“As hungry people will become enraged voters against the ruling coalition, …” (Jeffrey)

Jeffrey is trying to do a very profound analysis on the economic situation which Najib faces now. However, whether the hungry people will become enraged voters against the ruling coalition remains as a question which dictates different answer in a different situation even if a certain State Government is having much more disposable natural resources on hands than the other State Government.

For the past 51 years, Barisan Nasional (or its predecessor the Alliance) was able to win the majority votes in the General Election mainly due to one reason, that is, the ruling coalition was able to take control of massive scale of natural resources being bestowed by God and made use (or abuse) of these natural resources such as State Lands and Oil Incomes as the bait to entice people to vote for it through the practice of Grace Politics.

With the fast depletion of aerable lands and timber resources in the industrialised states such as Selangor, Penang, and Negeri Sembilan, there will be not many ways and means left for the present State Governments, whether from BN or from PR, of these three states to exploit in order to fish much more votes by using land grants or timber concession grants as the bait.

Some agricultural states like Kelantan, Trengganu and Pahang are still having plenty of state lands which are yet to be exploited and can be given by the respective state government to its respective party supporters as the granted land in order to raise the party campaign fund for General Election. However, the people’s political inclination in Kelantan is always leaning towards PAS whereas the people of Pahang still prefer Umno. And the people of Trengganu are quite divisive in politics, with past records indicated that about 50% of them wanted PAS and about 1/4 of them wanted Umno and the other 1/4 of the Trengganu people might want the royal patronage of the Sultan. Definitely Grace Politics will still play an important role in these three states.

Perlis is a small state but the Perlis people are inclined to obey to the Raja of Perlis because Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin Jamalullail was a king who is always friendly and close to the subject. Even though there are not many natural resources found in Perlis, the people of Perlis will tend to obey the Raja in the political inclination.

Now the states which are found to be shaky in the political inclination are Johor, Melaka, Kedah and Perak. Most Malay voters in Melaka might like to uphold their status as a privileged ethnic group in Malaysia in order to preserve their Malay traditions, which are largely influenced by the Minang Karbau sectarian group of people. In Johor, since many Johoreans are able to earn relatively much better income by working in Singapore and also from the business transactions with Singaporeans who visited Johor, those Johoreans who stand to gain from the good relationship with Singapore (including the Malay businessmen who exported vegetables, fishes, chickens, beefs and muttons to Singapore) will quite likely prefer to vote for BN so long as BN chooses to maintain a good bilateral diplomatic relation with Singapore.

Kedah and Perak are much more difficult to predict. It seems that PAS State Government of Kedah cannot do much in bringing the economic prosperity to Kedah due to PAS’s conservativeness in economic policy by requiring some housing projects to meet the quota of selling by at least 50% of the number of houses built to the prospective Malay house buyers. Such a policy will largely curb and restrain the demand for housing in Kedah. In Perak, Pakatan Rakyat will stand a good chance to win by the next election because the Perakian people are going to have strong will of wanting to teach Najib a lesson for his illegal, illegitimate, undemocratic, and gutter-style power grab in Perak.

Sabah and Sarawak are two states which are full of variables during a general election. Whether Sabahans will continue to cast votes for BN when the next general election comes will all depend on whether Sabahan tribal leaders are going to trust Najib more than their trust in Anwar. As for Sarawak, I think the coming state-wide election of Sarawak will be the time for Sarawakians to say a big “NO” to the greedy and dictatorial Iban tribal head Taib Mahmood due to the shameful and eye-sored unequal distribution of income in Sarawak!

In short, even though economic factor is important in deciding which party camp, BN or PR, will win in a general election, economic factor is not the sole crucial factor. There are other factors which may be equally important in determining the decisiveness of people in their political behaviour of casting a vote, whether in favour of BN or in favour of PR. These other factors include the loyalty towards the state ruler, the degree of people’s religiosity, the economic interdependency between the Malaysian people’s home country and their neighbouring country, and the political passion towards the opposition party which is perceived by a voter as the representation of voices of righteousness and natural justice.