KUALA LUMPUR – Pakatan Harapan (PH) is overplaying the issue of flooding as a desperate attempt to hold off the election to buy time for the coalition to recapture diminishing support from the Malays, according to Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.
The Umno president said this is the main motivation behind the opposition’s persistence to delay the dissolution of Parliament, worrying that the election result will not be in its favour.
“The opposition’s actual concern is when Malay voters, who represent the country’s largest population, are less interested in supporting the coalition.
“PH is nearing a dead end and has no other choice but to require more time. In other words, PH is trying to buy time to delay the calling of the general election,” he said in a statement today.
Zahid was commenting on a news report claiming that negotiations among senior PH leaders have ended in an impasse, with PKR deputy president Rafizi Ramli insistent not to pursue the big tent idea despite recent surveys pointing to negligible support from the Malays.
The article claimed that this has resulted in the coalition having no choice but to try for more time, and that leaders were supposedly told to play up on issues of inflation and the annual flooding to put a brake on the rumoured dissolution of Parliament next month.
It also quoted a source as saying that researchers conducted by think tanks on voters’ sentiment showed that Malay support for PH is at the lower, and that the coalition would not get more than 15% of votes from the group in the next election.
Zahid said it is particularly baffling that the meetings involving party leaders had neither raised the issue of flood nor strategies to assist the rakyat during the monsoon season.
“They also did not table any strategies to resolve inflation. Instead, the opposition is more interested in coming up with strategies to win the general election rather than looking for solutions in the respective constituencies.
“This shows the opposition’s true colours. What’s perplexing is there are those in Umno who are still deceived by their propaganda. Or perhaps they have their own personal motivation to delay the election.”
The Bagan Datuk MP added that he would elaborate further on the opposition’s myths and propaganda in the near future. – The Vibes, September 27, 2022
