The Barisan Nasional candidate from MCA, Oui Ah Lan, won the Indera Kayangan by-election on Saturday mainly on the back of Malay Malaysian voters.

Perlis Umno information chief Abu Bakar Ismail claimed that a strong turnout by Malay voters, who mostly voted for BN, had boosted the party's majority to 2,592 compared to 1,974 votes in the 1999 general elections.

Oui, a retired Chinese school headmistress, obtained 4,229 votes against Keadilan's Khoo Yang Chong, a former school teacher, who garnered 1,687 votes.

"We had expect to get a 3,000-majority. But our initial finding shows that many Chinese voters in Indera Kayangan voted for the opposition," Abu Bakar added.

Umno, he said, will conduct a post-mortem on the election results as well as find out why only a few Chinese Malaysians voted in the morning while the majority of them voted in the afternoon.

Disagreements and internal crisis

According to Abu Bakar, there might be three main reasons why the Chinese voted for the opposition.

Firstly, there were MCA members who disagreed with the selection of Oui as MCA candidate because she was one of the party's central committee members who supported the takeover of Nanyang Press.

Secondly, MCA's internal crisis between party president Ling Liong Sik and his deputy, Lim Ah Lek, has also affected the Chinese support for BN.

"I was told that the four MCA operation rooms in the Indera Kayangan constituencies were quiet during the day," he said.

The Perlis Umno leader said that MCA's campaigns were mainly confined to organising dinners at night.

He added that both factions in MCA often went their own ways when campaigning in the by-election.

"And thirdly, it is a known fact that many Chinese in Perlis are inclined towards the opposition," he added.

Abu Bakar said Umno's strong election machinery, headed by Menteri Besar Shahidan Kassim, was fully utilised to secure victory for BN in the by-election.

In anticipation of the reduced Chinese support for MCA, he said, Umno has gone all-out to get the Malay electorate to vote in the by-election. This included mobilising Puteri Umno to get the younger voters to exercise their rights.