PETALING JAYA: The Barisan Nasional may have won the Hulu Selangor parliamentary by-election but there is nothing to gloat, says DAP leader Lim Kit Siang.
He said the BN's 1,725-vote majority is a pyrrhic victory for Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak. “It is so devastatingly costly both in political and monetary terms that the (win) has laid the seeds for the forthcoming defeat of the BN,” he said in his blogsite.
In yesterday's election, BN managed to reclaim the seat when its candidate P Kamalanathan defeated PKR's Zaid Ibrahim.
Kamalanathan garnered 24,997 votes while Zaid polled 23,272.
Lim claimed that the BN had spent about RM60 million for various infrastructure projects and easily more than RM40 million for its campaigners.
He added that the expenditure also included the many rent-a-crowd outings for Najib.
(Even before nomination day, the government had rolled out instant projects to the tune of RM338,000 to upgrade drains to overcome floodings and pave roads.)
Lim said after the outpouring of “money politics”, the 1,725-vote majority is actually more a defeat than a victory for Najib and the BN.
With a RM100 million war chest and big guns headed by Najib leading the charge, he said BN thought it would not encounter any problem and would romp home by a landslide.
Even though PKR snatched the Hulu Selangor seat in the 2008 general election, Lim said Umno leaders regarded the win as a fluke.
“That was why Najib talked about the Hulu Selangore seat as being on 'loan' to PKR,” he said.
'MCA biggest loser'
Lim said that in 2008, the three BN candidates in the three state assembly seats -- Hulu Bernam, Batang Kali and Kuala Kubu Baru -- had polled a total majority of 6,176 votes. But in Hulu Selangor, the BN candidate G Palanivel lost the seat to the PKR man Zainal Abidin Ahmad by a wafer-thin majority of 198 votes.
Lim said Najib and his deputy Muhyiddin Yassin had calculated that they should be able to restore this 6,176-vote majority. “But the Hulu Selangor by-election results proved them wrong.”
In the event, Kamalanathan secured 24,997 votes, which was 1,267 votes less than the total of 26,264 votes collectively polled by the three winning BN state assembly candidates.
On the other hand, Lim said Zaid polled 23,272 votes yesterday, which was more than the vote polled by Zainal, that is, 23,177.
“Despite all the odds, Pakatan is making headway while BN is clearly losing ground. The future belongs to Pakatan,” Lim said.He also took a swipe at the MCA, saying the party was the biggest loser as it had failed the Hulu Selangor “test”.
He said that in the 2008 “political tsunami”, MCA secured some 37% of the Chinese votes cast in Hulu Selangor but this has fallen to 25% to 28% in yesterday's by-election.
Lim said the immediate question MCA has to answer is whether its ministers and deputy ministers would resign if Najib does not honour his Hulu Selangor by-election promise to issue a RM3 million cheque to build a new Rasa Chinese primary school.
(On the eve of the by-election, Najib made a campaign promise in Rasa to approve RM3 million to rebuild Rasa Chinese Primary School.
(The BN chairman said: “If we win this by-election, you can come to Kuala Lumpur the next day to look for me. I will write a personal letter to approve the money and it will be transferred to the school board’s account. If we lose, don’t have to come.”
But evidently the Rasa constituents did not buy the message. Lim commended the voters of Rasa for turning in a 82.4% support for Zaid.
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