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Friday, May 21, 2010

Chinese still Support BN

The victory of DAP in Sibu parliamentarian by-election does not represent Sibuan support for opposition but it does implicate that the Sarawakians are no longer fixed deposit for the Barisan Nasional.

The impact of the defeat means the beginning ultimate down fall of SUPP should no remedy is taken seriously.

Other than national and local issues, how much SUPP can fight for the Chinese interests remains questionable.

Ironically, Chinese are not voting opposition parties, but they are protesting the policies being implemented. The protests are actually a protest against the policies that are unfavorable to them. The by-election voting pattern clearly reflects this social attitude.

The assumption by the Chinese that the government had neglected the community in terms of education although was unfounded but is increasingly being seen as the result of the Chinese base party is not fighting for the Chinese.

In the many by-elections held after the 12th general election especially the latest in Sibu, the strategy used by BN is to allocate special allocation for Chinese and mission schools.

Unsurprisingly, this strategy doesn't seem to be working well out for BN, it did not swing their votes big enough to win the by-election. The BN is most unlikely to benefit from an increase in its support but just preventing further decrease in its support as the Chinese did not seem to increase their support to BN either.

On the other hand, if the strategy is not being used, there might be more swing in the Chinese votes towards opposition.

The RM18 million benefited the schools are as follows:

RM10 million for 60 Chinese Medium primary schools,
RM5 million for Chinese Medium Secondary Schools,
RM2 million for SMK Sacred Heart
RM1 million for St Mary

Undeniably, the RM18 million special by-election allocations is timely and it does help to ease the financial burden of Chinese medium schools in Sibu, but the electoral result shown that it did not swing the votes back to BN.

Although in appreciation, but the voters in Sibu did not express their gratitude by voting SUPP over the RM18 million allocations given by Najib. It seems that the event is overtaken by issues.

The crux of the matter is that though it is true that the allocation is timely and by far needed by Sibu Chinese community, but how about other schools in other areas? It was claimed that it does; however, it appeared that the government had neglected the community especially in terms of education.

The allocation strategy during the by-election claimed to be implicated that the government constantly show negative allocations, it is one-off during by-election and not a consistent allocation.

The allocation provided a good opportunity for the opposition parties to exploit the issue that the ruling party is often using their power monopoly to misuse public money to gain vote and not otherwise as reflected in the tactics employed by opposition in public campaigns to garner the support of voters.

On the other hand, though there are many more good policies that the ruling party had implemented but mostly the ruling parties were seen to practice double standards among the people and within SUPP.

BN candidate Robert Lau comes from elite SUPP and it was claimed that the elite SUPP families become very rich while ordinary Chinese need to struggle hard to make ends meet.

The KTS group is belonging to the family of the BN candidate. It is nothing wrong for the group to control timber business, retailing, plantation, reforestation and print media, but the ongoing court case due to the refusal to settle NCR land taken by the company cause him to suffer no meaningful political damage.

Politics is the art of the impossible, in winning strategy is important. Political parties especially politicians need starting to really stress now as the next general election are coming closer.

1 comment:

john white said...

whatever you say, the chinese especially the urbans are not grateful to the government compared to the rural chinese. the urban chinese have benefitted alot from all sort of policies since the new economic policy was introduced in 1970. you can check the list of chinese millionaires. and furthermore, this is a government-driven economics policies.if you are to see how japan, south korea and taiwan developed tremendously, they practiced private-driven policy my friend.

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