14th General Election: Felda Areas and the future of UMNO
Once you lose your heartland you are forever gone.
DAH IKHWAN Weblog
Even before the most recent debacle of Barisan Nasional and UMNO, it was trendy for the Malay community to question the party’s future relevance in the Malaysian political landscape. They started to wonder about this in the aftermath of the 2008 General Election when BN lost its 2/3 parliamentary majority for the first time. This was followed after the 2013 General Elecrion when BN suffered a worse result and now, with its first major defeat in 2018, the level of confidence in UMNO and the Malay community has sunk down further. It is as if a ruling political party should never lose an election, and as if this leads to definite self-destruction.
Yet this is something normal in a western form of two party system. Take UK for instance, the Conservative party may win this general election, but it may lose in the next round when Labour Party takes over the government. But such defeat never happened in Malaysia except after the recently concluded general election. It was a real shocker when the margin of defeat was so wide as to demoralize all the BN supporters and most in the Malay community.
It is well known to Malaysians that Felda areas form the bedrock of UMNO’s strength. Altogether there are 54 Parliamentary constituencies where Felda schemes exist in different sizes and numbers and these form the lynchpin of UMNO power. In 1/2 of these constituencies, Malays make up more than 80% of total voters. Attempts have been made to penetrate these areas for decades without success by various opposition parties, notably PAS and now by Tun Mahathir party PPBM. Political analysts believe that to defeat UMNO, opposition parties need to defeat UMNO in these constituencies by drawing away Malay voters.
Mahathir has succeeded to become the seventh Prime Minister yet has failed to win enough parliamentary seats for his own PPBM party. He only managed to win 12 seats in all and this is miniscule compared to those won by PKR or DAP. The problem lies in the Felda areas. PPBM, being the youngest partner of Pakatan Harapan and as a Malay party had little choice but to contest head on with UMNO in the latter’s stronghold.
The result is now history. UMNO won 25 seats, PAS 6 and PPBM, 5 (although PH won 22 seats in all). If not for the mixed seats with overwhelming Chinese support, PH couldn’t have won more than 10 seats in these areas. It should be worth to note that in the 13th General Election BN won 46 out of 54 Felda seats.
Felda areas are indeed difficult to crack. Prior to the 14th GE, I wrote an article on whether Mahathir’s onslought could succeed. I was proven wrong to suggest that Tun Mahathir could not change the GE results, but I was right in that he could only make a dent in the Malay heartland, much of which lie in the Felda areas. As a result UMNO, though having lost power, proved to be too strong to beat in its stronghold and still has 47 parliamentary seats in Peninsular Malaysia with the largest chunk of Malay voter support of 46.7%. By comparison PH only has 25% and PAS, 28%.
The past voting trend in Felda areas has proven to be the most reliable for BN. Details are given below:
Malay support for BN in Felda Areas
GE 2004. . 59.1%
GE 2008. . 58.1%
GE 2013. . 60.7%
GE 2018. . 46.2%
My analysis findings indicate that Malay support in Felda areas was stable during the study period but dropped significantly by 14.5 percentage points in this year’s GE, similar to the average figures for Peninsular Malaysia as a whole. It further indicates that race profile played less significant role in voting pattern in GE 2018, probably caused by unusual or confused reaction of Malay voters during the heated campaign period spearheaded byTun Mahathir.
The above however revealed an important finding that the Felda areas are still proven to be the most significant for UMNO. Even with unusually intense assault by Tun Mahathir, UMNO still managed to retain 25 predominantly Malay seats in Felda areas. The lost seats are actually mixed seats mostly won by PKR and a few by DAP.
