Sin Chew Daily

There have been talks a snap election is on the drawing board. The three Perikatan Nasional parties have officially started negotiating over seat allocation for the coming general elections.

PPBM led by prime minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin contested a total of 52 parliamentary seats in the last GE, 46 of which overlapping with seats contested by its new allies Umno and PAS.

Muhyiddin came into power through the "Sheraton Move" and is now enjoying enviable approval rating thanks to his sterling performance in containing the coronavirus outbreak in the country.

Even if Umno and PAS were to eventually form an alliance with PPBM, the two parties have said it was only for strategic needs. As such, it will take much more than Muhyiddin's popularity for his party to become a dominant force in the new alliance.

Umno has not only formed a "Muafakat Nasional" alliance with PAS, it still retains its BN ties with MCA, MIC and PBS. In either alliance, Umno still has the largest number of seats and will very naturally want to assume a dominant role in the next GE.

Umno has made it very clear that it will defend all its traditional seats and will not give in to any other party. In short, Umno is flushing with confidence it will eventually win the most Malay votes, on its own!

It won't be a big issue for Umno and its Muafakat partner PAS to negotiate seat allocation. As for the other BN parties, save for their winnable traditional seats, they may have to look to the outcome of the negotiation among Umno, PAS and PPBM to secure additional seats to contest.

PPBM's situation is the toughest. In the 2018 elections, the party contested 52 seats under the PKR banner and won 13. Its number of seats later doubled to 26 after Mahathir successfully got Umno MPs to jump ship.

After the February coup, PPBM split into two camps. Currently MPs supporting PM Muhyiddin plus the pro-Azmin reps total 31, while six pro-Mahathir reps have been sacked from the party. Such a situation makes it very difficult for Muhyiddin to negotiate at least 50 seats for GE15.

PPBM's future will be bleak and it will be reduced to a minor partner in the PN coalition if the party cannot secure comparable number of seats as Umno and PAS. If this happens, Muhyiddin may lose his PM office and this will further restrict his party's development potentials. PPBM could become irrelevant if the party does not even perform up to expectation in GE15!

The toughest problem Muhyiddin is facing now is seat allocation talks with PN parties. If Perikatan Nasional gets officially registered, all the parties will contest under the same common logo, and the success in striking a consensus with Umno and PAS in this matter should help stabilize internal support within PPBM, in particular the pro-Azmin faction. If this becomes a reality, Muhyiddin will very soon seek to dissolve the Parliament to pave way for a snap poll which will very likely return the PN government while posing an insumountable menace to the remarkably weakened Pakatan Harapan.

Cooperation among the three parties is poised to redraw the country's political map. Similarly, if their negotiation hits a snag, and BN, PAS and PPBM decide to go separate ways, a different model of political collaboration may emerge. Muhyiddin will have to seek new allies and the country's political map will, once again, be redrawn.