Mahkota: The byelection that shouldn’t have been

Murray Hunter


Mahkota: The byelection that shouldn’t have been

Sometimes allowing the opposition to win by walkover can be a strategic victory

Sep 29, 2024





On 29th September 2024, the state seat of Mahkota in Johor had a by-election to replace Sharifah Azzah Syed Zain, who passed away. Shahifah had won the seat for UMNO in the 2022 Johor State election with a hefty 5,166 majority in a four-way contest. With the BN winning 16,611 votes and Pakatan Harapan winning 11,445 votes in Mahkota during the 2022 state election, a victory for Barisan Nasional was almost assured in the by-election. In any other country, the opposing party with virtually no chance of winning it, would have just let UMNO have a walk-over.

However, Perikatan Nasional contested anyway.

The by-election gave a resounding win for Syed Hussein Syed Abdullah of UMNO with 27,995 votes to the Bersatu candidate Mohamad Haizan Jaafar, who garnered only 7,347 votes. That gave BN a massive 20,648 vote majority and bragging rights, that stupidly Bersatu handed UMNO on a silver platter.

Much has been made of the result in the media today.

There have been numerous interpretations of the results. For example, Nicholas Chung, writing in FMT pushed the line that attacks by Perikatan Nasional on UMNO showed PN had no new innovative policies to present the voters of Mahkota.

Bersatu’s Azmin Ali said that PN support remained the same despite the heavy loss and low voter turnout. The 7,347 votes obtained by Bersatu’s Haizan Jaafar was not far off from the 7,614 voted gained by the PN candidate Nor Lingan in the 2022 Johor state election, where the voter turnout was higher at 57.34 percent, compared to 53.84 percent at the byelection yesterday. Che GuBard added to this on a Facebook post, where he said that even when the government controlled all the machinery, BN could only muster 45.6 percent of total voters. That’s 27.941 votes from 67,274 registered voters.

DAP’s Anthony Loke was concerned at the low turnout rates of non-Malays in Mahkota yesterday. Voter turnout among Chinese was only 32 percent, and 34 percent for Indian voters. On the Bersatu side, FMT reports Lau Zhe Wei of the International Islamic University saying “The loss is a primary setback for Bersatu. The majority of seats previously won by PN, were won by PAS”. Former Bersatu Supreme Council member Faiz Na’aman urged founding Bersatu members to join PKR, following the defeat in Mahkota.

Veteran Sabah politician Bung Moktar Radin says that BN and Pakatan Harapan must employ the same formula and cooperate in the coming Sabah State elections. Anwar supporter Imraz Ikhbal says the result shows that UMNO voters now accept the party’s ties with the DAP. Finally, UMNO president and deputy prime minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said BN’s victory reflected the public’s acceptance of the (unity) government. This was reiterated by Amanah president Mohamed Sabu.

Zaid Ibrahim in a post on X said that the weakness of PN is not healthy for a democratic system in Malaysia. The loser is the nation at large.

So much is being surmised above without having enough data available to make sweeping general conclusions about yesterday’s byelection. It wasn’t a real hard ‘one on one’ contest with PAS taking a backseat in a place they are not dominant in. To the contrary, the state government is run by UMNO, and the area is one of UMNO’s bastions of popularity.

Why did so many not even turnout to vote? Perhaps Syed Akbar Ali in his OutSyed blog is absolutely correct. There is absolutely no different between Bersatu/PN or PH/BN.

The ‘mythical green wave’ reached its peak during the 2023 state elections. Now it has only one way to go. Nenggiri and Mahkota are both traditional UMNO territories. PAS south of Perak ‘tak laku’ in the south of the peninsula. So, all these electoral support idiosyncrasies on the peninsula will once again lead to a hung parliament in GE16.

Muhyiddin may be sitting alone very soon.

The odds for PN to win in Mahkota were so low, they should have just not contested it and let UMNO keep the seat by default. It was all just a waste of time and money.

Bersatu, that was only set-up to fight Najib Razak, has a lot to think about. Its electoral weakness is much more public after Mahkota. Bersatu should have not damaged itself.

A passive opposition is not working. PN will have to learn how to behave like an opposition, or are there other plans afoot?