BN claimed a huge victory in Sunday’s by-election. BN wanted a big victory to create the perception that Johor is still a BN fortress. Well, on the surface, they appeared to have succeeded with a 3,707 majority with MCA chief Chua Soi Lek claiming the Chinese had gone back to support BN.

The big win by BN is nothing but a created number. BN has access to meteorological forecast and would have known that it would be a wet period during the campaigning period as well as the polling day.

Also, the polling day was just three days before Chinese New Year and so this was perfect to ensure low turnout in non-Malay areas as those working outstation would not come back to vote. The second and third generation Felda settlers would also not come back.

We witnessed that the government machinery were mainly deployed in Malay areas to get voters to the polling centres. Requests from PAS to have trucks deployed in Labis Utara met with many excuses as to why a truck or boat could not be deployed to ferry voters from the town to the polling centre.

Hence, Labis Utara recorded the lowest turnout rate of 48%. Whereas, the Malay areas recorded exceptional turnout rate with Chemplak Barat registering 89%, Felda Tenang 81%, and Chemplak 79%. The other three Malay-majority areas registered above 72% turnout rate. This would mean that the lowest turnout rate in these areas was even higher than the average turnout rate of 70% in 2008.

There were also incidents of phantom voters and vote-buying which all contributed to a higher majority for BN.

What if the voters turnout rate in the six Malay majority areas were normalised as if they are like the other six non-Malay majority areas? The non-Malay majority areas have an average turnout rate of 56% and so if we normalise the six Malay majority area to that of 56% turnout rate, the majority would have reduced by about 1,350 votes and the majority would only be 2,350 votes.

PAS lost in Labis Timor and Labis, two Chinese-majority areas which it won in 2008. The major factor was because of low turnout rate for older and younger voters and also the decreased support from Malay and Indian. In general, the overall Malay support had reduced from about 22% to 12% and the overall Indian support had reduced from 50% to 20%.

However, the overall Chinese support has increased from 53% to 60% with Labis Tengah registering the highest at 72% and Tenang Station the lowest at 47%. The other two Chinese-majority areas of Labis Timor and Labis registered 67% and 65% Chinese support respectively. The above figures proved that Chua had misled the public by saying that Chinese voters had gone back to the BN.

The author is PKR operation manager in Tenang