Swallows - summer type or bitter pills?

There is an air of despondency among Pakatan supporters, especially PAS and PKR members, following the BN victories in the Galas and Batu Sapi by-elections. Political pundits have been busy providing us with their whys and wherefores.

Unfortunately some sore Pakatan losers have not only blamed their losses on the BN goodies (didn’t Anwar also grandiosely offered Sabah 20% oil royalties?) but disgracefully condemned the voters who selected BN as being stupid and therefore deserving of the likely continuing poverty they will be in under a BN government. This is most ungracious, unsporting and undemocratic. They have refused to swallow the bitter pills

Obviously these Pakatan people don’t understand that they themselves are also part of the cause of their loss. There were many reasons but the most obvious one would be in their inability to convince the voters that PAS and PKR are respectively the better parties for Galas and Batu Sapi in every respect and not just in ‘talk’.

I really dread to think of these people coming into power because then they would be exactly like the UMNO-ites we seek to oust.

Anyway, as the saying goes (paraphrasing), a couple of by-election swallows do not a 2/3-majority BN summer make! However, they have provided a wakeup call to Pakatan, one that warns that Anwar's all too eager fantasy to occupy Putrajaya may well be just a grasp too far.

Galas and Batu Sapi are both rural constituencies, part of the Malay heartland, with the latter having the additional factor of Filipino migrants. With PAS probably as an exception, the Pakatan members of PKR and the DAP are both weak in the rural constituencies. They not only don’t have a strong presence or party infrastructure there, as proven in Hulu Selangor, but have thus far been concentrating their efforts in the urban areas and to the more western exposed voters.

For Galas, I wonder how much distrust of PAS by both the Aborigines and Chinese in the party’s Islamisation programs have contributed to the huge swing back to BN?

There was the church issue in the local Aborigine settlement, and the recent PAS Youth’s harsh and frightening attitude towards anything less than Taliban-ish.

I am going to leave it here and discuss the issue of Anwar Ibrahim and PKR in a future post wakakaka.