Waiting to gobble up Selangor

In BN's mission to regain Selangor, three major factors are used as weapons. They can be classified as the 3Ws: water, welfare and waste.

COMMENT

The Selangor State Legislative Assembly will be automatically dissolved on April 22.

This has lent some credence to the rumours that polling for the 13th general election will be held in April, adding fuel to fire that Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak had the April month in mind since the beginning of this year as he had planned to get back Selangor after the general election.

Polling in the month of April will thus prevent the Pakatan Rakyat Selangor state government from going for separate polls.

With the Selangor electoral roll being the dirtiest in the whole of Malaysia, the tremendous advantage certainly belongs to Barisan Nasional.

Recently, Selangor Menteri Besar Khalid Ibrahim, who holds the state seat of Ijok, located in the parliamentary seat of Kuala Selangor (held by PAS MP, Dzulkefly Ahmad), has highlighted some facts in regard to the discrepancy in the electoral roll.

Khalid brought to light that in Bestari Jaya Utara in Ijok, the population stands at 1,788 but the number of voters is 3,589.

“It certainly does not make any sense that voters can outnumber the population who will surely include those below the voting age of 21 and those who are not even registered voters,” said Khalid, who is also the Bandar Tun Razak MP.

PAS Shah Alam MP, Khalid Samad, said that Najib always avoid issues concerning the electoral roll.

“I am of the view that the Election Commission [EC] will be used by BN as the main weapon to stay in power. All the efforts spearheaded by the Pakatan Selangor government in collaboration with Bersih to clean up the electoral roll have been ignored by the EC and the BN federal government is also silent on this matter,” said Khalid.

This shows that the EC could not be bothered whether the electoral roll is clean and accurate or not.

“The EC is acting in BN’s interests and this is wrong. I wish to remind the chairman and deputy chairman of the EC not to be the enemy of the state,” added Khalid.

BN’s Machiavellian politics wherein the end justifies the means is only all too obvious.

In Perak, BN stole the Silver State using the frog service and in Selangor it will be the phantom and alien factors.

Foreign workers as voters

“Currently, the BN federal government is bringing in more Bangladeshi workers. This is because the Bangladeshis who have obtained their Malaysian citizenship can be relied upon to vote for the incumbent government because they know nothing about the Malaysian political scenario.

“[On the other hand], the Indonesians who have stayed here a long time sometimes may prefer to vote for the opposition as they know that price increase in goods will affect their income,” said a PKR strategist who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding that PKR grassroots workers had obtained this information from survey conducted among the Indonesians.

Therefore this simply means that the prime minister is being economical on the truth. He talks about “moderation, model democracy, noble values” and so on and so forth, but his words are empty and meaningless because at the back of it all, he intends to strangle and kill off Pakatan by using or rather misusing the government’s heavy machinery.

Najib’s special project has always been to get back Selangor after having successfully regained Perak through diabolical means.

And in BN’s mission to regain Selangor, three major factors are used as weapons. They can be classified as the 3Ws and they are: water, welfare and waste.

The thrust of BN’s attack is to show that the Pakatan state government has failed to manage all three.

One would have noticed that since last year, more and more people have been coming forward to sue the Pakatan state government by claiming that they have not been given this aid and that aid despite being promised by the state government.

All these litigation matters can give a bad impression of the Selangor state government thereby showing that Pakatan has failed to manage the state well and, in the process, causing many Selangor residents to be neglected.

Najib himself has always harped on the same storyline: Pakatan has failed to keep its promises especially in Selangor.

In the meantime, BN’s component parties are also in the midst of appropriating land for themselves. These shenanigans in Selangor have been exposed by DAP’s Petaling Jaya Utara MP, Tony Pua, and DAP’s state assemblyman for Sekinchan, Ng Suee Lim.

This irresponsible move by BN’s people will impoverish the state of Selangor while, at the same time, enriching the well-connected and elite cronies.

While the land-grab is continuing in Selangor, the vote-grab is running simultaneously as the electoral roll is being dirtied in order for BN to stay in power.

That Selangor is firmly in BN’s grasp is a foregone conclusion. But there is only one avenue open to all the right-thinking rakyat and that is none other than to monitor all the roads leading to all the polling centres on voting day and to stop all the foreigners from voting.

The battle is out there. Are Selangorians ready to defend the battleground?

Selena Tay is a DAP member and a FMT columnist.