Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia's (Bersatu) ongoing opposition to the Forest City project in Johor will likely dominate the next general election campaign, said prominent analysts.

In a report by the South China Morning Post today, analysts said they believed that Putrajaya's recent multi-billion deals with China and the of influx Chinese real estate developers had caused public unease.

Bersatu, in particular its chairperson Dr Mahathir Mohamad, had in recent weeks been continously accusing Putrajaya of undermining the country's sovereignty through the Forest City project.

Several government officials and Johor ruler Sultan Ibrahim Sultan Iskandar, who has a stake in the project, have refuted Mahathir's claims.

Relying on a Bloomberg report that 700,000 residential units would be built on the 1,400ha reclaimed land, Mahathir said these homes were mostly targetted at buyers from China and should they reside here, would significantly alter Johor's demographics.

Bersatu's chances in Johor

This line of argument was important, said analysts, because of Johor's significance as the birth place of Umno and the fact that Bersatu considered this a frontline state.

"The fact that this quarrel is between Mahathir and the Sultan of Johor is also significant as Johor is the home base of the Bersatu party.

"(They are) hoping to make electoral inroads into a state that is the birthplace of Umno and bastion of Umno-driven Malay nationalism," said Mustafa Izzuddin, a Southeast Asia politics researcher at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

According to Bridget Welsh, an American academic which has written extensively on Malaysia, Bersatu "has traction" in Johor.

"There are concerns that this movement could affect the political balance in the state," she said, according to the SCMP report.

Underlying the opposition to the Forest City project was how Mahathir and his cohorts applied their Malay nationalist rhetoric on the side of the opposition.

Taking a page from Umno's playbook

The SCMP report noted that Umno had traditionally championed Malay supremacy while portraying Malaysia's Chinese minority and neighbouring Singapore as a bogeyman to draw support, particularly when Mahathir was prime minister.

"(Of late,) Mahathir is trying to show off his Malay nationalist credentials by portraying (Prime Minister) Najib (Abdul Razak) as having gone to bed with the Chinese with these deals," said James Chin, director of the Asia Institute at Australia’s University of Tasmania.

According to Welsh, attacking China's economic involvement in Malaysia was also a criticism against those involved in engaging and profiting from Chinese custom and therefore selling out the Malays.

“The criticism about the role of Chinese business in Malaysia goes to the heart of Malay identity and its position in Malaysia,” she said.

Forest City is developed by China's Country Garden Holdings with Johor-owned Kumpulan Prasarana Rakyat Johor holding a minority stake.