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KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysia’s largest ruling party, Umno, won a resounding victory with 85 percent of the vote in the by-elections on Saturday (August 29) in Slim, defeating the Pejuang party of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.
Parti Pejuang Tanah Air, in its electoral debut, failed to make a dent in Slim’s stronghold of Umno, garnering less than 14 percent of the vote for the Perak state assembly seat.
Umno’s candidate, Mohd Zaidi Aziz, who ran under the Barisan Nasional banner, received 13,060 votes, defeating Amir Khusyairi Mohamad Tanusi of Pejuang, who only got 2,115 votes. Meanwhile, independent candidate Santharasekaran Subramaniam received 276 votes.
Security procedures to slow the spread of the coronavirus were in place at all 12 polling stations, with voters assigned time slots and forced to socially distance themselves and take their temperature.
Umno had defended the seat in the 2018 general elections with 45 percent of the vote. Saturday’s wide margin was partly due to the fact that two of his opponents in 2018 are now his allies in the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government.
Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s Umno, Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) and Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia are part of the federal government and the Perak state administration, following the February coup that deposed Tun Dr. Mahathir.
PAS had obtained 22 percent of the votes in Slim in 2018, while Bersatu was backed by a third of the voters.
95-year-old Dr. Mahathir formed Pejuang earlier this month along with a handful of Bersatu leaders who refused to join Umno. The elderly statesman had led the Pakatan Harapan coalition, which later included Bersatu, to a stunning victory in the 2018 general election that ended Umno’s six-decade rule.
But Umno’s landslide victory on Saturday indicates that Dr. Mahathir faces an uphill battle to repeat his previous success with Pejuang, if, as is widely speculated, national elections are called in the next six months.
Umno President Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said the margin of victory showed that Umno was regaining the support of those who had turned their backs on the party in the last elections.
“This shows that the voters have missed us,” he told reporters. “This will be further revealed if the Sabah or GE15 state elections are held,” he said, referring to the upcoming general elections.
Three-quarters of Slim’s voters are Muslim Malays, who make up the majority in more than half of Malaysia’s parliamentary constituencies.
The results show that the majority of those who voted for Bersatu in 2018, when Dr. Mahathir was still its president, did not endorse his new party on Saturday.
“Pejuang was formed to face the three Malaysian parties in PN, but this by-election has shown that it will take a miracle to mount a credible challenge in the next general election,” Adib Zalkapli, director of risk consultancy BowerGroupAsia, told The Straits Times.
This was the third by-election since Muhyiddin removed Bersatu from the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government, and Umno won all three. This was also the only by-election of three in which an opposition candidate tried to win a Malay majority seat, the first real indicator of the crucial Malay vote.
Just over two-thirds of Slim’s 22,749 registered voters cast their votes, down from 81 percent two years ago, reflecting the voter fatigue that was evident during the two-week campaign.
If the result in Slim is indicative of national sentiment among Malaysian voters, it would mean that Pejuang, as well as other opposition parties, will fight to galvanize enough support to overthrow the current government.
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