2013 General Election: Winning More Votes, Yet Still Not Entering Putrajaya
Fifty-One Percent Opposition Votes, One Hundred and Thirty-Three Barisan Nasional Seats, and Forty-Four Seats in Selangor
On May 5, 2013, Malaysian voters delivered a seemingly contradictory answer.
Pakatan Rakyat secured approximately fifty-one percent of valid national votes.
Yet Barisan Nasional won 133 out of 222 seats, continuing to form the federal government. 1,2
It wasn't that the votes were counted wrongly.
It was because each constituency elected only one representative, and factors such as population size, concentration of support, and boundary delineations meant that national total votes did not translate proportionally into parliamentary seats. 2,3
Selangor Gave a Second Report Card#
On the same day, the answer in the Selangor state assembly was more direct.
DAP 15 seats, PAS 15 seats, PKR 14 seats, totaling 44 seats for Pakatan Rakyat; Barisan Nasional won 12 seats. Increasing from 36 seats five years ago to 44 seats, Pakatan Rakyat obtained a two-thirds majority in the state assembly for the first time. 4,3
This proved that 2008 was not a one-off protest vote. Having seen five years of state governance, voters still expanded the seats of the three parties.
But these 44 seats were not Khalid's personal 44 seats, nor were they Anwar's. The candidates, national issues, the grassroots of each party, and state achievements jointly shaped the result. 4,3
After the victory, the three parties ultimately submitted only Khalid's name together, and he was once again sworn in as Menteri Besar.
On the surface, the state government was more stable than five years ago.
In reality, the questions of who had the power to determine the Menteri Besar, how PKR evaluated Khalid internally, and whether Anwar should personally take over the state government, had already begun shifting beneath the victory.
In less than a year, a state assemblyman would resign, vacating the Kajang state seat.
This time, the act of giving way did not smoothly send Anwar into the assembly as Permatang Pauh did. Instead, it dragged all the deepest fissures within Pakatan Rakyat onto the main stage.
Next: "The Kajang Move: Why Manufacture a By-Election". When a coalition was at its strongest in Selangor, it decided to replace its own Menteri Besar first.
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