WALKING ON THIN ICE

by Raja Petra Kamarudin, MalaysiaToday

".....Barisan Nasional has 140 Members of Parliament, 79 of them Malays and 61 non-Malays. Pakatan Rakyat, in turn, has 43 Malay Members of Parliament against 39 non-Malays. This means both Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat are ‘Malay-majority’ coalitions.

But what happens when 30 non-Malay Barisan Nasional Members of Parliament cross over to Pakatan Rakyat? This would still give Barisan Nasional 79 Malays but it will be reduced to 31 non-Malays. This would make Barisan Nasional even more Malay than it is now. But Pakatan Rakyat would now have only 43 Malays against 69 non-Malays. So, while Barisan Nasional has become even more ‘Malay’, Pakatan Rakyat would become a ‘non-Malay’ coalition. And this would also mean that a ‘non-Malay’ government now runs this country once Pakatan Rakyat, with its 112 Members of Parliament, forms the federal government.

This is what concerns the Malays, the Rulers included. And their concern is not that the Malays have ‘lost political power’ and that the non-Malays have now ‘taken over’ this country. Their concern is that Umno will use this issue to ‘prove’ to the nationalist Malays that, finally, the Malays have lost political power, as they had been saying all along since the 8 March 2008 general election in their many road-shows the length and breadth of this country....." Read more