In the 2018 General Elections, the people of Malaysia went out in force and gave Pakatan Harapan a massive 113 parliamentary seats, and together with Warisan from Sabah, Pakatan Harapan formed the next Federal Government with a total of 121 seats. Barisan Nasional suffered its worst defeat by losing its hold on the Federal Government for the first time. Image source: Bloomberg / Yahoo Finance.
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Just another day to go before the whole country goes for voting and the country may see a new government by Monday. What are the odds that Pakatan Harapan gaining enough seats in Parliament and become the Federal Government again, this time with Anwar Ibrahim as the Prime Minister?
Reflecting GE14 Position
To be frank, Pakatan Harapan was not expected to win the 2018 general elections as it was thought to be rather impossible to go against the massive Barisan Nasional election machinery. And yet, with the help of an ex-Prime Minister who still had massive support from the Malays and the anger against the abuse of powers under Najib Razak and the revelations of the 1MDB scandal, Pakatan Harapan managed to pull the impossible.
| Peninsular Malaysia | Sabah & Labuan | Sarawak | Total | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Component | Seats | Voters | Seats | Voters | Seats | Voters | Seats | Voters |
| BN | 38 | 2,673,405 | 3 | 141,208 | 41 | 2,814,613 | ||
| GTA | 4 | 321,197 | 4 | 321,197 | ||||
| IND | 1 | 105,952 | 2 | 79,159 | 3 | 185,111 | ||
| MUDA | 1 | 68,925 | 1 | 68,925 | ||||
| PBM | 4 | 574,792 | 1 | 100,256 | 1 | 34,850 | 6 | 709,898 |
| PH | 77 | 9,736,258 | 6 | 405,715 | 7 | 669,368 | 90 | 10,811,341 |
| PN | 38 | 3,849,156 | 1 | 44,531 | 39 | 3,893,687 | ||
| VACANT | 2 | 167,008 | 1 | 43,916 | 3 | 210,924 | ||
| GRS | 8 | 516,742 | 8 | 516,742 | ||||
| WARISAN | 7 | 526,034 | 7 | 526,034 | ||||
| GPS | 19 | 1,069,423 | 19 | 1,069,423 | ||||
| PSB | 1 | 45,743 | 1 | 45,743 | ||||
| TOTAL | 165 | 17,496,693 | 26 | 1,733,871 | 31 | 1,943,074 | 222 | 21,173,638 |
This table is updated with the latest changes in the political party after the so-called Sheraton Move which saw a number of renegades from Pakatan Harapan jumping out to join PAS to create a new political coalition called Perikatan Nasional (PN) and they in turn joined BN to form the next Federal Government with an unimpressive Cabinet that saw the country going through 2 massive disasters – the COVID19 pandemic and the major nationwide floods.
These backdoor plots caused a major reduction of 23 seats from 113 seats in 2018 to 90 seats as of 2022 for Pakatan Harapan. Even so, Pakatan Harapan was still holding the largest number of seats in Parliament as of date but because BN has joined PN together with other BN-friendly political parties from Sabah & Sarawak, Pakatan Harapan Federal Government fell.
In summary, the Federal Government that is running the country is not the government that the people voted for in the 2018 general elections.
Kind of interesting that there is even a prediction from the US Embassy on who will lead in the upcoming general elections and they find that Pakatan will lead the overall wins between the 3 main political coalitions. Understandably pro-Pakatan Harapan Invoke and Penang Institute predicated even higher number of seats. Image source: Twitter
Online GE15 Predictions
To be frank, despite losing control of the Federal Government and Dr. Mahathir resigning as the PM, Pakatan Harapan did not come back to take charge of things effectively. They lacked the will to effectively engage the new voters and continued to make themselves relevant by admitting past mistakes and showing how they will do things differently if they are re-elected back in the next general elections.
That was the case until Rafizi Ramli re-joined PKR and started to rebrand, introduce the Ayuh Malaysia & Kita Boleh campaigns and regroup Pakatan Harapan into a force to reckon with. There were other changes as well namely in DAP which saw Anthony Loke who did a spectacular job as the Transport Minister taking up the position of DAP’s secretary-general.
For the upcoming general elections, there have been several predictions made by both local and foreign think tanks. Generally, Pakatan Harapan is expected to still maintain its lead in the number of seats in parliament but it is not enough to have a simple majority of 112 seats.
In a worst-case scenario, Pakatan Harapan is expected to get 84 seats in the elections which means a short of 28 seats to reach the simple majority. In the best-case scenario, Pakatan Harapan may get as high as 108 seats which means a short of just 4 seats.
So far based on the good response & support given to Pakatan Harapan on social media and their political gatherings for the elections, there is no doubt that Pakatan Harapan will likely win the highest number of parliamentary seats in the 2022 general elections. The big question is what is the shortfall of seats that it will need to meet the minimum simple majority.
The last thing that the country needs is the return of the BN-PN pacts that brought the end of the Pakatan Harapan government in 2020 and the instability in the governance with the Prime Minister changing twice with a bloated line of Ministers. Image source: Malay Mail
Final Say
Assuming that the voters are happy with their respective Members of Parliament, Pakatan will be able to secure at least 90 parliamentary seats in the 2022 general elections of which 77 seats are expected to come from Peninsular Malaysia and the rest from Sabah & Sarawak.
If Pakatan is able to maintain the same 90 parliamentary seats, this will make things difficult for Pakatan Harapan as they will need to join forces with others to make the simple majority of 112 seats. The question is who is willing to join Pakatan Harapan considering there is no way for Pakatan to join BN or PN. That leaves others namely GRS from Sabah and GPS from Sarawak.
Barisan Nasional (BN) is confident of forming a stable government after the 15th general election (GE15) with the cooperation of Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS), said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob.
Ismail Sabri said GPS MPs had shown they were prepared to be with BN MPs in the opposition after GE14 and joined the government formed by BN in 2020.
Touching on his previous statement regarding the confidence that BN will win GE15, Ismail Sabri said that even if the victory is based on a simple majority, the government will remain stable due to the enforcement of the anti-party hopping law.
(Source: The Borneo Post)
It looks like it will be tough to expect GRS and GPS to be politically friendly to Pakatan Harapan as they are known to be BN-friendly even before the 2018 general elections. For this, there is no choice for Pakatan Harapan to get the minimum 112 seats within the Peninsular itself before they open up to any other interested political parties in Sabah & Sarawak for further co-operations.
Unfortunately, Pakatan Harapan has no other choice for the time being.