Malaysia 2022 General Election Nov 19th

[jaichind]

How politically interested are Najib's children? If BN did run one of them, which would be likeliest?

Not very. Although once their day got put in jail they are emerging into more of an active political role.

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2022/08/28/najibs-children-pay-tribute-to-their-dad-in-heartfelt-speeches

"Najib’s children pay tribute to their dad in heartfelt speeches"

As for who UMNO might run I have no idea.  Might not matter that much since none of them have any political experience.  I would think they run one of his daughters since that will maximize the sympathy factor.

[jaichind]

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2022/10/16/bersatu-assemblyman-wetrom-set-to-join-warisan

"Bersatu assemblyman Wetrom set to join Warisan"

In Sabah, it seems a PPBM MLA will join WARISAN and almost certainly will be nominated to run for a MP seat.

The fact that defections from PN to WARISAN are taking place is a signal about the relative chances of PN and WARISAN in Sabah.

[jaichind]

Speaking of defections, MPs and MLAs elected in this election will be subject to the new anti-defection law where any MP or  MLA that leaves the party he or she was elected on will lose their seat automatically.  This seems to also apply in the case where an independent that is elected joins a party post-election.

[Joseph Cao]

Aside from all the Frog of the Week news:

Khairy is officially out of Rembau confirming something I mentioned previously. Still unclear where he will contest instead but Tok Mat assures us he will be getting a safe berth.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/malaysia-najib-razak-jail-corruption-1mdb-umno-ge15-election-jail-prison-election-candidate-3005741

"Jailed former PM Najib among UMNO nominees for Pekan seat contest in upcoming election: Reports"

UMNO will either run Najib if he can get a royal pardon or run one of his children if he could not.

The Pekan chapter clarified yesterday that they submitted that list before Najib went to jail… which is odd in itself but not inconsistent with certain factions of UMNO prepping for an early GE from Johor elections onward. And none of his children are on the list. Maybe if Pekan UMNO submits a new list?

For the record Najib is completely disqualified from nomination or election as an MP, that took effect immediately based on Article 48(5) from the moment of conviction. Whether he gets a pardon only has effect on whether he can remain as an MP now, but we're here in this thread because parliament has been dissolved and that has become a moot point.

If I were UMNO I would not run any of  Najib's children.  The only campaign slogan that PH has left is "if BN wins then  Najib will be back out on the streets"

How politically interested are Najib's children? If BN did run one of them, which would be likeliest?

Nizar Najib is UMNO Youth chief for the Pekan branch and there were persistent rumors of either him or Nooryana Najwa, the daughter who cried online about daddy not being able to get his caramel macchiato Starbucks in prison, being substituted in.

But Pekan UMNO is insisting on either Najib himself or a caretaker who can eventually hand the seat back to him some way, somehow. Putting a child in at this point would be a pretty big about-face and their usual MO is to bull through whatever happens even with egg on their faces.

The WARISAN-PH split most likely spells doom for PH in Sabah.  WARISAN could win a few seats given the BN-PN split.

BN and PN are actually fully working together in Sabah as they already lead the state government there and both sides have referred to it as a "special situation" separate from the national squabbling. Seemingly they both hate Shafie enough to come together on this.

[jaichind]

The WARISAN-PH split most likely spells doom for PH in Sabah.  WARISAN could win a few seats given the BN-PN split.

BN and PN are actually fully working together in Sabah as they already lead the state government there and both sides have referred to it as a "special situation" separate from the national squabbling. Seemingly they both hate Shafie enough to come together on this.

Interesting.  I thought there was pressure from both camps to break up for the federal elections (even as the alliance for state government stays.)  I guess BN and PN have withstood that pressure.  I wonder if their alliance is total or partial (like in the state elections).

I guess the results will be DAP winning the Chinese seats and BN-PN sweeping most of the rest. WARISAN has to hope that by dissociating itself from DAP it can win over some anti-DAP votes.  The fact that the state government is BN-PN will work heavily against WARISAN. 

[Joseph Cao]

Big day coming up for election news.

The Electoral Commission has confirmed that they will be holding a meeting from 10am to noon Malaysian time to decide on the nomination date, campaign period, and polling date. Obviously the earlier the date the more likely it will be, theoretically, to avoid the worst of the flooding season, although the clown from Pontian is already out on television telling people to “just use an umbrella” if it floods on polling day. The EC of course is not exactly averse to acquiescing to BN’s little voter suppression tricks and might still schedule the election on a weekday or put in niggling little regulations or any of the other extensively covered incidents that happened in the past. These will of course be most salient in places like Sarawak and the flooded parts of the Peninsula.

Speaking of which, there’s also a hiccup in Sabah that might throw a spanner into the works there – multiple leaders are raising the alarm over a 53.9% spike in new voters that happened before the age 18-21 cohort was enfranchised last year, and some Sabah parties have been at loggerheads with the EC for a while over whether the state of their electoral roll makes them fit to hold elections at all.

And as announced last week, the Pakatan Harapan convention is being brought forward by a week and will be held in Ipoh tomorrow evening Malaysian time. I hope they’re having a nice stay there, it’s a lovely place and I miss it very much. Their manifesto will be unveiled tomorrow and in preparation Ismail Sabri has been jeering about how people should vote for BN because they’re capable of passing budgets instead of manifestos; convenient how soon he forgets that he relied on PH votes to get the last budget through.

The PKR candidate list will also be unveiled tomorrow. The DAP list is set to be rolled out in stages next week and Amanah is supposed to have it out sometime soon. Once MUDA and PSM enter into formal seat talks I would expect their candidate lists to come quite quickly, but they’re going to have to wait for the big boys in the coalition to move first. There are signs of both parties being a bit restive that negotiations haven’t started yet although the PKR comms men have said those will start pretty soon. PN is meant to act on its list a few days. BN is already rolling out a steady stream of announcements that head honchos like MCA’s Liow Tiong Lai will be recontesting seats that they lost in 2018 and that they are gunning specifically for vulnerable PH seats. The usual.

A lot of the smaller state parties have gotten a head start on this actually – we already know more or less what parties like Sarawak DAP, Sabah and Sarawak microparties, Negri Sembilan PKR, Selangor BN, and Perlis everyone are planning for seat allocations, but those are by and large mostly unchanged from last election. Candidate names of course are the big thing everyone’s waiting for and we’ll be getting those starting tomorrow.

[Joseph Cao]

Which is why most of the rest of this update is tied together by one Anwar Ibrahim.

The PH convention is in Perak, among other reasons, to communicate that (note: paywall) the state will be the focus of one of their traditional battleground charges (PH state chief Nga Kor Ming calls it the “frontline” state meant to solidify PH’s standing in the Penang-Negri Sembilan belt) like Johor was in 2013 and Kedah in 2018. Usually this involves fielding heavyweights (Lim Kit Siang in 2013 in Gelang Patah, Mahathir in 2018 for obvious reasons) and flooding the zone with volunteers and generally pushing a bunch of chips in hoping for a good payoff within the state. And it generally works in setting up the infrastructure even if PH ultimately loses that election, Johor wouldn’t have been taken in 2018 without the work done previously.

Continuing the heavyweight theme, as I’ve mentioned before Anwar himself is supposedly looking to contest in Tambun against one of the Bersatu defectors, in this case former Perak MB Faizal Azumu. Tambun, while in the Ipoh environs, is really not very Ipoh-like in its mindset – the economic base is rather more agricultural among other things – so we’ll see how well Anwar can still work his magic in a not traditionally opposition seat.

The bigger problem this time is that a lot of the Perak targets are rural-Malay or otherwise very classically heartland and much closer in orientation to local hero Zahid Hamidi (southwestern Perak) than what Anwar is offering. So the big gambits that are rumored, like DAP big gun Howard Lee going to contest Gerik up by the Thailand border (currently vacant after UMNO man died, 70+% Malay and 14% Chinese seat, not a prayer for PH even if their candidate out-PAS’s PAS), seem very much more performative this time. And Zahid and company are not taking anything lying down either. MIC apparently is busy orchestrating seat swaps in the few pockets of the state where it can still throw its weight around. If PSM gets its way Michael Jeyakumar will be back to contest Sungai Siput – which he can do very well if allowed, but it offers another strawman to compound the erosion of PH’s image in PH’s target seats, one that certain parties who will not be named are already gleefully burning.

Wherever he contests, Anwar most likely will be leaving Port Dickson open. Although Negri Sembilan MB Aminuddin is its division chief he wasn’t recommended as a candidate by the local PKR chapter. He used to head up Tampin PKR but Amanah is going to have to go it alone in defending the most marginal PH seat in the state. Film director Ahmad Idham wants to go for the seat as a member of the Mahathir outfit GTA and apparently has some local support from Pejuang. Port Dickson is also supposedly one of the seats where UMNO might put their recently displaced wunderkid Khairy, the others being Kuala Pilah and Tampin – not coincidentally all seats where BN is the underdog on paper. Again, see that post from a while back about Khairy potentially being left hung out to dry even if he represents the only real chance UMNO has at getting any of these seats back.

[Joseph Cao]

And on this week's edition of the candidate rumor mill we go to Titiwangsa in northeastern Kuala Lumpur, land of Chow Kit, art galleries, and the Ministry of Defence, held by Doraemon former women's minister Rina Harun.

Back in 2018 this was held by Finance Minister Johari Abdul Ghani, the last BN man standing in Kuala Lumpur. It was supposed to be allocated to Amanah for that reason and contested by their Federal Territories chief Hatta Ramli after PKR and DAP split the other ten KL seats, having contested each multiple times. But it went to PPBM for undisclosed reasons and Hatta was shuffled up to Lumut (back in Perak! There's our tie-in), Rina won semi-comfortably, PH lost the seat after PPBM jumped ship in 2020, and the rest is history.

Now apparently MUDA would also like a Kuala Lumpur seat (something something urban party) and is eyeing Titiwangsa for the same reason as Amanah – it's the last pickings. They even have someone in mind – educator and nonprofit founder Siti Rahayu Baharin, who it must be said is actually a pretty decent choice in terms of work done on the ground even of the non-political variety. Obviously Amanah is peeved about this, Amanah Youth in particular has been making grumbling noises about having to contest less winnable seats, but given they're currently putting out internal fires in Sepang I am not sure how much oxygen they want to give to this.

Rina herself, it must also be said, is not a very present MP (for which there is a whole other, uglier set of rumors) and there is a litany of complaints against her neglect of the constituency. If she contests there's only so much that the consolidation of PPBM and PAS votes can do for her since both UMNO and PH badly want this seat back.

[Joseph Cao]

Oh, and before I go I have been informed of the existence of a really very useful candidates spreadsheet from our Reddit colleagues, which should be getting a whole lot of updates shortly. Highlights include the yellow highlight for every yellow-bellied MP who changed allegiance this past parliament on the second sheet. (Tony Pua for some reason has been highlighted on the third sheet.)

That in particular should help with recontextualizing the voting stats from https://undi.info/, since that site still has results for the past four general elections under the original party banners.

And as before, the best electoral map currently available is by the heroic folks at Tindak Malaysia (great work ethic too), site https://www.tindakmalaysia.org/online-electoral-maps-of-malaysia.

[xelas81]

So is the most likely scenario is that BN/UMNO will win the most seats and the question if they have to have share power with others parties (PAS, PPBM, Sabah and Sarawak based parties) or not.

[Joseph Cao]

Polling on November 19, nominations on November 5, campaigning period for the intervening two weeks.

Later than many people expected. But at least it’s on a weekend.

So is the most likely scenario is that BN/UMNO will win the most seats and the question if they have to have share power with others parties (PAS, PPBM, Sabah and Sarawak based parties) or not.

Correct, and in fact I would say mathematically they will be able to work without either PAS or PPBM. UMNO big guns including Sabri have been making noises about “we’ll see who we can work with after the election” but they’ll be fine without either of the parties that they just spent a month railing against.

[Joseph Cao]

The Harapan convention just concluded. Very clear attempt to raise the spirit of 2018, I thought.

Anyway, Anwar confirms he will contest in Tambun and throw down the gauntlet against PPBM. I may have a bit more to say about Tambun itself once more stuff is cleared up.

[Joseph Cao]

And on this week's edition of the candidate rumor mill we go to Titiwangsa in northeastern Kuala Lumpur, land of Chow Kit, art galleries, and the Ministry of Defence, held by Doraemon former women's minister Rina Harun.

Back in 2018 this was held by Finance Minister Johari Abdul Ghani, the last BN man standing in Kuala Lumpur. It was supposed to be allocated to Amanah for that reason and contested by their Federal Territories chief Hatta Ramli after PKR and DAP split the other ten KL seats, having contested each multiple times. But it went to PPBM for undisclosed reasons and Hatta was shuffled up to Lumut (back in Perak! There's our tie-in), Rina won semi-comfortably, PH lost the seat after PPBM jumped ship in 2020, and the rest is history.

Now apparently MUDA would also like a Kuala Lumpur seat (something something urban party) and is eyeing Titiwangsa for the same reason as Amanah – it's the last pickings. They even have someone in mind – educator and nonprofit founder Siti Rahayu Baharin, who it must be said is actually a pretty decent choice in terms of work done on the ground even of the non-political variety. Obviously Amanah is peeved about this, Amanah Youth in particular has been making grumbling noises about having to contest less winnable seats, but given they're currently putting out internal fires in Sepang I am not sure how much oxygen they want to give to this.

Rina herself, it must also be said, is not a very present MP (for which there is a whole other, uglier set of rumors) and there is a litany of complaints against her neglect of the constituency. If she contests there's only so much that the consolidation of PPBM and PAS votes can do for her since both UMNO and PH badly want this seat back.

Forgot to note this at the time but those are more or less why the reports of Rina contesting somewhere else have been swirling around recently. Talk of where exactly is centering on Sepang, which as briefly alluded to has been a bit of a headache for the local Amanah chapter because their MP Mohd Hanipa keeps getting health scares and although his constituency service and activity is still exemplary there have been people calling for him to take it easy and not contest this time. In the meantime Amanah has named their comms director, former federal territories minister, and current Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad as the prospective candidate for Titiwangsa. Signs of reaching for the big gun in anticipation of stronger challenges from either side – Johari wants to come back, and PPBM youth chief and "print more money" enthusiast Wan Fayhsal is looking at the seat too.

If Amanah can be said to have a pre-existing political base anywhere it's in the Selangor coastal stretch where a lot of the original defectors from PAS put down roots decades ago. So Rina is clearly hoping to test that. Potential signs of jitters from Amanah that this might not hold up: the Hanipa business, reintensifying interest in Titiwangsa, and calling for former health minister Dzulkefly Ahmad to recontest in Kuala Selangor further up along the coast. This last point may also owe itself to current Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul (sensing a theme here) looking to contest the seat since he's currently serving in that post from the Senate and it would be a nice launching pad if the rumors of him leading the Selangor BN charge for upcoming state elections are true.

[jaichind]

So in the end UMNO controlled  Pahang, Perlis, and Perak will have snap state assembly elections on the same day as general elections.

[jaichind]

A poll from Vodus did in Aug for Peninsular Malaysia which has BN with a likely narrow majority or falling just short of it.  With GPS sweeping Sarawak a BN-GPS majority should be workable.

[jaichind]

https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2022/10/22/ph-muda-seat-negotiations-taking-place-tomorrow-says-loke/

"PH, Muda seat negotiations taking place tomorrow, says Loke"

PH alliance talks with PPBM youth splinter MUDA ongoing.  Not a good sign that these talks are dragging on.

[Joseph Cao]

Saw that poll too last night.

For the record I can't count the number of safe PH seats in Selangor alone without using my toes as well as my fingers, just to give some idea of how reliable I think this is. Also the fact that both PH and UMNO are gunning for PN seats, which honestly could have been predicted when this data was being collected, in turn says a lot about how inflated that PN total is.

https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2022/10/22/ph-muda-seat-negotiations-taking-place-tomorrow-says-loke/

"PH, Muda seat negotiations taking place tomorrow, says Loke"

PH alliance talks with PPBM youth splinter MUDA ongoing.  Not a good sign that these talks are dragging on.

They're to conclude concurrently with PSM apparently (those should be happening tomorrow or early next week), and Jeyakumar has been vocal about scheduling that just so. There was that one story about MUDA getting impatient that I briefly alluded to last week but whichever MUDA "inside source" briefed it to media doesn't seem interested in "leaking" anything else…

[jaichind]

Saw that poll too last night.

For the record I can't count the number of safe PH seats in Selangor alone without using my toes as well as my fingers, just to give some idea of how reliable I think this is. Also the fact that both PH and UMNO are gunning for PN seats, which honestly could have been predicted when this data was being collected, in turn says a lot about how inflated that PN total is.

That is my main problem with this poll.  It seems to overstate PN's strength outside PAS's Northern strongholds.  If this poll has PPBM being wiped out in Johor I fail to see why PPBM even with PAS support getting anything.

[jaichind]

Yale sponsored survey for Peninsular Malaysia.  This feels more like what is the current state of play


My 2018 analysis of vote by ethnic group

I was able do a regression analysis of the results by district in Peninsular Malaysia and derive vote by ethnic group.  I used variables such as rural suburban and urban and grouped states that seems to voted similarly as well as take into account of special candidates that will over-perform their own party.

What I got is

Malays (60.9% of the voting population)
PH  24.5%
BN  44.0%
GS  31.5%

Chinese (29.0% of the voting population)
PH   94.0%
BN    5.5%
GS    0.5%

Indian (8.4% of the voting population)
PH   74.5%
BN   24.0%
GS    1.5%

Orang Asli (Aborigine) (0.6% of the voting population)
PH    2.0%
BN   97.0%
GS    1.0%

Others (1.1% of the voting population)
PH   19.5%
BN   63.5%
GS   17.0%

I also compute that when PAS is not running the PAS vote goes 83.5% for BN and 16.5% for PH.


Below is a chart of estimates of vote share by ethnic group in previous elections


It seems the PH large vote share lead was really driven by Chinese and Indian voters which all things equal did not add that much in terms of gaining seats for PH except for very close BN-PH marginal seats.  PH on the whole actually under-performed pre-election polls in terms of Malay support. What crushed BN was the fact that PAS over-performed at the expense of BN in the Malay vote.  So in the end the PH-PAS split worked to the advantage of PH and not BN which was the conventional wisdom.

If you look at the Malay vote by district type you can get some clear patterns

                   PH          BN           PAS
Rural          17.0%     48.5%     34.5%
Suburban    27.5%     43.0%     29.5%
Urban         37.0%     36.5%     26.5%

PH does better with urban Malays while BN does best with rural Malays.  What is the surprise here is how well PAS does even with urban Malays although that did not seem to make much of a difference in terms of seats.  It is PAS's over-performance in Rural and Suburban seats that cost BN seats, either to PH or PAS.

What is also interesting is in areas of PAS strength like Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu PAS does just as well in Urban areas among Malay voters as Rural Malay voters.  It is BN that has a falloff in Malay support in these states as well as in other states.

On interesting driver for this PAS strength with Urban Malays is if you take areas where the PH is gaining strength (Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, suburban and urban Johor) PAS does very well with Malay voters when an non-UNMO party is running when compared to when UNMO is running.  It seems this is mostly driven by the BN Malay anti-DAP vote which went over PAS now that PAS is not allied with DAP especially an non-UNMO candidate is running for BN.

This is why MCA and MIC got crushed.  They lost both ways.  The Chinese seats were lost in 2013 and will remain lost.  MCA and MIC won some ethnically mixed seats from 2013 based on the Malay vote and what is left of the Chinese and Indian vote.  This time around there is a further swing of the Chinese and Indian vote away from BN PLUS the Malay vote going over to PAS.  The result was a complete meltdown of MCA and MIC seats.

So again the story of this election is not a Malay Tsunami toward PH.  PH if anything did a bit worse than expected with Malays.  What took place was PAS took some of the BN anti-DAP vote and destroyed BN along the way.

We can now take these breakdown in support to try to estimate the levels of support for each party.

For the PH Chinese vote you can figure 67% are for DAP and 33% are for PKR.  
For the PH Indian vote you can figure 20% are for DAP and 80% are for PKR
For the PH Malay vote you can figure 35% are for PKR, 20% are for AMANAH and 45% are for PPBM.

For BN it is simple.  All BN Malay votes are for UNMO and all BN Indian votes are for MIC (and a bit for Gerakan) and all BN Chinese votes are for MCA/PPP/Gerakan.

Using this you can estimate the level of support for each party and you get.

DAP                             19.6%
PKR                             19.1%
AMANAH                        3.0%
PPBM                             6.9%
UNMO                          27.8%
MCA/Gerakan                 1.6%
MIC/PPP                        2.0%
PAS                             20.0%

The main danger for PH is that around 55% of voter support are from Chinese.  It is critical that for political power in PH to flow to PKR and PPBM to avoid PH being tagged as a DAP puppet.  This was the BN line of attack which did not work because Mahathir.  But if DAP's influence were to match its vote share with PH this will be a problem with PH when it comes to winning Malay votes in the future.

[omar04]

Malaysian constituencies are very gerrymandered to favor rural (BN) voters.

[Joseph Cao]

Malaysian constituencies are very gerrymandered to favor rural (BN) voters.

Yes. And slightly more nuanced than that, the current lines aside from being grossly malapportioned are also explicitly based on ethnicity (something the EC chairman at the time admitted). And even more nuanced than that, this is something that the legacy parties benefit from at the specific expense of the multiracial ones that rely on Malay voters.

[Joseph Cao]

As a matter of fact this ties in to a few things that were reported recently.

I didn’t want to talk about Tawfik Ismail before this but apparently he’s making himself relevant whether I want him to be or not; for those unfamiliar he is the son of former deputy PM Ismail Abdul Rahman, one of Malaysia’s greatest ever leaders and a key reason we didn’t devolve entirely after 1969. Tawfik was an UMNO MP in Johor (like his father) back in the 80s, quit in 2009 and recently founded Gerak Independent to promote “truly independent” candidates who unsurprisingly have stepped on PH’s toes as well as BN’s. This is, as might be expected, an outfit that will not go anywhere. Continuing that trend, Tawfik now wants to contest against Zahid Hamidi “wherever he stands” and has lobbied PH to let him contest for them in Bagan Datuk where Zahid has been king for several decades.

The problem according to certain PH middlemen is that he came into the picture too late and they have already allocated candidacies for that seat. Now the other big oddity is their choice. According to what might possibly be leaks by the man himself this will be current Hang Tuah Jaya MP Shamsul Iskandar. He has a giant-killer reputation thanks to defeating the incumbent Melaka chief minister in 2013, then holding on after BN gerrymandered his seat in 2018. The neighboring Kota Melaka seat used to be a nice neat strip along the Straits, taking in Malacca town plus connected areas. Without removing any voters in compensation (malapportionment: check) BN took a ridiculous tail up from Kota Melaka into several small towns from Shamsul's seat that aren’t connected to Malacca town itself but do hold quite a lot of “urban” Malays and Chinese (local CoI violation: check), and pushing rural Malays in from the north (motivated by ethnicity: check), which flipped the seat to a nominal UMNO majority.

Of course 2018 had other ideas, plus in the meantime the erstwhile chief minister had become infamous for contributing a truly dreadful soundbite about "racist Chinese" to the Apa Lagi Cina Mahu article. But by all accounts this seat is a) marginal even with Shamsul in it, b) exactly the kind of rural-influence orbital metro seat that PH needs to win to stay relevant, and c) in a state where PH urgently needs any win it can get. So sending Shamsul up on a suicide mission in a seat that Zahid will win by 35 points minimum is superficially consistent with the broader PH (actually mainly PKR) message of taking risks but unlike Anwar’s decision in Tambun makes zero strategic sense. In any case, if Shamsul is the PH candidate in Bagan Datuk it cannot be Tawfik. But Tawfik has said he’ll still run regardless. Democracy, don't you love it?

[Joseph Cao]

The other big consequence of gerrymandering, aside from UMNO snatching marbles left and right, has been the “legacy” opposition parties adapting to this. PAS does not have a prayer in any non-rural seat in the country that isn’t in Terengganu or Kelantan and DAP does not have a prayer in any non-urban seat more than half an hour’s drive away from George Town or the Klang Valley. This is largely because with the sandbox BN has historically boxed them into, they’ve developed some byzantine habits that limit them when they do try to step outside of it.

An example of this is the Penang DAP. The balancing act they have to do between Chinese and Indian leaders is well known and goes further back but was certainly maintained for the benefit of DAP co-leaders Lim Kit Siang and Karpal Singh, both of whom were big players in Penang. One reflection of this is the Indian-heavy Batu Kawan seat, home to office development blocks and mangroves and bridge traffic and a spanking new IKEA. DAP has always allocated this seat to an Indian candidate: P. Ramasamy won this against a former Gerakan chief minister in 2008, then stepped down in 2013 and DAP passed the seat to Kasthuriaani Patto of legacy fame. Now Patto has abruptly stepped down “on [her] own accord” and DAP, as it prepares to announce their candidates for the northern states as the first part (I believe) of its national rollout this weekend, will be scrambling to replace her.

The other facet of the balancing act is the chief ministerial arrangement. Of course Penang’s chief minister has always been a Chinese candidate, but as part of a DAP reform since taking office in 2008 the CM has appointed two deputy chief ministers – one Malay, one Indian – the only state to do so. The current Indian deputy CM is Ramasamy, and by certain accounts his heart really isn’t in it. (The Malay deputy CM role has also been a big political bomb for whoever holds it, every former officeholder has left Pakatan, but that isn’t relevant here.) But Ramasamy is also not planning to return to Batu Kawan as might be expected of this situation so it may go to his close ally, Seberang Perai city councillor P. David Marshel, who seems pretty locally active and contented with it. But we’ll have to wait and see if that can substitute for Patto’s parliamentary advocacy for women’s rights and such.

(As an aside, both this seat and the Kota Melaka seat in the previous post had the distinction of featuring candidates who lost to Lim Kit Siang. That man got around.)

Because of all this the smoke signals for Penang state elections will be sent up once the federal lineup is announced; Penang chief minister Chow may not defend Tanjong, his federal seat, and Lim Guan Eng will stay in Bagan but may not defend his state seat. Aside from these two big guns it’s understood that every DAP candidate in the state can only contest either state or federal positions. So aside from Patto situations, if someone is missing from the federal lineup they might reappear in state government and new state faces for Parliament will certainly be vacating their state positions. There’s talk of current Bukit Mertajam MP Steven Sim hopping to state government, for example, but Sim is an excellent parliamentarian and would be wasted in Penang IMO.

[jaichind]

Malaysian constituencies are very gerrymandered to favor rural (BN) voters.

Yes. And slightly more nuanced than that, the current lines aside from being grossly malapportioned are also explicitly based on ethnicity (something the EC chairman at the time admitted). And even more nuanced than that, this is something that the legacy parties benefit from at the specific expense of the multiracial ones that rely on Malay voters.

I think it is mostly about urban vs rural seats.  It is just rural areas area all Malay while Chinese and Indians are concentrated in urban areas.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

SNIP

Thanks for the write-up, i'm rather shamefuly ignorant of Malasiyan political geography.