Southern tsunami for Pakatan at GE13, says PAS

KUALA LUMPUR, May 31 — Pakatan Rakyat (PR) will win big in Umno bastions in Johor, Negri Sembilan and Malacca at the next national polls, PAS predicts, saying the next political “tsunami” will be in the southern states.

“In the next GE, I see a tsunami coming from the south where support, especially in Johor, is growing, not like previously where we lost our deposits,” Datuk Mustafa Ali (picture), secretary-general of the opposition bloc’s Islamist party, told Sinar Harian in an interview published today.

“We are confident of a tsunami in the south because the northern tsunami is dry, is saturated,” the Malay-language daily reported him as saying.

PAS, the DAP and PKR swept to victory in five states in Election 2008, snatching control of economic powerhouses Selangor and Penang from Barisan Nasional (BN) besides winning Perak and Kedah while retaining Kelantan, which has been in PAS hands since 1990.

The three parties formed the PR pact to rival the ruling coalition soon after the northern political tsunami.
All in, the three federal opposition parties took 84 seats out of 222 in Parliament, effectively denying the BN its two-thirds hold for the first time since 1969.

Mustafa also told Sinar Harian that PR would be able to retain its hold on all the states it won in the election four years ago.

“PR is confident of winning Perak, Terengganu, Negri Sembilan, Johor, Malacca and increase support for PR in other states,” Sinar Harian quoted him as saying even though the ruling coalition reclaimed Perak in early 2009 after three PR state lawmakers turned independent.

The 13th general election must be called by March next year when the BN’s mandate expires but talk is rife that Prime Mister Datuk Seri Najib Razak will call for early polls in the next few months.

Hit by a series of corruption allegations against several ministers and businessmen linked to top-level politicians in the 13-member coalition, BN’s control of Putrajaya is being severely tested for the first time since coming to power in 1957.