By-election: 'BN riding on support of DAP's voters'
SHAH ALAM - The victory of Barisan Nasional (BN) in the recent Pelangai by-election is seen as merely riding on the support of DAP voters, which is a party under the unity government.
Pas youth information chief Nazir Helmi said the support of non-Malay voters helped slightly increase the number of votes obtained by BN-Pakatan Harapan (PH) compared to Perikatan Nasional (PN).
"It is obvious that the lesser majority for the previous state election makes BN's victory a warning from the people to the BN-PH government.
"DAP-PH voters were an advantage to BN and contributed to a small majority. In reality, this will continue to add to the dilemma of BN's direction in the BN-PH coalition in the future," he said yesterday.
On Saturday, BN successfully retained the Pelangai state assembly seat with a majority of 2,949 votes.
However, the result declined compared to the 4,048 votes won by its incumbent the late Datuk Seri Johari Harun.
BN candidate Datuk Amizar Abu Adam obtained 7,324 votes, defeating the PN candidate Kasim Samat, who received 4,375 votes, while the independent candidate Haslihelmy DM Zulhasli only garnered 47 votes.
Nazir stressed that if BN continued to deny the fact that they faced a dilemma on the party's direction, it needed to be prepared to accept the people's anger, which would bring about even greater changes in the future.
He said the by-election results also saw a significant increase in votes for PN, especially in the voting results in Felda, which saw outstanding results for the PN candidate.
"This clearly signals that Felda is no longer a stronghold for BN. So, especially for the PN machinery, congratulations on your hard work this time. Let's continue to increase efforts to win PN candidates in the upcoming by-elections if they occur again," he said.
Meanwhile, Bersatu Youth chief Wan Ahmad Fayhsal Wan Ahmad Kamal said that PN could not block BN's momentum this time because non-Malay voters, particularly Chinese voters, had yet to embrace the PN struggle.
He added that the situation occurred because DAP was part of PH, but what was clear was that the results of the by-election proved that Felda was no longer a strong fortress for Umno and BN.
"Support has shifted to PN at this time and the votes received by BN are not impressive. They should have won by a larger margin if the PH-BN coalition truly caused a shift in votes but that did not happen; in fact, the shift in votes went to PN.
"Umno's votes shifted to PN. We won two Felda ballot boxes and lost only in Felda Chemomoi. This is an improvement because that area was a strong BN fortress, and we managed to break through," he said.
