Teluk Intan By-Election: Was There A Substantive Shift Of Chinese Votes To BN?

BN can gloat all they want over their 238 vote win in the Teluk Intan by-election.

They can claim that the Chinese support has shifted in their favour.

Really?

About the same number of people voted for them in this by-election as had voted for them in the 2013 general election.

Though the win was by a 238 whisker majority, the increase for them in the total votes they obtained this time compared to the last was a mere handful - 71 to be precise. (20,157 - 20,086) How many of the increase in the votes they received are Chinese?

They won largely because the 7000 plus majority who had voted for DAP in 2013 did not turn up to vote in the by-election.

Most of these are the younger voters, many of whom are working outstation in other states and in the Island Republic of Singapore because there are just not enough jobs in Teluk Intan for them. This in itself is an indictment on BN government for failing the TI folks since they have been the government of the day all the years.

They can claim like one idiot did, that Dyana lost because of the opposition's politics of hate.

The last time anyone checked, it wasn't the opposition who tried to prevent Dyana for campaigning in the kampungs. It wasn't the opposition who threatened to burn down other people's HQ. It wasn't the opposition who stormed a state assembly or the Parliament.

It wasn't the opposition who asked the Chinese "Apa lagi Cina mahu?" (What more do the Chines want?). It wasn't the opposition who told the Chinese to balik Tong San (Go back to China)

And it wasn't the opposition who talked about race supremacy.

The 7000 majority voters who had voted for the opposition in the 2013 general election did not turn up probably miscalculated that the DAP would win hands down again since the opposition had won by that large margin anyway.

They probably did not take too seriously a by-election that was not going to make any difference as to who would constitute the Perak state government.

But it is true that the results still reflected voting along ethnic lines, a failure to look beyond race to issues that doesn't augur well for the nation as a whole.