New Reality Voters Will Determine 13 General Election Outcome - Saifuddin

SHAH ALAM, Dec 13 (Bernama) -- Umno supreme council member Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah has opined that the kingmakers in the 13th general election would be the group of "new reality voters".

Saifuddin, who is also Deputy Higher Education Minister, claimed neither the Barisan Nasional (BN) or Pakatan Rakyat comprising the DAP, PAS dan Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) had enough support to form the next government and were equally dependent on the group to give them the score.

In special a discourse entitled "PRU 13 Undi Siapa Jadi Penentu" (13GE - Whose votes will determine the outcome?) here today, he said the "new reality voters" comprised groups that used the new media not only to communicate, share and operate online but adopted it as a lifestyle.

"They form a loose network among themselves, yet are close-knitted, producing ideas or reasoning, and acting without concerns for bureaucracy," he said as a panellist at the discourse organised by the Sinar Harian newspaper.

Saifuddin said the "new reality voters" were also aware that politics and democracy go beyond elections or becoming a people's representative for the BN or Pakatan Rakyat and they wanted the involvement of the youth, workforce including professionals, media and university students in the process they perceived as democratic.

The lone BN panelist, and facing an audience of mostly opposition party supporters in the auditorium, Saifuddin maintained that BN still stood a good chance of winning the next general election.

He said from feedback, those who voted in protest against the BN in 2008 had "returned to the fold".

"I feel a majority of them have accepted that the BN is committed and serious in wanting to make changes, via government, economic and political transformation as initiated by the Prime Minister (Datuk Seri Mohd Najib Tun Razak)," he said.

The other panellists were DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng, PKR vice president Nurul Izzah Anwar, KITA party chief Datuk Zaid Ibrahim and senior lecturer at Universiti Malaya's Media and Social Science Studies Faculty, Associate Prof Dr Abu Hassan Hasbullah.

International Islamic University, Malaysia's Humanities and Revelation-based Knowledge Kulliyah Lecturer Dr Maszlee Malik acted as the moderator.

Lim said for Pakatan Rakyat, winning depended on their control of parliamentary seats in Sabah (25 constituencies) and Sarawak (31 constituencies).