PETALING JAYA (March 22): Barisan Nasional (BN) will retain the federal government despite of the increasing popularity of Pakatan Rakyat, said political experts during a forum last night.

University of Malaya Centre Of Democracy And Election director Professor Datuk Dr Mohammad Redzuan Othman said BN will still form the next federal government even if it fails to get a majority in parliament.

“I believe that after the 13th general election, our next prime minister will still be Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

“The reason is very simple. The Yang di-Pertuan Agong will call the party that garners the highest number of seats and Barisan Nasional is the party that stand under one symbol and it is unthinkable that BN is not able to win more than 100 seats,” he said during the forum titled “Who would win the GE13?” at Hotel Singgahsana here.

“The Yang di-Pertuan Agong will call the party that garners the highest votes to form the new government and what happens after that is up to parliament,” he added.

The forum was organised by the Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research and moderated by its director Ibrahim Suffian.

The panellists were Mohammad Redzuan, Senior visiting fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Professor James Chin and head of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak's Political and International Relations Department Dr Faisal Hazis.

Mohammad Redzuan said Umno’s biggest political achievement was the formation of the BN.

“So in our practice of politics, that has been happening for the past 50 years. Umno has managed to form the biggest coalition and the Opposition failed to form a coalition among themselves except in 2008 where they managed to form Pakatan Rakyat.

“But PR is still fighting with each other for seats and I think BN will be the biggest winner as far as seats is concerned,” he said.

He pointed out that performance does not dictate success at the ballot box but there were other factors which determine who wins or loses.

“In the practice of democracy in Malaysia, the election of a party or leader is not based on performance. If you look at what happens in the United States, United Kingdom, France or elsewhere, you know that whether a leader will win or lose is based on their performance but not in Malaysia.

“Like in Sarawak, (Tan Sri Abdul) Taib Mahmud is hated by many people but still wins,” he said.

Mohammad Redzuan cited another example, referring to events in 1999 when the reformasi movement exploded and anti-BN sentiment was at a tipping point.

“The election was called on the last possible date of November 29, 1999. If (Tun) Dr Mahathir (Mohamad) had not called that date as the polling day, he would have needed to call the election in March 2000.

“What would have happened in 2000? The Election Commission would have had to gazette 650,000 new voters. If that happened then we believed that 2000 would have been the end for the BN government because at that time the anti-BN sentiment was very strong. The failure to gazette 650,000 voters enabled BN to continue bein in power in 1999,” he said.

Mohammad Redzuan referred to another such situation in which PAS lost Terengganu to Umno in 2004.

“In 1999, PAS managed to win the state of Terengganu but in 2004, PAS lost very badly. If you looked at the number of voters, there was an average of 88 per cent turnout.

“I would like to refer to an example of the practice of democracy (for comparison). In Turkey, for anyone aged 18 and above, it is made compulsory to vote. If you don’t vote, you will go to jail, but yet they only managed to get 83% (turnout), but Malaysia Boleh, (Terengganu had) 88%,” he said.

He also believed that the reason why PR performed well in the 2008 election was because the then prime minister Tun Ahmad Abdullah Badawi extended the campaigning period to 13 days.

“To Umno, the biggest sin of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was to allow campaigning to go on for 13 days. The political tsunami started Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. They lost the two-third majority in the last four days,” he said.

Chin opined that it was impossible to have a free and fair election in Malaysian and that the country has never had such an election since 1955.

“The reason why I do not want to make a prediction on who will win the election is because all the statistical modelling doesn’t work especially when 28% of the voters in Selangor can’t be tracked.

“If we assume that this is a nationwide trend and that is some states the percentage may go up to 43% then the answer is pretty obvious,” he said.

However, Ibrahim believed that the election was still wide open because there 65 parliamentary seats that could “change hands with a movement of under three per cent.”

“A lot of factors depend on two things; it depends on how many per cent of young voters and first time voters turn up to vote... and number two is the out-of-town voters, where we estimate somewhere around 10 to 15% of voters live in a different state than where they vote,” he said.