Can Pakatan get S’gor if PAS doesn’t cooperate? Kian Ming and RPK offer two outcomes
(CILISOS) – Ever since Selangor fell to the opposition’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), the Barisan Nasional (BN) had been prepping themselves up to win back Selangor.
“For two terms now, Selangor (BN) politicians have had to depend on the federal government to get projects and contracts to sustain themselves. With the opposition in control of the state, Umno can only look from afar at how the wealth of Selangor has escaped them,” – Hisommudin Bakar, executive director of the Ilham Centre, for The Malaysian Insight.
And rightfully so. The importance of Selangor in Malaysian politics could not be overstated. Besides being the richest state in the country if you look at its GDP per capita, Selangor is also the most populous state in Malaysia. The stakes are pretty high, so winning or losing elections in Selangor is a pretty big deal.
From targeting certain districts to antics against the current government to allegedly organizing coups, the past few months had casual observers and political analysts alike following the developments with great interest. With the 14th General Election (GE) close at hand, the dramas and controversies surrounding the battle for Selangor are getting more and more dramatic.
Who will win Selangor in the next GE? Will PKR continue to rule, or will BN make a comeback? Will the dark horse of the race, the Pan-Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) rise up and claim the throne? Dr Ong Mian King, the election strategist for the Democratic Action Party (DAP) crunched some numbers and came up with some insights regarding those questions.
These insights came in the form of a series of media statements titled “The Battle for Selangor” on his blog, and you can read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 by clicking on these links. In response to Ong’s media statements and predictions for the next GE, Raja Petra Kamarudin, a former PKR politician and the editor of Malaysia Today also weighed in on the matter, but we’ll get to that later. For now, Ong revealed some interesting trends in his statements, and one of them is that…
