Bersama Fights in Melaka: Is Winning Realistic?

This is a podcast from BFM 89.9, the business station. The Morning Brief is brought to you by CIMB, Private Wealth. It is 7.47 am here on the morning run. I'm Rich Bradbury with Roshencannison and Frankie Lim. Let's bring things back home for a little while, because our Party Brasama Malaysia is contesting. Sixteen of the twenty-eight seats in the Malacca Poles, the Party has outlined a six-point manifesto focusing on economic growth, public welfare and environmental protection, including a long-term plan to address rising sea levels. As we learned before Budget 2027, Colleagues and Founders at the three Rafa Ziramli proposed reintroducing the GSD at 5%, which it would be rather than here, because the idea would be to return part of that revenue to state governments to strengthen their own finances. So are these proposals enough to convince voters particularly with Brasama being a relatively new party? So to discuss this further, we are joined in the studio by Ibrahim Sani, the official spokesperson of Party Brasama Malaysia. Good morning, Ibrahim. Now, Brasama is fielding 16 candidates across Malacca's 28th-state seats, and making it the third largest party by number of candidates after Pakatan Harapan and BN. What is Brasama hoping to achieve in this election? I think the idea here is to introduce the brand to the people of Malacca and then extend it to the rest of Malaysia. If you think about it, if you want to flip a state or a country, say, for instance, Penang or Pelantan, you don't flip a state the year that you want to flip it. You have to use yourself 10 years, even 15 years, before you want to flip it. So that's the main reason why we enter a place like Malacca or Ibrahim Sani, because the idea here is always in the long run and for us to do so, we have to do it today. Ibrahim, you know, Brasama is still a relatively new party. What sets it apart from Pakatan Harapan and BN. And why should voters give it a chance now or in the future? We did something crazy, which is to be bold and say that we don't want to partner with anybody. Even like minded parties like Muder and PSM. So the idea here is that we ran a thesis arguing that the Malaysian population is bored and perhaps even fed up with the various coalitions and electoral packs. And what sets us apart is that if you vote for Bersama, there is an extremely low possibility of you getting somebody else along with us. So that's the main distinction between voting for Bersama versus voting for the other party. Ibrahim, we can focus then on Malacca. Tell us a little bit about how the campaign is progressing there and what are the key concerns you are all finding in terms of your engagement with voters across the state. The engagement with Malacca with Bersama is extremely different from the engagements that the other parties are doing. We've been in Malacca for the past three months. We were pseudo campaigning for the past two months. And throughout the whole process, the reaction has been quite interesting. For one, there is little to no animosity amongst the population with the brand, largely because they don't know us. So it's very likely that they just want to understand what we're up to and what we are standing for. The second reaction is that they believe that they agree with our stand, but they might not necessarily be convinced that we are strong enough to govern. And the biggest argument that we hear on the ground is that we like you, but you're not ready to govern just yet. So that is the main takeaway from our involvement in Malacca for the past three months. With Bersama contesting against Pakatan Harapan in seats like IACoro and Puget Cartel, how do you address concerns that your participation could split the opposition vote and potentially benefit Bersama National? This is an interesting take, because if you argue it in this sense, then we are also doing the same for all the other seats that we are contesting against Bersama National. For instance, quite a room pod. We are contesting against Puget Cartel National. For instance, in seats like Kuala Linghi, where the Bersama National folks that might be less stronger than the candidate of Pakatan Harapan. So generally speaking, we are not necessarily framing our arguments or our attack on Pakatan Harapan. We are against most other parties. For instance, in IKRO, where we are against Bersatu and Grakhan. Pagalan Batu, Bersatu, DAP, and Amno. So the idea here is that we are giving voters a choice to understand where we stand. And it's not just us taking away Pakatan votes. We are taking away everybody else's votes. That's the game of the game right now. Do you think Ibrahim, that there are any particular constituencies where the party believes that you might have a realistic chance of making some kind of breakthrough? Yes, we do have some targeted areas. For instance, in Bemban, where Pakatan Harapan and Amno is not contesting, and the candidate is Dr. Saleh. The Big Brother of Dr. Akmal Saleh. That's an area of interest. Another area that we are looking at is Buket Cartel, where we are against the former Chief Minister from Pakatan Harapan. And the candidate, Dottaliza, is an extremely strong candidate being a robotics, PhD holder, and so on. There's also another area of interest, like places like Cassidang, where we have a medical doctor as a candidate, Dr. Brian. He is up against the AP former X-code, one of those that walked away from the state government recently. So these areas, and a few others, might prove to be interesting findings for us, electorally speaking. And I don't know whether we can convert them and turn them into wins, but it's enough for us to show to the people of Malakas, as well as Malaysia, that if you campaign long enough, and you introduce your candidates long enough, you should be able to get a little bit more popular vote as initially thought. And the idea here is to ensure that the people know the candidates way longer than, say, two weeks or three weeks campaigning period that we normally have. Now, going back to what you were talking about earlier, Ibrahim, about the long term nature of building a party like this, for this particular election, realistically, what would success look like for Brasamah? Not losing a deposit. Yeah, that was the idea for Joho. Clearly that was not, I guess, it didn't transpire. For us, if any of the 16 seats managed to not lose their deposits, that's a big win for us. Now, Brasamah's six-point manifesto focuses on financial sustainability, public welfare, and environmental protection. It also proposes a locating at least 30% of the state government's expenditure to programs that directly benefit the people. How will you ensure these promises are financially sustainable? Okay, if you look at the problem statement, the spending is three times faster than the revenue. We need to arrest the speed of spending by about two times. Now, that is extremely hard. People think that cutting costs is the easy part, it's not. Because some of the costs are already budgeted for and already baked into the state budget. So that is the main concern for us if we do take over Melaka. But an area of interest that we are possibly thinking of where we can actually have a lot more control is increasing the revenue, the state revenue. And this includes development order controls, property developers getting a rest of blanket approvals, joint partnerships between public and private projects, projects and a lot more feasibility studies including environmental impact analysis, social impact analysis, so that we know that any of the developments that we do in a state like Melaka can be done with a long-term view. We know that environmental concerns are a big problem for the country but more so in Melaka. But if we do this correctly and if we go for quick wins, like making Melaka the number one healthcare provider of the country for medical tourism. Right now it's third place. It's not that far if you want to bring it to first place. You want to think about it. saya akan membuat kemudian. so that it can at least overcome the breed. of spending that the state faces. Ibrahim, we've got a couple of minutes left. but let's address one of the elephants in the room. Nick Nazmi is Khalewat controversy. Raise questions about the party's leadership. and potential credibility. How much of a setback has this been. for Bersama's Malakia campaign? And how do you address voters' concerns about the party's leadership. and integrity? This is a great test for the party. kerana banyak daripada kata-kata yang telah bergantung di sini adalah Rafisi Ninknizmi Setup. Tapi sekali kita mempunyai syarikat yang Ninknizmi harus berkata-kata-kata untuk 3 bulan, so that he can walk through the legal proceedings that is required for him to go through this issue currently. A lot more leaders started stepping up. Ini juga ada seperti Wang Chen dan Chen Chung. Kita melihat di setiap hari, di AAP, di setiap hari, mengembangkan kembali di Berhasa-Berhasa. Kita melihat beberapa orang yang bergantung di jalan-jalan, untuk mempunyai mobilisasi. Jadi, ia bergantungan untuk memberi memberi memberi, bahawa ini adalah setiap hari, dan kita melihatkan kembali. Kita berguna dengan baik. Saya rasa ia terima kasih untuk kita berguna. Mereka ada banyak banyak di dalam berjaya. Kemudian, untuk berguna dengan saya. Ibrahim, terima kasih banyak untuk menjaga ini. Itu adalah Ibrahim, ada di dalam berjaya. Di perjalanan berjaya. Di sini, di BFM 89.9. Hari ini berguna berguna dengan CIMB, Privat Wealth, Mereka akan mempunyai dengan kecemasan dan percayaan dan percayaan untuk mencari.