PETALING JAYA: Can Pakatan Harapan (PH) win the 15th General Elections (GE15) in 2023? DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang today said it is tentative.
“I have not asked the leaders of the four component parties of PH, but my own answer to the question as to whether PH can win GE15 in 2023 is a tentative yes,” Lim said in a statement today.
“This will be going against the tide of public perception today about PH, for there is a school of thought that it is sure to be thrown out of Putrajaya if an election is held today, just as it had fallaciously expected the PH government to implode and disintegrate in a matter of months,“ he said.
Lim then highlighted four flashpoints that had the pendulum swinging in favour and against PH, since its victory in the 14th General Elections (GE14) on May 9 last year.
“From May 9, 2018 to the end of 2018, when the euphoria of change was palpable, PH seemed to be in an invincible position where it could do no wrong, and reversals like the pledge to ratify the International Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) could take place without much adverse consequences. Pakatan Harapan won four by-elections during this period.
“The first four months of this year saw the evaporation of the euphoria of change, the setting-in of disappointment and disenchantment that things were still very much the same. This coincided with the phenomenon of the “Malu Apa Bossku” campaign, a period where PH could not do anything right, with events leading to the withdrawal of the accession to the Rome Statute. PH also lost three by-elections during this period.
“In May and early June, the tide turned because of three major factors: The first anniversary celebration of PH government in Putrajaya with the theme of “shared prosperity”, the landslide by-election victory of Pakatan Harapan and Warisan in the Sandakan parliamentary by-election on May 11, which pulverised two myths in Malaysian politics, that Pakatan Harapan and Warisan in Putrajaya and Sabah are only one-term governments, and the invincibility of the shameless “Malu Apa, Bossku” campaign by Najib.
“But this period of recovery was short-lived, as from before mid-June to August, a quartet of issues, from the gay sex video scandal, the introduction khat writing into the Bahasa Melayu syllabus for Your Four pupils in Chinese and Tamil primary schools, the Zakir Naik fiasco, to the Lynas licence renewal conspired to give the misperception that the PH government is on the ropes.”
Amidst the tide of racial tensions amplified mainly on social media, Lim urged Malaysians to be more discerning of the information they consume as there are irresponsible parties out there trying to sow seeds of disharmony among the races.
“Let us prove wrong the political wet-blankets who want to wage war along racial and religious lines in plural Malaysia. Their wishes are for the country to be plunged into unrest, instability and chaos, destroying all hopes of Malaysia fulfilling her dream of becoming a top world-class nation of unity, freedom, justice, excellence and integrity, doomed to the trajectory of a failed and rogue state and a klepto-theocracy,“ he added.
