Few days back, I had an opportunity to discuss matters pertaining to the upcoming PRU 13 with my long time friend who had been long involved in previous PRUs and in this upcoming PRU 13 also had been tasked to be in one of the government Intel machinery. The first question posed by me to him was which side will be able to form up the future government? And of course a lot of other aspects of PRU 13 had been discussed along the line of discussions between both of us.
It had been made clear to me from the discussion that actually on the date of the dissolution of the parliament, BN have had their confidence in securing simple majority vote from PRU 13 based on the feedback received from the government intelligence machinery. Undoubtedly, this fact is totally contradicted to the feeling that BN is on the losing end if you are a frequent user of social media such as Facebook, Twitters and others. You can obviously see that the backed up commentaries for the opposition had been monopolizing the walls of these social medias until you will feel that there will be no tomorrow for BN and the reality of reduced petrol price, toll free highway and many others are really in a grasp ahead. If you feel that I’m just a making a statement, please consider this, Military Intelligence, Special Branch are really those who make their study on this issue, they are the one who go on the ground, and please bear in mind that their calculation are based on so many variables such as past result, voters’ composition, local issues at site, and various others an combined with many times of regression analysis, their prediction are much near to real.
However, the fact that on 3rd April 2013, BN had gained their confidence to secure simple majority in the upcoming PRU 13 will only contribute 60% to the final result of PRU 13 as 40% of it will be largely depending on period starting from the nomination day which I believe will be on 13th April 2013 until the voting day which might fall on 27th April 2013.
Nomination day will be very crucial for BN in this PRU 13. No more saying, “Kalau letak Kambing jadi calon BN pun boleh menang” as majority of the voters are matured voters and Najib’s list must really depict a truly winnable candidates’ list or else, major swing toward the opposition will be imminent. But, even, if Najib tend to choose winnable candidates but turn out to be unpopular among the area’s BN leaders such as Ketua Bahagian, Ketua Pemuda or even the JKKK, threat of sabotage from within the party may arise which will also be disastrous to the party. Please take note that, Najib has been receiving feedback from various sources such as the Military Intelligence, Special Branch, BN and many others in determining his winnable candidates’ list and really it takes wisdom for him to pick any name from the list.
Another factor that constitute within the 40% contribution toward determining the victory of any party will be the voters turn out. Please bear in mind that the reason why all those social media had been very much associated with the Opposition is because that many of the young voters turned out to be quite radical and always against BN who had been painted with bad image due to corruption and bias media coverage and others had been the frequent users of those social medium. But, it has to be noted that, many of matured voters especially those who reside in remote areas such as villages, small township and districts, their affiliation with BN are very strong and needless to say, after experiencing so many elections before them, their awareness on the voting responsibilities are higher than those new voters whom tend to be very outspoken and radical but unfortunately many of them do not turn out to vote during the voting day.
Psychology Ops is another factor that will contribute to the 40% and this tactic clearly can be observed during the campaigning period. The candidates’ will play their role in painting their personality (though it is not) and approach in order to attract the local voters and this is a moment where you will notice scenes such as candidates campaigning from house to house, walking from kampong to kampong shaking hands with the villagers and many other popular approaches in order to psychologically influence the voters to vote for them. The advantage of BN in this regard will be the existence of the intelligence machinery to assess from time to time the level of the voters support within the area and these intelligence machinery which will from to time identify any local issue that can be used to increase support from voters in case there is an need to do so. That is why you’ll see many launching of so called “projek kilat” during the campaigning period in many areas such as building new bridges, repairing old roads and many others. This tactic may seems to be trivial in urban areas however the effect of it in remote areas will be tremendous as most of the voters tend to be from low social class where basic amenities such as water supply and electricity are scarce.
Whatever it is, how best we plan or strategize for this coming election, The Almighty will always know which one is the best for us and may in the coming PRU 13, whatever the result will be, it will bring positive changes to our nation.
PAK WAN