GE15: How will the seats go? ― Lee Hwa Beng

GE15: How will the seats go? ― Lee Hwa Beng

Wednesday, 02 Nov 2022 10:59 AM MYT


NOVEMBER 2 ― As announced recently by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri, our Malaysian Parliament has been dissolved and nomination day is now fixed on November 5 and polling day on November 19.


Three states controlled by BN/PN, Pahang, Perlis and Perak are having their state elections simultaneously together with the federal elections.

The Pakatan-controlled states ― Penang, Selangor and Negri Sembilan together with the PAS-controlled states of Kelantan, Terengganu and Kedah were not dissolved. The other states Sarawak, Sabah, Johor and Melaka already held their state elections earlier.


There has been much speculation on the outcome of the federal and these 3 state elections, where the majority believe Pahang and Perlis will be retained by BN. It would be interesting to keep an eye on the Perak state elections as Anwar and PKR hope to recapture the state from BN/PN.


In this article, I am going to focus only on the federal elections which will decide the direction of our country for the next five years.

It will be drawn from my personal experiences standing in five elections from 1994 to 2008 under the MCA/BN banner.


I first stood in Damansara State constituency in 1990 and lost, and later won in the Subang Jaya constituency in 1994, 1999 and 2004 consecutively.

I last stood as a candidate for the Kelana Jaya Parliamentary seat in 2008 and lost.

Subsequently, MCA appointed me as Port Klang Chairman in 2008 to investigate the PKFZ financial scandal.

The results of my investigation led to some of those responsible being charged in court, and I further published a book to document it for public knowledge. I was subsequently sacked from MCA as a member in 2013 for my action, when its president changed.

Coming back to the subject of GE15, I present below my forecast of the results of GE15.

In the last elections held on May 9, 2018, the Pakatan Harapan coalition came into power with 121 Parliamentary seats (consisting of PKR ― 48, DAP ― 42, Bersatu ― 12 and Amanah 11).

BN clinched only 60 seats (consisting of Umno ― 57, MIC ― 2 and MCA ―1) and GPS obtained 19 seats, PAS 18 seats, Star 1 seat ― Independent candidates three seats. Subsequently, the Pakatan Harapan government fell on February 24, 2020 during the Sheraton Move.

My analysis will be based on the results of the last elections, as above, to take into account voters’ sentiments and not based on the subsequent status of Parliamentary seats caused by political manoeuvring due to the Sheraton Move.

I believe across all Parliamentary seats, there will generally be three-cornered fights between BN, PN and PH.

In 2018, around 90 per cent of non-Malays and 30-40 per cent of Malays nationwide voted for Pakatan candidates.

For this upcoming election, non-Malay voters for Pakatan will fall.

I predict that DAP may still win 70-80 per cent of non-Malay votes but PKR and Amanah candidates will obtain, at most, 60-70 per cent of non-Malay votes, resulting in PKR and Amanah getting less than their 2018 seat count of 48 and 11 respectively.

Bersatu had won 12 Parliamentary seats at that time, when Dr Mahathir was its President and it was part of the PH coalition. However, for the upcoming elections, I predict that they will be wiped out due to the reduction of its non-Malay support to near zero and its very low Malay support without Dr Mahathir.

Pejuang will not make any headway as shown in the Melaka and Johor elections. At most Mahathir or maybe his son Mukhriz might survive.

Muda will win a few seats only if they can secure an electoral pact with Pakatan.

GPS will obtain more than their 2018 seat count of 19 seats as shown in last year’s state elections in Sarawak.

For Sabah, there will be a free-for all scramble as it is unlikely that the electoral pact of GRS will hold.

As a result, I predict that DAP will win in Chinese constituencies, Warisan in mixed-race constituencies, Umno in Muslim constituencies while Star & PBS will share victories in the Kadazan/Dusun constituencies.

For the overall results, as observed in the four state elections held earlier in Sarawak, Sabah, Johor & Malacca, we will see a swing of voters returning back to their traditional BN component parties that they had previously supported.

Hence we can expect Umno to obtain better results than the 57 seats they had won in the 2018 elections.

Umno counterparts MCA and MIC might expect to pick up a few more seats due to the slight increase in non-Malay votes and increase in Malay votes for them.

PAS will be expected to achieve the same number of seats that they had won during the 2018 elections.

Based on the above, my prediction is that BN will win around 70-90 seats and together with GPS, the coalition could garner more than the majority 112 seats required to form a government, or win a number of seats just shy of 112.

A lot will depend on how the GRS coalition in Sabah perform as well. If they do well, BN, GPS and GRS might form the next government. Hence BN will not need to rely on PAS to form a government.

There is also a small possibility of DAP joining the BN-led government if the BN coalition is not strong enough, according to some conditional statements made by its leaders.

This is an ideal situation for me, as there will be Malay, Chinese, Indian and East Malaysian indigenous communities’ representation in the government and no community will be left out.

Our country has to move away from the 1MDB scandal and the prevailing racist and religious extremism currently in existence. The world is going into recession and we need to be united to overcome the challenges ahead. DAP will also be a better party to keep Umno in check compared to MCA.

Nobody can guess how the six million new voters that include the 18- to 20-year-old age group, and those who have been automatically registered as voters will vote.

However I have assumed the younger voters are normally anti-establishment and the older voters who did not register themselves but got automatically registered will still not be keen to vote or mainly overseas where postal votings are still troublesome to them.

Thus, I conclude simply, that this upcoming election is important as it will determine the long-term future of Malaysia.

* Datuk Lee Hwa Beng is a three-term state assemblyman and co-author of PKFZ: A Nation’s Trust Betrayed and Where is Pastor Raymond Koh?