By Sahabat Seperjuangan

Once in a while, an event occurs that leaves a profound effect on the political scene. While some rush to label such events with less compassionate terms like divine intervention, others simply prefer to call it neutral serendipity.

Now that the by-elections have come and gone in Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar, what are the lessons that can inform the future course of the political parties involved in the fight?

1. The support base of PAS is still intact. Efforts by Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah) have failed to make inroads into the rural strongholds of the Islamist party. The liberals in Amanah can garner some support from the chattering classes in the towns but they have not found fertile ground among country folk accustomed to finding solace in a more spiritual outlook to tide them over hard times.

2. PAS, alone as a political party, contributes as many votes as the other three political parties grouped together in Pakatan Harapan. If DAP is counting on Malay support from PKR and Amanah to boost its chances for federal power, it has got to have a serious re-look. Whoever underestimates the hardy “jentera” of the committed Islamists, and the ideology which makes them tick, is making a serious mistake.

3. The semi-rural Chinese in these communities can swing their votes just like their brethren in the urban enclaves. We have seen many examples of this before. What bothers them is their livelihood more than all the political intrigues and all the national issues which the less deprived middle classes are so fond of. Whoever can put food on their tables looms large in their thoughts when they mark the ballot.

4. What were the other factors which made those Chinese swing? Disillusionment with the endless squabbles among the politicians in the Opposition (and government in the case of Selangor)? Or simply a dawning realisation that they’ve been had, that politicians who gained power in their name have pulled a fast one on them by using political office to acquire material assets, leaving them to look foolish and still neglected.

5. PAS has failed to gain Chinese support. While its call for hudud is definitely able to rally the party faithful to withstand the onslaught of a DAP-backed Amanah to break their ranks, the same issue still spooks the Chinese. They still see it as a frightful threat of harsh punishment being visited upon them, and not an issue which boils down in the end to letting a part of a diverse nation exercise its democratic right to practise a religion the true way as the followers see it, without infringing on the rights of the other parts of the nation who do not believe in the same religion.

6. The influence of Dr Mahathir Mohamad has waned among the Malays. The older generation still remember him as a leader who, while making Malaysia prominent by fast-tracked materialistic development, indulged in dismantling the checks and balances which he saw as a hindrance to his autocracy. They are not prepared to have him and his ilk again. It remains to be seen whether the Citizens’ Declaration will survive this setback, and whether the motley crew of Opposition politicians, NGOs and NGIs with thinly-veiled political ambitions will continue to forlornly prop him up.

Sahabat Seperjuangan is a non-Muslim grassroots activist in a Muslim political party.

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