By Kenny Gan

Is Barisan National gaining on Pakatan Rakyat? Ibrahim Suffian, the head of Merdeka Centre, which conducts opinion polls, seems to thinks so. Based on his centre’s survey results, he opines that BN would regain its two-thirds parliamentary majority and even the states lost to PR, except for Kelantan, if elections were held now.

I’ve always been a little wary of opinion polls conducted by Merdeka Centre. Their sample size of 1000 per survey appears to be rather skimpy to represent a population of 27 million. Their questions are sometimes biased to one side, rather than being framed to be as neutral as possible. Also, in this country, many people tend to shout out their support for BN while keeping support for the opposition close to their chests so the accuracy of political opinion polls may be suspect.

Nevertheless there must be a grain of truth in what Ibrahim is saying. It may not be far from the truth that support for BN has risen at the expense of PR since the tsunami of March 2008, although the question of BN regaining the status quo before the 2008 tsunami is highly debatable.

However, we should note that public sentiment is a constantly shifting phenomenon which is affected by all manner of past and recent events, including scandals, exposés, tragedies, in-fighting, promises and action or inaction of the political parties.  Will the current stronger sentiment for BN last until the next general election, which my gut feeling and political reading places at the end of 2012?

Public opinion – the three streams

Three months is a long time in politics and three years to the next elections can even be considered long enough for a dynasty. The intervening time will see many events, big and small, impact on the public consciousness. The multitude of individual events in conjunction with action, responses or inaction contribute to powerful streams of public opinion that flow through the recesses of society. These will affect the result of the next election.

There are three streams of public opinion that will impact on the next election. They are generated from the democratic front, the economic front and the racial policy front.

On the democratic front, Malaysians generally want to see more accountability in government, serious efforts to fight corruption, respect for human and democratic rights, independence of democratic institutions, social justice and better service delivery. In short, they want good governance.

No less important is the economic front, where people want an improvement in living standards, increased purchasing power and ability to keep on top of the cost of living.

The racial policy front concerns the economic, educational and employment opportunities for the non-Malays, whose support is vitally needed for BN’s election success.

To keep its power comfortably, BN has to satisfy all three streams of public opinion. How is BN doing on all counts?

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