BARISAN Nasional cannot assume that past electoral victories will guarantee future success, its Melaka chairman Datuk Seri Ab Rauf Yusoh has warned, pointing to the coalition’s defeat in Alor Gajah despite winning several state seats in the parliamentary constituency.
His remarks come as BN prepares for the Melaka state election on November 14, with the expansion of the electorate through Undi18 and automatic voter registration presenting parties with a different electoral landscape.
Ab Rauf said the party had to rethink how it identified and engaged voters instead of relying on methods that had worked in previous elections.
“In the past, we could register voters, collect their names and keep them in our basket. We would know that if we contested here, we could win,” he said.
That certainty had diminished with automatic voter registration, which brought more Malaysians into the electorate, including young people aged 18 and above and older citizens who had never voted before.
Ab Rauf said the party could no longer be certain of the preferences of voters who had entered the electoral roll automatically.
He cited Alor Gajah as a case in point. BN won the Gadek, Asahan and Machap Jaya state seats in the constituency at the 2022 general election but failed to secure the parliamentary seat.
The result, he said, should prompt the coalition to examine why its performance at state level had not translated into a parliamentary victory.
“I do not see the Alor Gajah machinery as weak. I see it as capable, but we have to ask why we lost,” he said.
BN won 21 of Melaka’s 28 state seats in the November 2021 election, giving it a comfortable majority to form the state government. But the result did not translate into comparable success at the parliamentary level in the general election a year later.
For Ab Rauf, that gap is a reason for the party to reassess its strengths and weaknesses before the next state contest, rather than assume that a strong grassroots machinery alone will be enough to secure victory.
He also warned that internal divisions could undermine BN’s chances, particularly if members allowed personal ambitions or dissatisfaction over candidate selection to take precedence over the coalition’s interests.
Members, he said, must accept the leadership’s choice of candidates and work together regardless of who is selected to contest.
“The party must win, not individuals,” he said, urging members to close ranks ahead of the election.
He said BN could not afford another defeat and called on its machinery to remain united throughout the campaign. – October 23, 2026