It is time for everyone – Barisan Nasional, Pakatan Rakyat and the people – to take stock of what and how they have done.

SO the GE13 has come and gone. More importantly the results were distinct and clear as we have definite winners and it had also thrown out the sore losers.

There were obviously more sore losers than gracious ones in our national polls that saw more than 1,900 candidates vying for 222 parliamentary and 505 state assembly seats.

But this is politics where there are only reasons to win and none for losing.

Even every independent candidate who contested and lost his deposit does not think he deserved to lose.

The massive gathering at the MBPJ Stadium in Kelana Jaya on Wednesday night was impressive and the message was obvious – Pakatan Rakyat has substantial support and they are unhappy with the results.

The truth is, except for the DAP, everyone else is unhappy with how their party performed.

Of course, even before the results were announced, Pakatan leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was screaming election fraud – something he has been doing since 1997.

Yet at the same time, his DAP partners had huge smiles on their faces and laughter as they rejoiced in their wins at a press conference on Tuesday – 48 hours after the results were announced.

Pakatan strengthened its hold on the two massively important states of Selangor and Penang while Barisan recaptured Kedah.

It cannot be denied that Barisan did better in the Malay heartland while its opponent did very well in almost all urban seats.

While Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak set out to recapture Selangor and failed, Anwar too has failed to regain Perak.

I will not dwell and analyse the results or its authenticity (which I strongly believe to be accurate) but rather pose the question of where do we go from here.

The results are quite similar to the one in GE12. But does this mean that we have to live through another five years of meandering populist politics? Are we going to see the continued one-upmanship that Malaysia cannot afford?

Remember how the Penang Government started the welfare payment of RM100 to the old folk only to be upstaged by the Federal Government’s BR1M payments of RM500?

Hopefully, Lim Guan Eng and Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim (provided he is chosen to be the MB of Selangor) in their second term as the state government heads would desist from this kind of policies and concentrate on REAL policies like wealth and job creation.

I hope Lim will draw up long-term programmes to solve the rising cost of housing on the island and more importantly to lessen the ethnic and political divide between the mainland and the island. Barisan did not do any better from 1974 to 2008.

For Khalid, I hope that he will help the hundreds of thousands of urban poor in the state and not leave this responsibility to the Federal Government.

In return, I hope that Najib will ignore all of the populist policies his opponents throw at him and concentrate on his National Transformation Programmes which include the Political Transformation Programme and the NKRA of fighting corruption.

After all, corruption turned out to be a major rallying call of his opponents and dealing with the issue head-on would silence many of his critics.

But Najib and his component leaders will have to face their respective party grassroots later this year at their annual general meetings. It is also an election year for Umno, the MCA and Gerakan.

This I feel is the next test of the GE13 results. The MCA and Gerakan will be assured of a new party president as the incumbents will not seek re-election.

I am sure there will be a lot of soul-searching in these two parties during their AGMs as they ponder about their future and how they go about to rebuild and rebrand themselves.

However, all eyes will be on Umno and its party elections. The party will be using a new election process for the first time this year – it will be a direct election of the 40,000 branch delegates instead of just the over 2,200 divisional delegates in the past.

Najib had gotten the Umno constitution amended so as to do away with the warlord syndrome that has dogged the party for so long.

He also did away with the quota system – where anyone contesting for a post needed a certain number of nominations before he or she could fight for that position.

On one hand the direct election of the branches may make it difficult for anyone to try to oust a sitting president, but on the other, the no quota requirement will allow any Tom, Dick or Harry to challenge for the presidency.

Such a challenge after a bruising general election will surely be seen as a direct reaction of the GE13 results.

Will GE13 result in another 60 months of political uncertainty? If it comes to that, then Malaysia will suffer greatly.

The world is on the verge of a global economic recovery and we should be ready to catch the wave.

We should all accept the score and move on.

Executive editor Wong Sai Wan hopes that there will be no by-elections soon as he is too tired after 60 months of extreme politicking.

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