Harakah Online Preview: PAS, you need to find your way back fast!

ANALYSIS

5435! 5435 from 2333, an increase of 133% in majority votes. Yes, I hope PAS was humbled by that number, and this loss is worst than UMNO's loss in Permatang Pasir (4551 votes).

Honestly PAS, don't you feel sad? After spending over 50 years in Malaysia being attacked by UMNO/BN day-in-day-out as the extremist Islamic party; to being able to overcome that perception on March 2008; only to lose it all 19 months later in Bagan Pinang? You were supposed to be on your way to replace UMNO as the biggest party in Malaysia. Have you asked yourself, what has gone so wrong?

1. Stop the blaming game. Take it as it is, and find the answers from within

Don't blame the voters.
Don't try to blame it Tan Sri Isa's popularity either.

The fact that you lost with a bigger majority to a tainted candidate like him, regardless whether Bagan Pinang was his stronghold or not, there must be something VERY wrong about you.

Why did 75% voters in Bagan Pinang voted against you? Ok, perhaps you wanted to say they had 4600 postal votes in hand. Fine, let's take out the 4600 votes then. Yet you still lost by 3413 votes to 2,578 votes.

So, don�t even try to pin it on postal votes as well.

Image But the question remains, why did 57% of ground voters in Bagan Pinang voted against you across all races?

How come voters in Bagan Pinang viewed PAS's candidate in such low quality, that he was not even given the chance to beat Rohaizat's (the disbarred lawyer) score? To voters, by hook or by crook, whether it was a crook or a hook, they had to choose one before 5pm, and PAS certainly failed miserably to provide them with enough reasons to at least show some support for PAS's candidate.

So, what went wrong? Was it due to a campaign strategy gone wrong? Or was it due to the dented image of PAS caused by controversial statements from its own leaders?

2. Campaign strategy of exposing Isa Samad�s bad records.

Attacking Isa Samad's past record as a MB was a very unintelligent move. Come on lar, for 22 years he was the MB, there must be so much that he had done right, compared to his wrongs, right? If his money politics scandal did not deter people from nominating him, what makes you think people will hate him for his past failed projects? Even for a very successful corporate leader, there must be some broken projects under his belt along the way.

You cannot underestimate the number of voters in Bagan Pinang that Isa Samad had helped directly and indirectly during his tenure as MB. Your actions of exposing Isa's failed projects as a MB would certainly piss them off and set off a chain reaction of disgust.

Mind you, 22 years was a very long tenure, even the baby that was born on Isa's 1st year as a MB has turned into a eligible voter in Bagan Pinang today! Most of the people grew up into eligible voters under Tan Sri Isa�s leadership.

PAS�s campaign strategists forgot about those young voters who benefited from MB Isa while their parents were struggling to send them to schools or universities in the past 22 years.

Image How would those parents of these young voters feel when they see PAS puts up so many posters about Isa Samad's past which to them, were not comparable to the good deeds he had done as a MB? I believe they would have told their children (the young voters) something like this: "PAS was no where to be seen when your father or mother was struggling to feed you. MB Isa helped us before. Don't vote for PAS because they had smeared Isa's name as MB."

Instead of attacking Isa�s past, PAS should have adopt the psychology attack strategy in wooing the young ones in Bagan Pinang by increasing their political awareness. By playing the sentiments over Isa�s candicacy against their morale barometer and religion beliefs would have driven more young voters over to PAS.

The young voters (in the age of internet) were way easier to convince compared to their parents. Once we were able to convince the young ones, they could have go back and shared with their parents about the country's future if they were to vote for BN. They could have convinced their parents that a vote for BN is a vote to endorse their corruption practice and their super lousy way of governing the country. They could have set off a chain reaction to make people accept PAS and PR as the better party for Malaysia.

This wrong strategy by PAS had drove an extra 1,551 votes to BN instead of reducing the majority. There's a valuable lesson to be learnt here by PAS's think-tank and election strategists.

3. Confusing Signals from PAS

Fortunately for PAS, you need not to look far, as the answers were staring right in your face. The answers were so clear that there's something wrong with PAS when Zulkefly Omar could not answer these questions (below) posted by TheNutGraph (on 7 Oct 2009 http://www.thenutgraph.com/zulkefly-omars-dilemma):

a. What is his stand on concert banning, as called for by central PAS Youth against both Danish soft-rock band Michael Learns to Rock and US R&B diva Beyonce Knowles.? b. What is his stand on the open sale of alcohol? c. What is his position on the whipping sentence dropped on Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarnor?

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