It is more than two weeks since the by-election in Bukit Selambau. What began as an inauspicious start for Pakatan Rakyat and its candidate ended with an unexpectedly positive outcome for the opposition coalition.

This seat was retained with a slightly larger majority, the independent candidates did not do undue ‘harm’ to Pakatan and the anticipated Indian swing against Pakatan was not as significant as first anticipated.

Anwar’s gamble to field an outsider, if you will, instead of a Hindraf-backed candidate paid off. The only blemish for Pakatan in this by-election was a lower than expected turnout, probably caused by a small number Indian voters who ‘boycotted’ this by-election.

In contrast to the announcement of the ousted PAS menteri besar Mohd Nizar Jamaluddin’s candidature in Bukit Gantang, which received almost unilateral praise, Pakatan’s candidate in Bukit Selambau was not so warmly greeted.

anwar bukit selambau pkr candidate manikumar 200309 10 The local Indian community did not see S Manikumar as a ‘local’ candidate because he did not have a history of serving the community. He did not even have a long track record as a PKR member. In addition, Hindraf leaders felt that their voices were not being heard since none of their own proposed candidates were chosen.

The sense of dissatisfaction on the part of the Indian community manifested in five Indian independent candidates contesting in this by-election, including the assistant of the former Bukit Selambau state assemblyperson and former PKR division chief of Pokok Sena.

But the initial uproar on the part of some of these local Indian leaders failed to translate into votes for them.

bukit selambau by election 2009 results 070409 short version Of the 1,326 votes (less than 6% of valid votes cast), only 266 or 20% went to the Indian independent candidates. While some of the Indian voters in Bukit Selambau were unhappy with Anwar’s choice of candidate, rationality seems to have prevailed on polling day as the majority of Indian voters choose to cast their vote for the Adun whom they knew would be their exco representative in the state government, if he was voted in.

An insignificant number of Indian voters choose to support the independent Indian candidates and not many of those who went out to vote choose to spoil their votes. Spoilt votes number 415 - less than 2% of total votes cast - a reduction from the 1,694 spoilt votes in the 2008 general election.

Indeed, it is very likely that, contrary to what I predicted earlier , the independent candidates probably took away more votes from BN rather than Pakatan. The independent candidates who garnered the highest number of votes were both Malay candidates.

One of the candidates, Mejar Anuar Abdul Hamid, who was a former Umno division committee member in Merbok, managed to win 528 votes. He was followed by another Malay candidate, Husaini Yaacob, who won 257 votes, slightly less than the 266 garnered by all five Indian independent candidates.

It is likely that if these Malay independent candidates had not contested, most of their votes would have gone to the BN candidate given that most of them would probably be Umno sympathisers who would probably have preferred to vote for an Indian BN candidate rather than an Indian Pakatan candidate.

Lower turnout hurt Pakatan

The presence of 13 independent candidates makes estimating racial voting in Bukit Selambau very challenging.

Using data at the ‘saluran’ or polling stream level and ignoring the votes obtained by the independent candidates, I estimated that the non-Malay support for the BN may have increased marginally from 26% in 2008 to 28% in 2009 at the same time as Malay support for the BN decreased from 63% in 2008 to 61% in 2009.

This would explain the fact that the majority for Pakatan was almost unchanged from 2008 – 2,362 in 2008 compared to 2,402 in 2009.

This confirms the initial assertion that most of the non-Malay and more specifically, the Indian vote, did not swing against Pakatan and back to the BN.

Where Anwar’s decision to field S Manikumar did hurt Pakatan was in causing turnout to fall from 73.7% in 2008 to approximately 70% in 2009. Approximately 1,200 fewer votes were cast in this by-election compared to the general election in 2008.

The lower turnout most probably was caused by the decision on the part of a small number of Indian voters to boycott this by-election because of their unhappiness over Pakatan’s choice of candidate.

bukit selambau ceramah umum sungai lalang 040409 anwar crowd 1 While their decision did not ultimately cause Pakatan to lose this seat, an additional 1,200 voters - most of whom would have likely voted for the opposition - would have seen Pakatan’s majority increase by at least a few hundred votes.

The Bukit Selambau by-election showed that Anwar was willing to ‘gamble’ on the Indian voters in that he clearly felt he could choose a candidate that was more ‘moderate’ to show the Malay voting public that he would not be held ransom by the Hindraf leaders.

The fact that this ‘gamble’ paid off means that Hindraf leaders need to re-evaluate their position vis-à-vis Anwar as well as Pakatan. Anwar called Hindraf’s bluff, as it were, and Anwar come out on top.

In the aftermath of Bukit Selambau, Hindraf leaders now need to figure out their next move. One possibility is to try to form a political party to better represent Indian issues and to field Hindraf candidates in elections. Such an option is being discussed but the possibility of such a party being approved by the Home Ministry is almost negligible.

brickfields uthayakumar hindraf 280209 water cannon Another option would be to try to incorporate themselves more fully into the power structures of existing political parties whether it is within BN, or more likely within DAP or PKR. But this would mean that those Hindraf leaders who choose to join these political parties would inevitably have to seek a more broad-based agenda of reform instead of focusing only on Indian issues.

The third possibility would be to continue as a social movement and to continue agitating for changes in policies which affect the Indian community.

The Hindraf movement clearly showed its influence by mobilising Indian dissatisfaction against BN in the 2008 general election. But now that the Indian vote is firmly in the opposition camp, it remains to be seen how much Anwar can and is willing to concede to keep Hindraf in the opposition camp.

Given the Bukit Selambau results, Anwar will likely continue to pay lip service to the Hindraf cause and to their leaders but without doing anything substantive to back up these promises. At least not while Pakatan remains as the opposition at the federal level.

ONG KIAN MING is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Duke University. He can be reached at im.ok.man@gmail.com.