PH-BN still standing strong, says Fahmi

PUTRAJAYA: The performance of the Pakatan Harapan-Barisan Nasional (PH-BN) alliance in the six state elections may not have been stellar, but it has withstood the test and is still standing strong.

Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil (pix), who is also PH communications director, was commenting on the three states the alliance won, where it managed to push back Perikatan Nasional’s (PN) challenge and retain Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Penang.

“Apart from winning the popular vote, none of our candidates lost their deposits, compared with PN, which failed to get the one-eighth required number of votes in 18 seats,” he said, referring to the 10 seats in Penang, six in Selangor and two in Negeri Sembilan where PN candidates lost their deposits.

He added that while PH-BN had almost 50% of the total votes, it only gained 40% of the 245 seats due to malapportionment in the state seats.

In the elections, PH-BN garnered 3,399,472 votes, which was 49.58% of the popular vote compared with PN, which received 17,000 fewer votes for a total of 3,382,455 (49.33%) of votes cast for the party.

Fahmi said Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Penang proved that the unity approach can work and the people are keen for this form of administration to continue.

The federal government coalition, including Gabungan Parti Sarawak and Gabungan Rakyat Sabah, currently controls nine state administrations and almost two-thirds of all state assembly seats in the country.

He said the unity government will conduct an in-depth study of the results of the six state elections to determine what should be improved.

“We will conduct an in-depth post-mortem on the state elections. Our study will encompass our selection of candidates, machinery, manifesto, policies and campaigning methods to determine what improvements need to be made for a better showing in the 16th general election.

“In the coming weeks, we will also be studying the data in a granular fashion to try and understand all these factors.”

He said the unity government respected the people’s decisions in the state elections and would study every aspect that needed to be improved, including forecast results by research firms.

Many studies reported forecast results and had additional data.

“So we will take all this data and study it, including the percentage of voter turnout,” he said.

Commenting on the matter of (low voter turnout) that affected the PH-BN coalition he said, “one of the factors that contributed to this could be voter fatigue due to GE15 having been held less than a year ago”.

“We will also look at the federal government’s efforts in attending to and resolving public issues as this is critical to retaining public confidence.”

On the participation of the Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (Muda) which allegedly split support for the unity government, Fahmi reiterated that he was saddened by it.

“I am saddened that this split allowed PN to win the Sungai Kandis seat.”

Fahmi also said he observed that voters were less interested in turning up at ceramah during the first half of the campaign period, but attendance improved as the polls drew closer.

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