SUNGAI PETANI, Aug 5 — There is an increase in the support from Malay voters in Kedah and Kelantan for Pakatan Harapan (PH) and Barisan Nasional (BN) just a week after campaigning for the state elections began.
Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) deputy president Rafizi Ramli said that in the first seven days of campaigning, Malay support for the Unity Government alliance in Kedah had increased by seven per cent on average and he claimed that, so far, they have eight seats in hand.
“If we continue the momentum from the first week, I am not saying we will win but, as heralded by Perikatan Nasional (PN) that they will win big up to 36-0 (in Kedah), I can’t see it happening. It’s far more intense than that,” he told reporters after the ‘Jelajah MADANI Sungai Petani’ programme here today.
Rafizi said a similar situation is happening in Kelantan, where support for UMNO has reached 46 per cent in the first week of campaigning while support for PH has seen risen from 10 per cent to 35 per cent.
“This means that within six months, Malay support in Kelantan for PH has tripled and is almost the same as Malay support in Kedah. All this time that PH contested in Kelantan, it lost its deposits.
“So, would it be enough for us to exceed 50 per cent, I feel that there are seats which BN is contesting that can exceed 50 per cent. There is also one seat which I think PH could win. And there are seats that were previously PAS strongholds that even if we lose, it will be by a margin of about 10 per cent only,” he said.
Besides these two states, Rafizi said that based on the campaign momentum and also from the findings of weekly surveys, PH is currently leading and should win comfortably in Penang, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan.
As such, he said PN’s claims that the Unity Government won’t get the support of Malay voters are not true at all.
