D-Day arrives for Merlimau voters

Both BN and Pakatan Rakyat have wrapped up their ceramahs and now await the outcome

MALACCA: Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin wrapped up the last day of campaigning for the Barisan Nasional (BN) with a final pitch for the votes of the Merlimau constituents.

PAS, joined by its Pakatan Rakyat allies PKR and DAP, went all over the place with a final pep talk to try and turn the BN tide.

In the eight days of intense campaigning, both rival parties battered each other and chased each other to get the 10,500-odd voters to elect one of their candidates as their state assemblyman.

BN went into the arena confident of retaining the seat while PAS is nurturing a forlorn hope of unseating BN or least trimming down its majority.

BN puts its hope in its candidate Roslan Ahmad, a local who is the Jasin Umno committee member, while PAS picks Yuhaizad Abdullah, who is not a voter in Merlimau but a local boy.

From the very beginning, the voters have up their minds that BN would retain the seat but PAS, being an old rival of Umno, the backbone of the ruling coalition, would not want the seat to be given away free.

Although PAS waded in without “heavy artillery”, the Islamist party wants to show it is still around and can deliver powerful punches at his rival.

The last eight days saw federal leaders swarming Merlimau, with Chief Minister Mohd Ali Rustam leading the charge.

Chipping in are several pro-BN NGOs which have been actively organising events to lure voters away from the Pakatan trio.

Wrong candidate

Bread-and-butter issues were the main concerns of the Merlimau folk and Mohd Ali was on hand to get things sorted out promptly.

For PAS, lack of issues, shortage of funds and fielding the wrong candidate have put the party at a distinct disadvantage.

The party’s election machinery fell apart half way through the campaign, with several operation centres left unmanned.

PKR and DAP brought up national issues but the voters were clearly not paying much attention to the speakers in their nightly ceramahs.

Although PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim drew some 1,000 people to his ceramah, the audience was more interested in what he had to say about his ongoing sodomy case.

There is gloom in the Pakatan camp as campaigners realised with a sinking feeling that defeat is almost certain. All they were able to do on the final day was making a round of the polling stations to take a last headcount.

Tonight the ceramah guns fall silent as the rival parties concentrate on “locking up voters” – standing by them, consoling them and giving them last-minute help, all in the hope that they would not forget whom to vote for.

Campaigning ends at 12 midnight. Tomorrow campaigners will have a very busy ferrying voters to their respective polling stations. - FMT