BN Government is still insensitive and arrogant just like how it was before the 2008 Gereral Elections!!

22/4/11
BN government is still insensitive and arrogant just like how it was before the 2008 general election.

In the recently concluded Sarawak state election, DAP won 12 out of the 15 seats we contested and PKR had won 3.

The result was a combination of unprecedented big swing of Chinese and some percentage of non Chinese support for Pakatan Rakyat.

If more non Chinese had decided to vote for change, then not only had Pakatan Rakyat been able to deny BN of its two thirds majority in the Sarawak State Assembly, it might also have been possible to see a change in government.

I was there to help in the DAP campaign and I could see that days before the polling day that the mood among the Chinese voters was similar to the 2008 general election.

We were confident of achieving unprecedented victory and were hoping that all the races would be prepared to vote for change.

But we missed the opportunity to deny BN its two thirds because though some percentage of non Chinese had voted for change, The non Chinese support was not strong enough.

The Opposition had not been able to deny BN of its two thirds parliamentary majority until the last general election when the Opposition obtained unprecedented support from all three races, namely the Malays, Indians and Chinese.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Indians had played the King Maker role in the 2008 general election and helped bring about a new political landscape.

However, it cannot be denied that the results of the Hulu Selangor, Tenang and Merlimau by elections showed that there was a swing of Indian support back to BN.

Nevertheless, from the feedback which I have been obtaining across the country, I can still feel the strong anti BN feeling among the Indian community.

I therefore don’t subscribe to the view that the die is cast and that the Indians have all decided to back BN again.

I certainly don’t believe that the Indians do not care about or are not concerned about the Interlok issue.

It is a fact that the Interlok novel is not a suitable school text.

It is also true that the inaccuracies and distortions in the novel have hurt the feelings of the Indian community.

Yet why is the BN government so adamant and unwilling to withdraw the book?

The answer is simple.

BN government is still insensitive and arrogant just like how it was before the 2008 general election.

Its arrogance could partly stem from the fact that BN had seen some Indian swing of support in its favour in the recent by elections.

In fact, even MIC is so sure that the Indians have backed BN again that MIC leadership is not making enough efforts to get the Interlok novel withdrawn as a school text.

MIC is so arrogant that its Youth Chief Mohan can now publicly declare that the Indians have now backed BN again.

So come the next general election, the Indian voters must rise to the occasion and play the King Maker role again to create a second political tsunami that will deal BN a more severe debacle.

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