JOHOR BARU – “We are closing the gap to DAP.
“The difference then and now is significant and MCA won’t give up moving forward in the future,” said MCA president Datuk Seri Wee Ka Siong during a press conference today.
The Ayer Hitam MP was referring to the Barisan Nasional’s (BN) landslide supermajority victory in the Johor polls which concluded yesterday.
Some pundits have already dubbed the state election as a “reverse tsunami”, in comparison to the political tsunami that favoured Pakatan Harapan (PH) and its previous incarnation Pakatan Rakyat (PR) since the 2008 general election up till the 2018 one.
In the Johor contest, MCA managed to nab four seats, all with more than 50% of the votes, claimed Wee.
Furthermore, three out of the four seats (Yong Peng, Pekan Nanas and Bekok) were wrested from DAP incumbents who had successfully held their constituencies in the past two elections.
Yong Peng, for instance, was held by DAP’s Chew Peck Choo since 2013 and, in the last general election, the incumbent defended it with 12,307 votes.
This time around, Wee pointed out that MCA’s Ling Tian Soon overthrew his rival with 9,870 votes and a comfortable majority of 2,471 votes.
“If we total all the votes, MCA won more than 50% of the ballots in Yong Peng. So even if the opposition votes were totalled, we will still win.
“This seat also has a majority Chinese population,” Wee told reporters in Trove Hotel, Johor Baru.
Similarly, in Pekan Nanas, MCA managed to seize the constituency from DAP’s Yeo Tung Siong who held the seat for two terms.
In 2018, Yeo won the seat with 11,856 votes but this time, MCA’s Tan Eng Meng booted the DAP man after garnering 11,024 votes with a 4,835-majority.
In Bekok as well, MCA candidate Tan Chong won more than 50% of the vote and a comfortable 3,569-majority.
Paloh was the only seat out of the four that MCA had lost in the 2018 elections where they stood as the incumbent.
He added that half of this constituency comprised of Malays, and MCA’s Lee Ting Han won it with a 3,176 majority.
For the other ten seats where MCA lost, Wee claims that his party made progress chipping away some of the votes from the opposition.
He added that even in urban seats, previously DAP strongholds, the opposition only won with a smaller majority.
One example Wee gave was the state seat of Perling, previously won by DAP’s Cheo Yee How with 32,592 of the votes in 2018. – The Vibes, March 13, 2022
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