i slept at 4 am yesterday to watch the 2008 election results and i was not surprised at all that the opposition was able to make inroads in many constituencies across the nation. several of my predictions especially on sabah are wrong but nationally it turns out that indeed the opposition has managed to deny bn a big win this time. in sabah, the opposition only managed to win two seats through dap in kota kinabalu and sri tanjung respectively. the muslim bumiputera and the kadazandusun are solidly behind bn. why did the muslim and kadazandusun back the bn candidates though there was strong indication initially that they would vote for the opposition? well, it is true that one should not rely too heavily on assumption and unsubtantiated claims. the claims that some section of the muslim community in sabah are not happy with musa and umno are completely flawed if the election results are taken into consideration. all the muslim seats went to bn/umno and pkr was not able to even pose a strong challenge to umno. except in a few seats, the kadazandusun this time gave their solid support to bn as they knew they would not gain anyting from the opposition and that they thought it is better to back the bn then supporting the weak alliance of opposition parties. but several leaders though were able to pose strong challenge. a case in point is jeffrey in bingkor. if not for the presence of independent candidates in the area, jeffrey could have won the seat against justin guka of bn. the latter only managed to scrap through with a 174-majority vote. this shows that jeffrey is still a force to be reckoned with in sabah politics. when he stood at the same consitituency, challenging joseph kurup in 2004 as an independent candidate, jeffrey only lost to the former with a 300-something vote (i have not checked the validity of this fact. i will pose another version if there's any mistake).
another pkr candidate jurin gunsalam in tandek also had to be denied by the split votes caused by the independents. if the independents gave way to jurin to content one-on-one with anita, the latter's winning margin would only be 200-something votes. other constituency which shows the opposition's strong presence is in kepayan. edward khoo of bn won the seat with a majority vote of 2062. if the opposition parties dap and pkr set aside their ego, they could have denied khoo a victory in kepayan and thus provided another opposition seat in the state assembly. it goes without saying the the failure of the opposition in sabah to form a strong pact resulted in the convincing win of the bn.
i am, however, correct in saying that the opposition will be able to make inroads in several chinese and indian seats in peninsular malaysia and that bn is still strong in sarawak. the problem with the opposition in sarawak, i would like to reiterate, is that they are unable in forming a formidable alliance and thus give bn a significant challenge.
okay guys, i will give more thought on the elections once i have gone through the election results in detail.
