PUTRAJAYA: PPBM president Muhyiddin Yassin claims that time has proven his party made the right decision in restricting full membership to Bumiputeras alone.
Speaking at a forum at the Perdana Leadership Foundation yesterday, he said he had no doubt that PPBM had attracted a lot of Malay support for Pakatan Harapan, adding that this vindicated it for the much criticised decision to implement a membership system that bars non-Bumiputera members from voting or contesting in party elections.
“It is a strategy that has worked,” he said. “We now see Malays coming out in droves to support PPBM and ultimately to support Pakatan.”
He claimed that this had made Umno feel threatened and was the reason that Prime Minister Najib Razak tabled “such a populist budget”.
Explaining how the founding members of PPBM came to the decision to adopt the unique membership system, he said:
“In GE13, Pakatan Rakyat managed to win 52% of the popular vote while Barisan Nasional retained power even with only 48% of the popular vote because of how the constituencies were structured.
“In the early discussions between the founding members we looked at this and we saw that Pakatan Rakyat won the popular vote because of the major support they got from the Chinese and the Indians. There was no Malay tsunami.
“Bersatu (PPBM) surmised that the reason for this was the fear Umno had instilled among the Malays from years ago that the only party that would take care of them was Umno.”
Muhyiddin also said it was ridiculous to think that Malays would suffer in the event of a Pakatan Harapan victory in the coming general election.
“The majority of Pakatan Harapan members are Malays,” he said, adding that the DAP was too small a party to influence decisions on the set-up of a Pakatan federal government, even if it wanted to.
“In GE13, DAP contested about 50 seats,” he pointed out. “In order to win GE14, we need at least 112 seats.
“It’s impossible that Lim Kit Siang will become the next prime minister. The prime minister will be a Malay Muslim.”-FMT NEWS-
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