Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has but a few wishes for this Chinese New Year.

And one of it is for the return of the Chinese community’s support for BN.

“I hope, in this Year of the Monkey, it will be more prosperous,” he said, when asked about his wish for Chinese New Year.

“Political and economic problems will be solved and I hope the Chinese community will return to be together with the government,” Zahid told reporters at the MCA open house in Kuala Lumpur today.

Zahid may have wished for this to become a reality, but it may well be an uphill battle for the ruling coalition to overcome.

MCA – one of BN’s main component parties – only managed to win seven parliamentary and 11 state seats in the last general election, compared with the 15 parliamentary and 32 state seats it secured in the 2008 general election.

And a Merdeka Center survey conducted last year found that the government’s approval rating was at an all-time low of 23 percent, with only five percent of Chinese voters supporting the government.