We’re tempted to say Pakatan Harapan must be used to this feeling by now. After all, the government’s loss in Tg Piai on Saturday is its fourth by-election defeat on the trot; there’ve been nine by-elections since the last GE.

But this one, you see, is not just a loss. It’s an absolute pasting, one of the worst by-election defeats suffered by a sitting Malaysian government. But first, the numbers. The turnout was quite healthy for a by-election, with 74.5% of voters showing up at the polls. The Barisan candidate, MCA’s Wee Jeck Seng, romped to victory over Pakatan’s Karmaine Sardini, winning 25,466 votes to Karmaine’s 10,380. 

Wee, a two-time fomer MP for Tg Piai, was the candidate in the last GE, when he lost to Bersatu’s Dr Md Farid Md Rafik (whose death triggered this by-election) by a razor-thing 524-vote margin. But here’s what’s amazing – so dramatic has been Wee’s turnaround, that his 15,086-vote majority this time was even greater than his majority in his victorious 2008 and 2013 general election campaigns. In addition to that, Pakatan lost in EVERY SINGLE ONE of the 27 polling districts in Tg Piai; they’d won 11 in the last GE.

Barisan has been quick to announce that their victory is a sign they’ve won back the Chinese community, while some Pakatan politicians have been as quick to play down the results and to blame it on fake news. The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle. Yes, politics and political rhetoric – fake or true – always plays a part.

But it’s undeniable that Chinese voters in Tg Piai spurned the government at the ballot booth. This great piece by Malaysiakini shows just how dramatic the Chinese turnaround has been – in areas with more than 80% Chinese voters, the reduction in support for Pakatan was between 27% and 38%.

Let’s not forget that all this happened despite Pakatan throwing money at voters left, right and centre in the run-up to the by-elections and bringing out the big guns on the campaign trail. Even a personal letter from Dr Mahathir Mohamad didn’t help stave off what has become his worst-ever by-election showing as PM. 

Why did this all happen? Well, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Bersatu’s gradual swing to the right, never-ending issues around race and religion, problems with the Unified Examination Certificate and the introduction of Jawi/khat, and broken election promises, just to name a few, have not been received kindly by the electorate. Top that off with Bersatu’s constant attacks on DAP, as well as the perception that DAP is not fighting hard enough for the Chinese, and this perfect storm is what you get.

PM wannabe Anwar Ibrahim says the whole debacle comes as a shock to the government. But they need to get over their shock and course correct before the protest vote in Tg Piai becomes something larger in the next elections. Pakatan needs to soul search and fix the issues – most of them self-inflicted – that have led to this. And perhaps the most important question it needs to ask itself is this: Is Dr Mahathir still the right man to helm the government, or has he lost the public?

The saddest thing is that nobody – aside from Barisan and its supporters – wanted this. GE14 was supposed to have been a new dawn for Malaysia. It wasn’t and Pakatan is paying the price now.