KUALA LUMPUR, June 1 — DAP’s choice of an unknown and inexperienced candidate drove pragmatic voters to pick the more experienced Datuk Mah Siew Keong and his promises of development for Teluk Intan, analysts said.
Political analyst Khoo Kay Peng noted that while Gerakan had offered up its “best” in 53-year-old president Mah, his DAP rival Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud, 26, was only finding her feet in the by-election campaign.
Viewed as a political greenhorn lacking, Khoo said the perception was exacerbated when Dyana had to be guided in her interviews with the media and shielded by her party members.
“Clearly Dyana Sofya is not ready and she also made mistakes that caused her to lose credibility,” Khoo said, referring in particular to questions over her academic credentials and her alleged “flip-flop” on her mother’s role in the Malay rights group Perkasa.
Dyana’s idealistic message during her Teluk Intan campaign drew young voters, but the community there still places high value on “service” to the public, Khoo said.
“At the end of the day, people still want a representative they can relate to, someone who can understand the situation,” he said when suggesting that older voters, especially among the Chinese community, may find it easier to relate to their former MP Mah.
The prime minister’s promise to make Mah a minister was also “very tempting” to Teluk Intan voters, whom he noted are “also quite practical”.
These voters knew that a win for DAP would not unseat Barisan Nasional (BN) from Putrajaya, while an extra seat for Gerakan means that the federal government’s attention on Teluk Intan would bring more development, he said.
But while Gerakan has won the seat for now, Mah and his party knows that the 14th general election — due in four years’ time — is going to be a “totally different game”, where the promises he made now would have to be delivered, Khoo added.
Dr Shamsul Adabi Mamat said voters opted for Mah as the former two-term Teluk Intan MP had administrative experience and provided pledges that were more convincing and “realistic”.
Mah promised to improve facilities in Teluk Intan such as better internet connectivity, a university and seeking international recognition of the town’s heritage, while Dyana had campaigned on national issues such as the rising cost of living and the new Goods and Services Tax (GST).
Although Dyana’s message appealed to the younger generation, voters would still want a minister to be their representative as they would want “development”, Shamsul said.
“If DAP chose a candidate who is stronger than Dyana, maybe it had the potential to win,” the associate professor at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) said when commenting on the results where BN won by a razor-thin majority of 238 votes.
Political analyst Asri Salleh shared the two’s views, saying that the Gerakan victory showed that BN’s “formula” of using “recycled” candidates that are tested and proven, together with the additional promise of a ministerial position was “still working well”.
But Asri believed that the main reason Dyana lost was due to Malay voters feeling “betrayed” by the former Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) law graduate, describing it as a case of a risky DAP “experiment” gone wrong.
While Dyana had touted her UiTM experience when telling voters she was seeking to break the mould of race-based politics, this may have been a double-edged sword for her.
“We can’t discount Umno’s deep, entrenched association with the Malays as well as UiTM.
“I think it is more because the Malay voters feel that Dyana is betraying UiTM which is strongly linked with the Bumiputera Malay rights,” the analyst based at UiTM’s Terengganu campus said.
Asri also noted that her opposition to the implementation of hudud — Islamic penal code — might have turned Malay voters against her.
Although the anti-BN sentiment among the Chinese community in Teluk Intan remains strong, some of them may have also felt a sense of betrayal when DAP fielded a Malay candidate in a seat “traditionally held by a Chinese MP”, he said.
A win by Dyana would have encouraged more “young Malay political aspirants” to join DAP, but the Teluk Intan polls showed that communal politics is still here to stay, Asri said.
Teluk Intan is a predominantly Chinese seat, with the community forming 42 per cent of the 60,349 electorate, while the Malay and Indian community stand at 38 per cent and 19 per cent, respectively.
Shamsul suggested that the Gerakan victory resulted from a slight swing in Chinese voters to BN, combined with the typical level of support from most of the Malay and Indian community.
The controversy over Perkasa, which has “negative connotations” for the Chinese community, may have contributed to the drop in votes for Dyana, he said.
Compounding all of these factors was the low voter turnout at 66.7 per cent — the second lowest in a by-election since the 13th general election.
Khoo blamed this on DAP’s wrong strategy of overconfidence and “over-arrogance” that ultimately failed to create a sense of “urgency” among their outstation supporters to return and vote.
