KUALA LUMPUR: On Saturday, Tanjung Piai voters made sure they were heard loud and clear.
Their message? An underperforming government will get the boot. No quarter given.
They are keeping politicians on their toes to show who’s the boss.
While Barisan Nasional’s landslide win signalled unhappiness with the ruling coalition, one could argue that a by-election would not necessarily determine a political party’s future performances.
In this case, Tanjung Piai showed that voters are in control, and they want promises made to them fulfilled.
Maya Angelou once said: “People forget what you say, but they remember how you make them feel.”
Saying you are unable to do something or asking people for more time to make changes no longer works with Malaysians. Actions, as they say, speak louder than words.
Pakatan Harapan (PH) is not the only one guilty of this. History showed us that BN had 61 years to change the people’s lives.
To be fair, PH has been trying its best to cater to all problems and 18 months is too little a time for any government to effect any serious change.
It appears that Malaysians are finally opening their eyes to the power that they wield: the power of the vote.
For more than a decade, a significant portion of the Chinese had treated MCA as an outcast and lent their support to DAP. As such, the 15,086-vote majority for MCA in Tanjung Piai, where 42 per cent of the voters are Chinese, was an eye-opener.
This was a huge reversal not many expected. Observers had predicted a very small vote majority, 1,200 at most.
PH’s huge defeat was a new shift in the pendulum, a swing of Chinese voters from DAP to MCA. So, is DAP the new MCA? This is not impossible because Chinese voters have always been wise when casting their votes.
For Chinese voters, the two most important issues are education and the ability to do business smoothly.
It doesn’t matter if you field a Malay, Indian, Kadazan or Sikh candidate. The math is simple. If you can’t deliver these and fail to address other bread-and-butter issues, they will show you the door.
Tanjung Piai was not the first test for the government. It began in Cameron Highlands but now, voters are sending an even clearer message in this southern part of Johor. Not only did the Chinese vote bank here return to MCA, plenty of the Malay votes went to the party too.
This would suggest that the Umno-Pas support base backs MCA and, in a way, that BN is back. But for how long? Unfortunately, for BN, it is not forever as it will depend on its performance.
The 14th General Election rewrote Malaysian politics. We’re starting to see that change is becoming a constant and this is not necessarily a bad thing.
Take a second to digest this: Australia’s top job has changed hands six times in the last decade with not one prime minister completing a full term.
Nevertheless, the Australian government continues to run with business as usual. The people still get the world-class benefits the government provides them and civil servants do their work without feeling any political pressure.
Does changing governments and prime ministers regularly turn a country into a developed nation? Perhaps.
But such political instability can make investors uneasy. So what’s the solution? Or maybe, a better question to ask is, how has Australia been doing this without losing its investors and yet continuing to enjoy good economic growth?
According to the International Monetary Fund’s forecasts released in April last year, Australia is expected to realise an average annual real gross domestic product growth of 2.8 per cent between this year and 2023. To put this into perspective, the ideal GDP rate for a country is between two and three per cent.
As our nation matures, people want more change. They begin to grow weary of petty politicking and playing the race or religion card for support.
A mature nation demands its politicians to direct their attention to performing and governing the country for the benefit of the people, not themselves.
Moving forward, to promote a more advanced form of politics in the country, Malaysia could consider a two-party system.
This is a tried-and-tested method that has benefited many developed countries and could pave the way for the establishment of a strong opposition bloc.
Some historians have suggested that a two-party system would lead to greater political stability. This, in turn, would lead to economic growth.
The Tanjung Piai by-election showed that Malaysians are maturing and this can only lead to more discerning voters, which is unfortunate news for politicians.
The pendulum will keep swinging more often until the people’s lives are improved.
While PH might be mourning their loss, nothing lasts forever, especially in politics.
Just because BN won this time doesn’t mean the people want them back. Conversely, just because PH lost this time, it doesn’t mean they will keep losing.
Didn’t someone say one week is a long time in politics?
After all, it only took 48 hours of a vote swing in May last year to forever change the history of Malaysia.