While it’s now near impossible to find a smiling face among Barisan Nasional’s main component party leaders, M Kayveas is probably the least saddest within the coalition.

Despite losing its Taiping (parliamentary) and Pasir Bedamar (state) seats, the People’s Progressive Party president feels the party has done its best given the circumstances.

"Without seats, we have grown from strength to strength. When I took over the party in 1993, PPP had no seats. We worked and built the party up again."

kayveas ppp pc 120308 sullen "In 2004, we were given two seats. We won the parliament and lost the state. This year, we lost both.

"But that doesn’t make any difference to us. The manner in which the seat was given to us, we were kicked all over the place, insulted and we were not respected," said Kayveas ( pix ).

Besides the massive swing in voter sentiments, the lack of help for PPP and even sabotage had also caused them to lose their seats, he explained.

"All this resulted in the losing of the seats. It has nothing to do with the weakness of the party, the candidate or having me as the president."

"We are very strong and we are very relevant. In fact, some of the points the opposition parties had used as their issues were once highlighted by me personally in BN," said Kayveas.

According to Kayveas, what cheesed him off was the manner some other parties had tried to sabotage them.

Emergency general assembly

"Before the election, the bigger parties were already going around Taiping, telling people not to vote for me. But this is nothing because if we lose, it’s only two seats. When a big party loses, it loses a lot of seats."

The former deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Department said this may be the right time to combine all the BN parties into one big party.

He argued that in such a system, nobody needs fear that their parties will be wiped out in one general election

kayveas ppp pc 120308 group "The loose coalition of the opposition parties cannot do well in the future. DAP and PAS have different ideologies and PKR was set up for a different reason.

"If BN was one single party then we wouldn’t have to be afraid of losing the Malay, Indian or Chinese votes," said Kayveas.

Another factor he cited for BN’s poor performance was its inability to read the voters’ sentiments and its inability to change.

"Umno has to change a bit. It is the leading party and the foundation of the BN coalition and it needs to lead in changing itself. If it doesn’t want to change, then maybe one day the federal government will fall to opposition," said Kayveas although he declined to specify what the changes were.

PPP will hold an emergency general assembly at the PWTC in Kuala Lumpur tomorrow at 2pm to voice its support for the BN government and its present leadership.