Will The Malays And Indians Cooperate To Wrest Penang From Dap

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THE latest idea promoted by Perikatan Nasional (PN) is that if it can get the Malays and Indians together, it will be able to wrest Penang from DAP.
Mathematically, there is a merit to this idea. Ethnically, Penang is 42.57% Chinese, 41.40% Malay, 9.92% Indian and 6.12% other races.
Theoretically, this means that if the Malays and Indians in Penang rally under PN’s banner, 50.32 % of Penang’s population, or slightly more than half, would be on PN’s side.
If all of them rally behind PN, this will open a slim possibility that the coalition might be able to lead Penang.
If PN promises the Penang chief minister (CM) post to the Indians, it could also most likely sway the Indians to swing their support for PN.
Indians are already feeling disenchanted with Pakatan Harapan (PH) and DAP. We are also the only major race in Semenanjung who has never ruled a state. The promise of having a state where one of our own will be the Number One is an idea that will definitely be appealing to the Indians.
Even if Malays forfeit the CM post to the Indians, it will still technically be the Malays that will be calling the shots in Penang, on account of the fact that an Indian CM in Penang will be reliant on the support of the Malays to stay in power.
The Malays also technically lose nothing by forfeiting the CM post to the Indians, because the Malays had never had the CM post in Penang in the first place. You can’t lose what you never had.
If PN manages to wrest Penang on the other hand, PAS, the biggest party in PN, will be able to claim a supreme victory against its arch-nemesis, DAP. Penang is DAP’s main fort. If DAP loses Penang, it will crush DAP’s self-confidence.
Also, if PN manages to use the Penang campaign to cobble up a Malay-Indian alliance, it could use the Penang alliance to cobble up a Malay-Indian alliance all over the country.
In the 2022 general election, PN won 74 seats, just seven seats behind PH’s 81. If Indian support all over the country swings from PH to PN, in the next election, it might be PN that has 81 seats while PH might have to resign itself to just 74.
However, while the Malay-Indian cooperation seems promising on paper, there are plenty stumbling blocks that might prevent it from happening.
The first is the fact that the next election is three years away. This gives ample time for PH to counter offer whatever PN can offer the Indians, and PH’s counter offer will not only be more lucrative on account of PH being the ruling party, it will probably be also more appealing, on account of PH being more diverse and multicultural.
There are also no major Indian leaders in PN, which will make PN’s offer to give Indians a chance in Penang to not appear genuine.
The biggest Indian name in PN currently is the Malaysian Indian People’s Party (MIPP) president P. Punithan.
MIPP president P. PunithanTo be honest, nobody knows who P. Punithan is. Even I, who am very well versed in the politics of the country, had to Google MIPP and P. Punithan before I found their names.
To convince the Indians that they genuinely stand a chance to see one of their own as the Number One in Penang, PN will need to find a bigger Indian name to tout as the next Penang CM or quickly and heavily prop up Punithan within the next three years.
The third stumbling block for PN would be Gerakan, the third most prominent coalition partner in PN.
The only reason Gerakan is in PN is because it is hopeful that it will be able to return to its glory days when it ruled Penang for four decades, before it lost it to DAP in 2008.
If PN wants to wrest Penang from DAP, it will be Gerakan that will want to do the wresting. If it succeeds, it will also likely want its president Datuk Dr Dominic Lau to be installed as the Penang CM.
If it is Gerakan leading the charge in Penang and if all that the Indians in Penang have to choose from is either Gerakan or DAP, it is doubtful that they will see any reason to swing their support from PH to PN.
In conclusion, although the idea promoted by PN for an Indian-Malay cooperation to take over Penang has potentials, it also has a lot of pitfalls, and thus, PN will probably have to do a lot of tweaking and refining before the idea will have a chance to succeed in reality. 
Nehru Sathiamoorthy is a roving tutor who loves politics, philosophy and psychology.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of  MMKtT.
- Focus Malaysia.

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