00:10Hi, welcome back to Consider This. I'm Melissa Idris. Let's continue our discussion about the
00:14results of the Johor State election. This after Barisan National outperformed expectations
00:20securing a commanding mandate while Pakatan Harapan suffered significant losses. What do
00:26the results tell us about where Malaysian politics are heading? Joining me now is Adip Elia Azlan,
00:34who is the CEO of Invoke, which is a market research and data solutions firm. Adip, welcome
00:39back to the show. So, still fresh from results night over the weekend, but I'm just wondering,
00:45looking at the preliminary data that you have from election night, what do you think was the
00:50most interesting takeaway for you from Saturday night's results? Well, I think the most important
00:59observation is that we're starting to see fence-sitters start to weigh up their options a lot more
01:11intricately. I think the common wisdom over the last 10 years or so of elections has been that
01:17when you have fence-sitter voters on the eve of the election, that would typically be to the benefit
01:25of opposition parties, right, regardless of whether at the federal or the state levels. At the same time,
01:33I think the other common wisdom of the last 10 years has been that if you have undecided non-Malay
01:40voters,
01:41that these undecided non-Malay voters would almost always come out in favour of Pakatan Harapan,
01:47and its allies, was the fact that it's quite obvious that you finally have fence-sitters actually
01:53saying, you know, look, we are not going to vote for Pakatan Harapan just because we don't have any
02:01other option. And even amongst Malay fans-sitters, we're not going to vote for Perikatan National just
02:08because we don't like Paris National, right? So, I think what the most interesting thing for me to see
02:14over the weekend was that I think we're seeing voters finally coming to the conclusion that,
02:21you know, hey, like if all three options are not exactly what I feel in love with or that I
02:31feel to be
02:31attracted to, I'm actually going to reconsider my options and, you know, if PN is one of those options,
02:36then so be it. So, when you look at this voter behaviour, do you think it is specific to Johor,
02:43or is this a voting trend that we might see in the upcoming Negeri's Milan election and other state
02:50elections and the general election?
02:53Well, one perspective is that whatever has happened in Johor is actually the culmination of several
03:03years of emerging national trends. And among those important trends are as follows. The first
03:09important trend is that I think it's been clear over the last two years especially that there has been
03:17growing discontent amongst sensitive voters with Pakatan Harapan but also Kerikatan National, right? And
03:26this is an interesting dynamic because historically since GE14, discontent was predominantly directed towards
03:38BN, Paris National, and really it was a competition between PH and PN in terms of who could accumulate
03:45the biggest share of disaffected voters. So, as I mentioned earlier, I think what is significant and
03:54what has definitely occurred in Johor is that you have a considerable subset of fence-sitter Malays as
04:01well as non-Malays who have come to the conclusion that actually in this particular case BN and UMNO is
04:08my
04:09best bet. That being said, I think it should also be emphasized that in Johor there are two particularly
04:19unique issues, right? The first is that there can be no denying that the state government as well as the
04:27Mitri Besar prior to the dissolution of the dun, both these entities were popular including amongst fence-sitters.
04:36So, that was a boon obviously for BN going into the election and I think secondly is that even prior
04:46to
04:48the most recent election rounds, you can make a case that Johor was sort of the final bastions of MCA
04:58and
04:58MIC. Not to say strength per se, but you know let's put it another way, they weren't as weak in
05:04Johor as
05:05compared to other states. So, you do have these unique Johor factors, but I would say that they went hand
05:13in hand with the wider national trends that we've been observing over the two years that have produced
05:19this particular result. Right, so how are you reading the cooperation between PAS and UMNO in Johor
05:26and how do you think that might affect the political landscape going forward? Do you think BN's success,
05:36performance might embolden them to call for maybe an earlier general election and to this cooperation with PAS?
05:45I would be careful to overstate the impact of the BN-PN or rather the BN-PAS cooperation because
05:56while there's no denying that PAS throwing its weight and its resources behind abnormal candidates whether
06:04implicitly or explicitly, while there's no denying that that helps. I think it's also worth reminding ourselves that
06:12when we think back to GE15 and when we think back to PRN 2023, it's very important for us to
06:22to actually remember that big chunk of perikatan or passports, out of that entire chunk of PN and passports,
06:35you cannot characterize that entire block as a monolith. You know, these voters are not all
06:46hardcore PAS members and PAS supporters. There is a big chunk of fansiter Malays who perhaps in 2018 and 2013
06:56voted for Paketan Rakyat and Paketan Darapan and who between 2018 and 2022 moved towards PN and
07:04aside from the assistance that PN and UMNO received from PAS and PN on the ground, I would be more
07:11inclined to
07:11say actually that the bigger issue or the bigger story is the fact that these same Malay fansiters who
07:17once upon a time were happy voters for Paketan, who then became happy voters for Perikatan, now they've
07:25gone back to PN and UMNO. And that I think is the wider national trend that is going to carry
07:31a big ramifications moving forward towards year 16. Right. And what about the presence of smaller
07:37parties? We saw Muda, PSM, Bersama and many people are calling them vote splitters, spoilers, if I may
07:45quote some. How do you see them maybe in the political landscape having said what you just said
07:54about this shift back to BN and should Paketan Harapan then rethink its strategy with the emergence of these
08:02new players and its previous electoral wipeouts in the last two state elections?
08:09Well, the challenge for the small parties is always going to be one of scale because first things
08:19first, you know, whenever a voter weighs up their voting decision, it's going to come down firstly to
08:27credibility, right? And credibility has many different factors informing them to see credibility, right?
08:36Number one is an agenda, having an agenda that is relevant and that resonates with people. Number two is
08:45candidates, right? So quality of candidates, the kind of rhetoric that's coming out of out of the
08:52candidate's mouth. Number three would be, I would say actually the ground efficiency as well, right? So to
08:59what degree do you see people from these parties actively doing work and participating on the ground?
09:06And so when it comes to all of the smaller or the minor parties, not just in Johor, but is
09:15this going to be an
09:15issue nationally as well? They're always going to be fighting an uphill battle, right? I would also say that
09:25perhaps one of the other factors that has influenced the relatively poorer showing of the of the smaller
09:33parties is that I get the sense based on some of the data that we've looked at, that credibility also
09:41comes down to the likelihood of a party forming or shaping a government. Because let's make this clear,
09:51right? A week before nomination day, when we looked at our data points, we were actually seeing a bit of
09:58momentum amongst some of the smaller parties. We were seeing support levels for some of the smaller parties
10:04coming close to Perikatan as well as Pakatan. But after nomination day, you suddenly see a crash, right?
10:14Now, the more we look at it, and the more that we think about it, one of the factors that
10:18may have
10:19actually shaped this is the fact that, you know, when people vote, they want to vote for a winner. And
10:25if you
10:26are effectively saying from the off that there's only two, basically two coalitions, two parties that can
10:32actually form this government, then really your vote becomes a choice of two, not a choice of four,
10:39five or six, right? So that again, I think is the challenge for the minor parties, because if they
10:45want to be taken seriously, if they want to be a serious option at the polls heading into future state
10:51elections, as well as G16, the challenge for them is that they are going to have to be nationally relevant,
10:57and whether they can muster up the resources, as well as the as well as the machinery needed to
11:06actually be nationally effective, that's going to be the challenge that they need to address.
11:11Right. Adib, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. I appreciate your time. Adib Elia
11:15Azlander, CEO of Invoke. Wrapping up this episode of Consider This, I'm Melissa Idris signing
11:21on for the evening. Thank you so much for watching and good night.
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