the upcoming 2008 general elections: things to be closely observed

after about two years and a half struggling to finish my thesis, i finally managed to complete the first draft and sent it to the graduate school for examination. i hope the examiners would not take a long time to read my thesis. my focus now is on preparing lectures to diploma and bachelor students at uitm sabah campus.

i want to write something about the upcoming general elections today. i think it is interesting because of several reasons: first, it will show whether the badawi administration is still supported by the electorate after much criticims ranging from its inability to weed out corruption to its failure in reviving the stagnant economy. second, it will test the opposition's power after the strong grassroots political mobilisation led by former deputy prime minister anwar ibrahim particularly in rural areas. third, it will show whether the ruling barisan nasional will be able to maintain the chinese and indian support. indication is that bn might lose several chinese and indian seats in the peninsular malaysia. already, the opposition has played out the hindraf issue and several hindraf key leaders have shown strong desire to stand as candidates.

personally, whatever the observation is, i think bn would win the elections but with a reduced number of seats particular in sabah and several chinese and indian seats in the peninsular malaysia. i don't think the opposition would be able to make an impact in sarawak as what it did in 2004. at best, i think the opposition might be able to retain its status quo while at the same time deny bn's majorities in several marginal seats. part of the problem among the opposition parties in sarawak is that they are unable to find a comprehensive solution to seat allocation and that they fail to campaign aggressively on a number of contentious issues such as the ncr issue, logging, and the "orang ulu" problem. having said that, the taib administration is still well entrenced in sarawak and as usual he will give bn a big win.

in sabah, the opposition might win several seats, in particular kadazandusun seats because the kadazandusun are now split between pbs, upko and pbrs. the sentiment played out by the opposition led by jeffrey and his keadilan comrades is that the kadazandusun has been alienated and that their rights have been ignored. the kadazandusun are very sentimental about their rights and they have long thought that their economic marginalisation is something which their leaders have failed to address. since pbs is no longer seen as champion to the kadazandusun people, the kadazandusun might turn their back on pairin and support jeffrey instead. upko might create an upset if it could project its image as the new champion to the kadazandusun people. what it needs to do is to convince bn to allocate it with more kadazandusun-majority seats. this if this were to happen, it would draw strong reaction from pbs which currently controls the kadazandusun seats .