Permatang Pasir defeat - blow for Muhyiddin

By now I bet most Malaysians just like to listen to the wisdom of our dear DPM Muhyiddin Yassin. For the fun of it, of course. Now the result of Permatang Pasir is out, we all know that the wind blew directly on his face, after he claimed that “there is a wind of change blowing in the constituency”. Perhaps we all misread his message, that the wind of change that he referred to was the wind of change from Mar 2008.

As pointed out by RPK’s analysis, PAS effectively safeguarded its original margin of victory in 2008 despite fighting in a by-election confronted with carrot (”promises of development”) and sticks (intimidation) from the ruling block Barisan Nasional.

Let’s examine these perspectives:

25% of Permatang Pasir voters are Chinese, who are predominantly opposition supporters, especially in the immediate aftermath of Teoh Beng Hock affair, which was extensively covered by Chinese media but conspicuously missing (or twisted) on Malay media;

It is commonly known that many Malaysians of Chinese descent nowadays work in large cities, as far away as Singapore. I won’t be surprised many of the 25% Chinese voters belong to this category.

The polling is on a Tuesday, not even Monday or Friday. So a very long extended weekend is needed if those voters who are outstation wish to go home and cast their vote. They likely wasted their votes yesterday.

The final voter turnout is 73%, much lower than 82.6% in 2008, a drop of 9.6%
25% of total voters of 20,350 is 5,087. Assuming the average turnout applies across the board, there were 4,201 in this group who cast their votes in 2008, versus 3,713 yesterday. A drop of 488.

As analysed by RPK, PAS obtained 65.5% of valid votes yesterday, compared to 66.39% in 2008, a gap of mere 0.89%. PAS was actually missing 390 votes to bridge the gap. It seems that these 390 votes may very well be the missing votes from those outstation Chinese voters – 80% of 488 above.

In other words, the wind of change as demanded by the rakyat in 2008 is still blowing very strongly in the direction of Pakatan Rakyat.

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