UMNO seeking former glory with the Johor snap elections

MALAYSIA: Liew Chin Tong, a Deputy Minister of Finance of Malaysia, warns United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and Barisan Nasional (BN) of a painful realisation in Malaysia’s general election after the allies in the Madani government insisted they will go solo in the Johor elections.

Now that the Legislative Assembly of Negeri Sembilan has also been dissolved, there are talks that UMNO-BN will contest these elections without their government partners.

It appears that BN is not changing course from its plans to contest all seats in the upcoming Johor state election, despite Pakatan Harapan (PH) chief Anwar Ibrahim’s desire to work out a deal to avoid clashes.

BN chief and Deputy Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said he is in the midst of finalising the list of candidates for all 56 seats. It clearly means there will be no Madani deal in the state that borders Singapore.

“I will finalise BN’s list of candidates for the 56 state seats as soon as possible and, God willing, the names will be announced a week before nomination day,” he was quoted as saying by The Star today.

For Liew, BN wants to go solo in the Johor polls because UMNO wants to use this state election to restore itself as the “dominant party” like its former supreme position in the pre-2018 one-party state.

He says, “Umno wants to turn back the clock to before 2018.”

This is the year UMNO was dethroned after six decades of rule, marking a historic moment in the country with the first Prime Minister, Najib Razak, defeated in an election.

He believes that UMNO is going solo in Johor because they have a good chance of winning these elections, but things will be very different at the national level, where Umno failed to win more than 23 seats.

He warns UMNO and BN that the debacle of the coalition at the national level will continue in the next general election.

Liew also lamented that Johor BN has decided not to hold the state election concurrently with the general election.

“It has also decided to contest all 56 state seats, even if this means contesting against Pakatan Harapan (PH), its coalition partner in the federal Unity Government.

“BN is now confident of winning more than 40 seats out of 56 seats in the Johor state assembly. Some even think BN will win 45 to 48 seats.

“In the general election on 19 November 2022, PH won 82 parliamentary seats, Perikatan Nasional (PN) 74, BN 30, and GPS 23,” he recalls.

Liew says the cooperation between PH and BN has largely passed the tests of governing together and winning elections together.

He says there was a real possibility that both coalitions could work together in the next general election in direct one-on-one contests between the Unity Government and Perikatan Nasional (PN).

However, he says some people are still dreaming of bringing back the era when UMNO was the overwhelmingly dominant political force. He reminds UMNO that in the 2022 general election, of the Peninsula’s 165 parliamentary seats, PH and PN won 71 seats each, while BN only secured 23 and also blames the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) for pushing UMNO to go solo, that is, without PH, in elections.

The reason he says is that if both PH and BN were to be together, MCA would only be able to contest 2 seats, but without PH, MCA can have a larger representation in the elections.

“Although MCA is part of the governing coalition, it has consistently behaved like an opposition party, playing up issues, stoking insecurity among the Chinese, and fanning dissatisfaction towards Prime Minister Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim, the DAP and the Unity Government,” he says.

He concluded his missive on Facebook saying he hopes that BN and Umno leaders will soon realise that “no Malaysians in their right mind want to return to pre-2018 UMNO’s dominance. The era has changed.”