agenda, the ‘Borneo Tea Party’ and ‘Ini Kalilah’ (This Time) which is getting good response from the people of Sabah,” said Dr Faisal.
He said this in his presentation at the “Pre GE-13 Forum: Who Will Win?’ which was held at the Singgahsana Hotel here last night.
In Sarawak, support for BN has also declined when they acquired 55.4 percent of popular votes in the 2011 state elections compared to the 62.2 percent in 2008.
Iban-dominated seats showed the most significant decrease from 71.7 percent to 57.6 percent, followed by Bidayuh at 70.8 percent to 578 percent.
The popular vote of the Chinese community decreased from 50.7 percent to 37.8 percent and for the Malay-Melanau from 77.2 percent to 73.4 percent.
Current issues have been thought to be able to pose a threat to Umno-BN in Sarawak, including the state economic monopoly by elite politicians and the position of the Sarawak United Bumiputera Heritage Party (PBB) which is dominating.
Other issues include the customary land, the ‘Allah’ word, while the composition of non-Muslim voters and Chinese voters which are relatively balanced will also influence voting patterns.
Apart from that, the PR ‘Change’ campaign is also said to receive good response from the people of Sarawak.
Dr Faisal said that apart from defending the 83 seats won in Peninsular Malaysia in 2008, PR has to at least win 5 seats in Sarawak, 4 in Sabah and 20 in Peninsular Malaysia if they want to run the country.
This combination will provide an easy majority win of 112 seats going to PR from the total 222 seats in Parliament.