KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 13 — Negeri Sembilan holds the key to how Pakatan Harapan (PH) and Barisan Nasional (BN) can work together to win big in future elections, Subang MP Wong Chen said today.
The PKR politician observed that the PH-BN team in Negeri Sembilan did better than the five states that held their elections yesterday.
“While PH-BN need a detailed review of what went wrong in other states, I would stress that the more important move is to study and adopt the PH-BN model in Negeri Sembilan.
“How did the Negeri Sembilan team create a Perpaduan coalition in just eight months into an effective election campaign team? PN which is a four-year-old coalition, was stopped cold by an eight-month-old PH-BN coalition there.
“Therefore the formula for future PH-BN victory is there in Negeri Sembilan,” he said on his Facebook page this morning, hours after the Election Commission announced the official results for all six states.
PH and BN were bitter political enemies for decades, but joined up to form the federal government and end the deadlock with the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition after the 15th general election last November.
The state elections in six states saw PN strengthening its hold on Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu while achieving significant victories within both PH and BN’s strongholds, notably in Selangor’s once considered ‘impenetrable’ safe seats.
The combined PH-BN forces in Negeri Sembilan and Penang won by two-thirds, though the number of state seats in the latter slid from 33 in Election 2018 to 29 this time around.
In his Facebook post today, Wong said that the state elections this time around should serve as a “wake-up call” for the unity government to focus on fulfilling its promised reforms.
Despite the overall result maintaining the status quo, Wong said that the fight was a “bruising” one for PH as PN had made gains in Penang and Selangor where the former once dominated.
He called on Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim to organise the parties making up the government to agree on reforms needed and to then set an agenda to deliver the reforms.
“Not rocking the cobbled together coalition boat is not helping nor producing political results at the polls,” he said.
He added that Parliament needs to pass the Parliamentary Services Act and Political Financing Act as soon as possible in order to fight corruption and preserve democracy.
