The lack of performance of state government and its assembly reps are the main reasons why the Malay community, which threw their support behind Pakatan Rakyat in the last general election, are now returning to Umno’s fold.

Teluk Bahang assemblyperson Hilmi Yahaya said Penang Umno has conducted its own survey by speaking to the voters and found that many were ‘angry and dissatisfied’ with the poor performance of Pakatan assembly reps.

penang land scam issue 290708 hilmi yahya Hilmi ( right ), who was former Penang Deputy Chief Minister, said the voters backed Pakatan in 2008 because they felt the coalition could bring changes to their lives.

However, after three years of governing the state, the people found that nothing has changed since the previous administration under Barisan Nasional rule, he added.

“There is nothing new... they felt their lives remained the same... there are no new factories opening in the state... and all the investment are re-investments,” he said.

“There are also complaints that the assemblypersons under Pakatan are not addressing the issues of the people... which is why many have come back to us,” he added.

Hilmi, who is state BN secretary, said that the opposition would release detailed reports about how Pakatan had brought little changes or none at all to the state.

“We have done our own homework and we will let you know the details soon,” he added.

On the alleged Umno propaganda via the media, especially the Malay language dailies controlled by the party, Hilmi said there was nothing to stop Pakatan from owning their own press.

“Let’s not blame others... this is politics... on record, they are not experienced (as government or assemblypersons) and they have not resolved the people’s problems,” he added.

Recently, Penang PKR leaders conceded that there were indeed a decline of Malay support towards the party but pinned the blame on Umno’s persistent racial and religious propaganda.

Lack of media coverage, especially in the Malay language dailies, which are wholly owned by Umno, had also been blamed for the declining support.

PKR said Umno and its media have been consistently painting Pakatan as anti-Malay and anti-Islam, thus driving away the community back into the arms of the latter, who promotes itself as the true champions of the race and religion.

Growing dissatisfaction

Meanwhile, Seberang Jaya assemblyperson Arif Shah conceded that Malay support for Pakatan has indeed gone down the drain.

He attributed the decline to the growing dissatisfaction of members with their own parties, and referred directly to the political state of affairs in PKR.

He said the declining support of the people, especially the Malays, towards Pakatan was obvious as he noticed there were increased numbers of participants attending his various programmes in his constituency.

He added that the audience comprised not only of Umno members, but people from other communities or ethnic groups like the Chinese and Indians.

“We have more participants compared to those at events organised by Pakatan, who mostly used ‘artificial’ crowd as many of them come from outstation,” he said.

umno penang wants contest in penanti state seat 200409 ariff shah “There were also instances when their (Pakatan) members actually invite us from Umno to attend their events and give speeches... but they do not openly say they are from Pakatan, they identify themselves as NGOs,” he added.

Arif ( left ) explained that another reason why support for Pakatan was declining was due to the increasing confidence of the corporate sector towards Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s economic policies and commercial approaches.

“1Malaysia is a selling point, and together with Najib’s down-to-earth behaviour, it shows that his policies are not merely slogans,” he said.

However, Arif admitted that Umno remains rather cautious and does not want to be over-confident over the current developments.

“We will continue to do our work as before so that more people would come back to us... truth will prevail... as you can see, there is no improvement brought about by the new government as it was all done by the previous government, they have just come and did some touch-up,” he added.