Universiti Malaya’s Tawfik Yaakob was responding to Bersatu Supreme Council member Wan Saiful Wan Jan, who said on Saturday the party needs to outline what it could offer to voters a lot earlier instead of banking on protest votes in future elections.
Tawfik said such a view should have been voiced earlier, “and not after its loss with a majority of over 20,000”.
“Many Bersatu leaders fail to realise this. It’s too late (in terms of Mahkota) especially after Bersatu could have made drastic changes after Nengirri,” he told FMT.
On Sept 28, Barisan Nasional’s Syed Hussien Syed Abdullah emerged as the new Mahkota assemblyman after defeating Perikatan Nasional’s Haizan Jaafar with a majority of 20,648 votes, four times higher than the 5,166-vote margin BN achieved in the 2022 state election.
The month before, BN reclaimed the Kelantan state assembly seat of Nenggiri, securing a thumping majority of 3,352 votes in a by-election to overturn the coalition’s loss by 810 votes to PN last year.
Before these electoral outcomes, many political observers were of the view that PN was able to perform well in Malay majority areas in the 15th general election and the six state elections in August 2023 due to the shift in support by Umno members.
Tawfik also said Bersatu was in need of a new strategy and not rely on Malay votes and current issues during an election.
He said the party should emulate Umno in terms of taking a completely new direction, adding that Umno was slowly wooing the Malays back into its fold as well as appealing to Pakatan Harapan voters.
“Bersatu should also not just keep its focus on a particular race. Our electoral system is based on the ‘first past the post’ concept, which does not take into account the racial makeup of a constituency,” he said.
Oh Ei Sun of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs was sceptical that the call by Wan Saiful to rely less on protest votes and for Bersatu to spell out what they could offer voters, would be heeded.
“I don’t think Bersatu leaders will be instituting any reforms,” he said. “There is a power struggle between several camps in the party.”