JOHOR BARU, Oct 8 — Rafizi Ramli has predicted that Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) current campaign momentum in Johor will secure the coalition the same number of seats on November 19 as previously won during the national polls in 2018, or even more.
The PKR deputy president said the chances of PH winning at least 18 parliamentary seats in Johor during the 15th general election (GE15) were good, based on the strong momentum that had been building in southern districts, and now poised to head north.
“It looks like we are getting closer to replicating what PH managed to do back in the 14th general election (GE14) in 2018.
“There are three ways to look at how we are faring. First is the response, second is the support level, and lastly, the people’s attitudes towards PH.
“Hopefully, we can recreate that kind of energy where people feel they have a stake in this election and their votes mean something,” said Rafizi on the sidelines of his visit to Johor at Kedai Makanan Kee Kim Huat in Taman Sri Tebrau here today.
Rafizi, who will be contesting the Pandan parliamentary seat in Kuala Lumpur, was accompanied by PH’s Johor Baru parliamentary candidate Akmal Nasrullah Nasir, its Stulang assemblyman Andrew Chen Kah Eng and Bukit Batu assemblyman Aethur Chiong.
They were greeted by a crowd of about 100 who had turned up at the popular coffeeshop to meet them.
Rafizi, who is also PKR’s election director, said he was more familiar with southern Johor seats, which are mainly urban, as he has often campaigned there over the last 10 years.
“From there, we can see that the energy level is strong, especially in the southern Johor parliamentary seats.
“What remains to be seen in the next two weeks is whether the momentum will flow from the south to the north,” he said.
Rafizi also claimed that an advantage for PH is that the Barisan Nasional (BN) campaign had yet to take off at the national level.
“BN hasn’t found its campaign rhythm yet and action has been largely confined to the respective constituencies,” he said, adding that it showed BN did not have a national narrative.
With that, Rafizi said it was realistic to project that PH would secure more than 80 seats nationally for GE15.
He said that figure, which was stated publicly several times, had never been disputed by any BN leaders.
“I believe that if BN does not disagree with or dispute our figure that means they somehow acknowledge that PH has the lead now,” he said.
In the watershed national polls of 2018, PH managed to win 18 out of 26 parliamentary seats up for grabs in Johor.
It was the first time in Malaysia’s history that BN was trounced in a state touted as the birthplace of coalition lynchpin Umno.
