Malaysia’s General Election 2013: Kelantan voters’ continued rejection of Barisan Nasional

The General Election 2013 (GE-13) saw the continued rejection of the UMNO-BN by the people of the northeastern state of Kelantan and the continued ushering of the Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) for the 6th consecutive term. Based on field interviews of selected party political leaders in Kelantan and secondary sources of information this study found three success factors of the PAS : (1) the charismatic leadership of the supreme religious leader Tok Guru Nik Abdul Aziz; (2) the failure of the UMNO-BN’s ‘Gelombang Merah’ campaign to convince local voters to swith to an UMNO-BN government; and (3) solid support of the Kelantan’s urban voters for PAS. In other words the two-party competition in Kelantan was decided more by religious spirit and loyalty as the majority of the Kelantanese are Muslim. Thus, such socio-economic issues as racism, rising costs of living, water supply and land issues did not affect the overall outcome of the elections. Although the results of the 2013 elections did reflect to some extent the latent desire of the Kelantanese for a change in government the strength of the PAS religious leadership rendered it still able to prevail in this state.