Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi did just that last Saturday. He and others in the ruling coalition believed their own propaganda, they smiled at their own press releases, and they duly submitted their necks to be wrung by an electorate only too anxious to throttle them.

The rout the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) suffered on Saturday was due to a number of factors, many of which are still unclear. But at the top of the list has to be the coalition's gross misreading of the electorate's mood.

Datuk Seri Abdullah and his senior colleagues had no idea they were unpopular. So the Prime Minister decided to call snap elections a full year before they were due, expecting to get a result not too different from the result he had gained four years ago.

Never in the history of Malaysian electoral politics have so few been so ignorant of the disillusionment of so many. And this ignorance went beyond their misreading of the electorate's mood.

They seemed ignorant too of the effect a number of government actions - from prohibiting Christians from using the word 'Allah' to snatching the bodies of dodgy converts for Muslim burial - were having on the nation's minorities.

They seemed unaware that Chinese and Indian Malaysians were no longer willing to accept sops - public holidays for Indian festivals, say - to reconcile them to economic and political deprivations.

And most crippling of all, they seemed unconscious that a significant segment of Malays were no longer convinced that their interests required them to stick like limpets to the ruling coalition.

The last - the abandonment of Umno by from a quarter of the Malay electorate in states like Penang, Perak and Selangor to more than half in Kedah and Kelantan - is what distinguishes this election from 1969, the last time the ruling coalition almost met its Waterloo. This represents a life-saving grace, one hopes.

There is no doubt, however, that the primary reason for the opposition's impressive performance was support from minorities. Analysts estimate that between 65 per cent and 80 per cent of Malaysian Chinese and Indians - who together make up 32.8 per cent of the country's population - may have voted for the opposition.

In most of the states where the opposition did particularly well, minorities constitute close to half or more than half of the electorate. In Penang, for instance, where the Democratic Action Party (DAP) and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) won more than two-thirds of the state seats, Chinese and Indians together form a majority of 57 per cent.

In Perak, minorities constitute 45 per cent of the state's population; in Selangor, 46 per cent; and in Kuala Lumpur, where BN won only one of the 11 parliamentary seats, 55 per cent.

Significantly, the PKR, whose impressive haul of 31 parliamentary seats has been hailed by its de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim as a 'new dawn for Malaysia' for having inaugurated multiracial politics, invariably scored its victories in seats where the proportion of minorities was above the national average.

The PKR's performance, like the DAP's, was based on solid support from minorities. A 5 per cent to 10 per cent swing of Malay voters in the opposition's favour compared to the 2004 polls was enough for BN to lose control of the most urbanised territories in the federation - Penang, Perak, Selangor and KL.

PAS' victories in Kelantan (95 per cent Malay), Kedah (77 per cent Malay) and elsewhere derived from a different dynamic. It won in areas where the proportion of Malays was well above the national average.

If PKR's victories reveal an erosion of Umno's support among urbanised, middle- class Malays, PAS' signify a more serious erosion among the Malay heartland. While the former threatens the ruling coalition's hold in the economically more advanced areas of the peninsula, the latter threatens its lifeline. It is not clear at all if Umno can devise a singular strategy to address both threats, for they are very different in nature.

The rise of PKR, together with the DAP, in the urbanised heartland of peninsula Malaysia does open an opportunity for multiracial politics, though Mr Anwar was probably over-egging the possibilities somewhat by calling it a 'new dawn'. If it chooses to respond to this challenge, Umno will have to moderate the Islamist rhetoric it has been pursuing over the past decade in an attempt to shore up its base, as well adopt more equitable policies to appeal to minorities.

The rise of PAS represents a more existential threat to Umno. Though the party put its Islamic state agenda on the backburner in this election, there is no doubting its Islamic appeal.

Umno cannot make a play for the same constituency without further jeopardising its hold in the urban centres; and it cannot pretend to be a better version of PKR without conceding more ground to PAS in the Malay hinterland.

No amount of propaganda is going to solve this problem for Umno or BN. It might try proper governance instead and focus on delivering the goods to all, regardless of race or religion. And that may be the only way it is going to avoid another 1969 - now or in the future.

janadas@sph.com.sg