Support for PR in Selangor rebounds to 43%

KUALA LUMPUR — The Pakatan Rakyat’s (PR) support in Selangor has rebounded to 43 per cent, a recent survey showed, after taking a beating five months ago largely due to infighting in the opposition coalition.

Support for the Barisan Nasional (BN) party, meanwhile, dropped by five percentage points from 25 per cent last May, the survey conducted by Universiti Malaya’s Centre for Democracy and Elections (UMcedel) showed.

The survey, which was carried out three days after the new Selangor Chief Minister, Azmin Ali, was sworn in, also found that 28 per cent were unsure about both coalitions.

The results for the PR were an improvement over UMcedel’s survey in May this year, which saw support for the coalition in the state plunge to 35 per cent a year after winning Selangor in last year’s general election.

But ominously for the BN, its support base has not grown since the survey in May, which showed that only 20 per cent to 25 per cent of respondents supported the coalition.

“This shows that despite PR’s crisis, the rakyat is still with them. The voters’ response shows that they are still not confident that BN/UMNO can be a better alternative and that their anger towards BN has still not died down,” said a source in UMcedel.

UMcedel’s latest survey, conducted from Sept 26 to 28, also revealed that 48 per cent of those polled said they wanted the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) to remain in PR while only 19 per cent wanted the PAS to break away and another 22 per cent were unsure.

The survey polled 1,165 respondents in all 22 parliamentary constituencies in Selangor, covering all races.

The internal turmoil in the PR began after the People’s Justice Party (PKR) initiated its Kajang Move, which saw Kajang assemblyman, Mr Liew Chin Cheh, step down to allow the PKR’s de facto leader, Mr Anwar Ibrahim, to contest the seat and become Selangor Chief Minister.

However, the PAS did not agree with the move as it wanted Mr Khalid Ibrahim to remain the Chief Minister, causing the episode to drag on for nine months, during which time the ties between the three parties worsened.

Although the Selangor impasse was finally came to an end with the swearing-in of Mr Azmin as the Chief Minister on Sept 23, the tension within the PAS did not subside. Things came to a head in the party when its president, Mr Abdul Hadi Awang, ordered those who wished to challenge his position to leave the party.

“Whoever wants to become an imam, you are better off looking for another piece of land, build your own mosque and become an imam,” he had said during the PAS annual general assembly last month.

In the same speech, he had claimed that there were “brokers” and “stooges” in his party, in a reference to the two PAS Selangor assemblymen who had pledged support to PKR president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail as the new Chief Minister ahead of the party’s decision on the matter.