By Saiful Azhar Abdullah29 November 2000

THE Lunas state by-election was undoubtedly one of the most keenly contested by-elections between the Barisan Nasional and the opposition. Finally, the opposition's hard campaigning helped it capture the seat, denying the BN of its two-thirds majority in Kedah State Assembly.

Indeed, the opposition, in particular Parti Keadilan Nasional has inflicted Barisan a blow given that Lunas has been traditionally a BN seat.Certainly, the race was gripping towards the end. For many observers, they saw it (opposition's win) coming.

The morale-boosting victory increases the opposition's seats to 13, 12 of which are held by Pas, in the 36-seat Assembly.

Keadilan supreme council member Saifuddin Nasution Ismail who garnered 10,511 votes was named the winner when vote-counting finished at Dewan Serbaguna Kilang Lama in Kulim at 9.03pm last night.

He won by a majority of 530 votes. BN's S.Anthonysamy obtained 9,981 votes. Independent candidate, N. Letchumanan, contesting for the second time as an independent candidate, managed only 50 votes.

It was Saifuddin's first victory in an election. Last year, he was trounced by BN's Lim Bee Kau for the Padang Serai Parliamentary Seat.>From the beginning of the campaign period, it had seemed to many observers that BN was set to suffer one of its rare and humiliating defeats in a by-election.

It was not just another defeat, they said, but a humiliating one with the Opposition denying the BN State Government a two-thirds majority in the State Assembly.

But the BN never felt so. Most of its leaders were confident it could, in the worst possible scenario, scrape through.

In the last general election, the Opposition, Pas to be specific, came close to that by winning 12 of the 36 State seats in Kedah.

In fact, denying the BN the two-thirds majority was one of the Opposition's slogans in the course of the Opposition's campaign in this by-election.BN won convincingly in 1995 when Dr Joe Fernandez first contested the seat, winning it with a 7,236-vote majority.

In last year's election, the majority was further reduced to 4,700. But observers believed that the actual vote majority that BN had garnered would have been much lower.

Even the Umno top brass believed that BN had won the seat with just 2,455 votes last year because the 2,158 votes which went to Independent candidate Ibrahim Md Rashdi, they believed, were actually protest votes from hardcore Pas supporters who could not accept a DAP candidate.

The constituency has 12,102 Malay voters which make up 45.2 per cent of the total number of voters, 9,212 Chinese voters (34.4 per cent), 5,413 Indian voters (20.2 per cent) and 19 voters categorised as other races (0.07 per cent).

But the 1999 general election result for the Lunas seat was a cause for concern for the BN. It won in all 19 polling districts.

But in certain districts, especially the so-called Malay heartland, it was a different story that was worrying the BN.

One of the closest were the Kampung Baru Lunas polling district, a DAP stronghold, which gave the BN only a two-vote advantage.

In Sungai Seluang, BN won by 467 votes against 399 votes by the DAP while in Naga Lilit, the BN received 374 votes against DAP's 321 votes.

BN had earlier expected for the DAP to field their candidate in the by-election. But the final choice of Keadilan's Saifuddin almost threw the BN off balance.

From day one to day three of the campaign period, BN's chances were said to be 60-40 in its favour merely because of the squabbles between the opposition.

Campaigning saw the vigorous exploitation of race and religious issues. The Opposition, getting the help from some Chinese associations, swarmed the Chinese voters with the Vision schools issue, and the Malays with sensitive religious issues such as stories of Muslims being converted to Christianity.

The odds were reduced to 55-45, still in favour of the BN, and it went down further to 50-50. Possibly, the scale tipped towards the opposition when the DAP decided to re-enter the battleground on Monday when DAP secretary-general Kerk Kim Hock announced the party's decision.

On Monday, DAP chairman Lim Kit Siang joined other opposition leaders at a huge gathering at Keadilan's strongest fort at Taman Selasih.

A last-minute attempt by BN to clear the air could have come a little too late. State Religious Affairs Department president Sheikh Yahya Jusoh told reporters at a mosque in Alor Star that there was no fatwa preventing Muslims from voting for a non-Muslim candidate, countering the Opposition house-to-house campaign calling on the Muslims to reject Anthonysamy.Analysts believed that the BN machinery allowed the issues to spread and its counter attack was too slow.

The opposition might have won the seat but the battle is not over. The by-election result demonstrates a promise from the opposition to take the fight on in Kedah to the next general election.

This must be one of the worst heartbreaking moments for the BN. It appears that obsolete election strategies still work but not as effectively as it used to be.

The voters have begun to dictate the pace of an election, swaying the votes from one end to another.

The BN will have to start preparing for election from now. Their leaders must understand issues and come up with strong defences before it's a little too late.

The Kedah BN can now expect a tough time in the State Assembly.