Whispers of change persist in Penang

The Star:

Whispers of change persist in Penang




By JOCELINE TAN
ANALYSIS


Saturday, 01 Jul 20233:08 PM MYT



PENANG’S caretaker chief minister looked a little flushed with excitement as he lowered his car window for a wefie with journalists on the day the Penang state assembly was dissolved.

Chow Kon Yeow will be 65 this year but has not lost his boyish looks in the dog-eat-dog world of politics.


The flushed cheeks could also be from the stress of the approaching state elections - Chow needs to hold onto Penang as well as his chief minister job.

Talk that Penang will have a new chief minister after the state elections has refused to die off.

It did not help that DAP’s “lao da” (elder brother) aka Tan Sri Lim Kit Siang went silent when he was challenged to name Pakatan Harapan’s chief minister candidate after he tried to provoke Perikatan Nasional into revealing their poster boy for Penang.

The elder man should know better than to play with stones in a glass house.

Moreover, a fake list of DAP candidates had gone viral earlier this week.

It was a provocative list populated by names associated with former chief minister Lim Guan Eng. The only name associated with Chow was, well, Chow himself.

A couple of fake state exco lists were also in circulation. One featured Guan Eng as the next chief minister while another list had state DAP election director Wong Hong Wai in the No 1 post which Wong was quick to deny.

“It’s obvious the fake lists were to cause apprehension and splinters except that it fits in with what people are saying in the kopitiam. Like it or not, people will keep talking,” said former DAP politician Jeff Ooi who is now Penang Warisan chief.

Chow was unperturbed because the actual list of DAP candidates was decided by a top state level committee on Wednesday (June 28) and forwarded to the party headquarters.

He has also been pressing all the right buttons. He credited the state civil servants for their role in Penang’s 13.1% GDP growth last year, which was the highest in the country.

Chow, a former journalist, also paid tribute to the media for promoting transparency and accountability and thanked them for being a bridge between the different communities. His relationship with the media has been a sweet contrast to that of his predecessor.

Chow is no trailblazer but he has managed to keep things running in his own style.

Talk of a comeback by the ex-CM is off-putting especially to the thinking class who approved of the two-term limit on the CM post.

“Chow is seen as a softie but he is not controversial. Penangites, even those who are not Pakatan supporters, can live with that.

“People’s expectations of politicians have fallen so much so that anyone who can do a reasonable job without any big scandals or corruption issues is okay with us,” said lawyer and former Gerakan politician Rowena Yam.

The Penang government is pushing the narrative that last November’s green wave has subsided, and Penang Malays will go for political stability.

But the Malay-majority seats especially in Seberang Prai appear vulnerable.

Penang has 40 state seats and a Malay daily has predicted that 15 Malay-majority seats - 12 on the mainland and three on the island - could fall to Perikatan while another three seats could go either ways.

The Malay daily also predicted that Pakatan/Umno was assured of winning 22 seats.

This is probably a worst case scenario but what it suggests is that Penang will not fall but if the Malay wind blows hard enough, Pakatan could lose its two-thirds majority in the 40-seat state assembly.

Chow, according to political observers, has focused largely on the Chinese-dominated island constituencies and his parliamentary seat in Batu Kawan on the mainland.

DAP is guaranteed of winning all of its 19 seats but a convincing win depends on PKR, Amanah and Umno delivering the Malay seats on the Seberang Prai side.

“The Malay ground is unsettled, it would be foolhardy to deny that,” said a Penang journalist.

Pakatan has been over-dependent on non-Malay support in Penang. One fantastic win after another in Penang has also made Pakatan somewhat complacent, taking their support for granted, that is, until the wake-up call in November.

The past months have shown that Pakatan politicians seem at a loss on how to consolidate their Malay support.

There is no outstanding Malay figure in the state who can hold the Malay hearts and minds. Nurul Izzah Anwar, who is the Penang PKR chief, is unable to command Malay support the way her parents did.

In fact, the spokesman role in PKR seems to have fallen on Bukit Tambun assemblyman Goh Choon Aik, a town planner who is known to be a smooth operator.

DAP has Malay leaders but they are like window-dressing, with lots of showmanship but are quite useless on the Malay ground.

“It’s going to be a tough fight in the Malay seats. Even the entire Permatang Pauh area does not look safe for Pakatan,” said Ooi.

Surveys show that Malays like Chow but not DAP. However, the perception is that he has outsourced the work to Umno and Amanah.

Chow has grown more confident in the last one month as various Penang cultural and community organisations have publicly expressed support for him, stressing that they support him as the chief minister.

A Hainanese clan association had presented him with a basket of “bak chang” (dumplings) in conjunction with the dragon boat festival.

Much was made about the fact that the dumplings, pronounced as “bao zong” in Mandarin, sounds like “sure get,” implying that Chow would be returned as chief minister of Penang.

But Chow needs to deliver convincingly. Winning only 22 seats, as predicted by the Malay daily, could undermine his claim to the chief minister's post.

He has to aim for 28 seats and hold on to the two-thirds majority to shatter attempts to unseat him.