KUALA LUMPUR - In the wake of the Democrats’ sweep of Congress at the US midterm elections, Malaysian politicians lost no time in drawing favourable comparisons to their own advantage.
“We started the blue wave in Negeri Sembilan. America copied us,” Malaysia’s Opposition Leader Hamzah Zainudin said in jest on Nov 5.
The term “blue wave” has been used by local media to describe the strong performance of the Barisan Nasional (BN) and Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalitions at the Negeri Sembilan state election on Aug 1.
“They used (the midterms) as a way to rebuke the government, that what it was doing was not benefiting the people,” Hamzah, president of the Wawasan party under PN, told a press conference.
“If that was a tsunami, then God willing, the wave in Negeri Sembilan will be carried into Melaka... and become another major wave across the country.”
The US Democratic Party’s victory in both chambers of Congress - the Senate and House of Representatives - at the Nov 3 midterm elections has also been hailed by US media as a “blue tsunami”.
The metaphor is a familiar one in Malaysia: at the 2013 General Election (GE), when Chinese voters switched their support to the Opposition, it was dubbed the “Chinese tsunami”; when PAS made inroads into new territory at the 2022 GE…
