Wednesday’s General Election was a crushing defeat for Prime Minister Najib Razak’s Barisan Nasional (BN) in more ways than one, as many states fell to the opposition and ministers lost their seats.

Assistant Professor Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman, coordinator of the Malaysia Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, had in the past week said in a TODAY commentary that the Terengganu state was “competitive for the opposition parties” owing to the ruling coalition’s narrow majority of two seats in the state assembly, divisions within Umno Terengganu, and the unpopularity of its chief minister Ahmad Razif Abdul Rahman.

With a number of old faces from Umno standing for election, young voters were also unable to relate to “recycled candidates” who did not understand their aspirations, he added.