BN parrots 'Ubah' in Pakatan's only Johor foothold

GE 13 WATCH JOHOR In the last general election, Bakri was the only one of the 26 parliamentary seats in Johor that the BN failed to retain.

For Pakatan Rakyat, this was its foothold in the southern state to show that the ruling coalition does not have total dominance.

Facing an onslaught across Johor from an emboldened opposition this time around, BN aims to squeeze out its opponent. Pakatan's DAP won the Bakri seat with a this 722-vote margin in 2008.

Last Friday night, MCA's heavyweights, including president Dr Chua Soi Lek and Youth chief Wee Ka Siong descended on the constituency to prop up their candidate, Lee Ching Yong (left), against the DAP incumbent Er Teck Hwa.

"You need to elect someone who can work and speak well and this is what our candidate can do, not someone who gets his secretary to prepare speeches that he reads out in Parliament, and still, I can't understand what he is saying," Wee, the incumbent Ayer Hitam MP, said of Er.

Er is a Chinese-educated DAP grassroots member who was propelled onto national politics when he beat all odds to win the Bakri parliamentary seat.

Having never put on a suit in his life before this, the former plastic bag distributor and insurance agent struggled with the Malay language in Parliament, but eventually gained respect from even his BN opponents for his energetic efforts as MP, even going for tuition in the national language.

Er (left) has also earned the respect of the party's top leadership as they fended off any possibility of a seat swap with PKR, which was sought by its Johor chief and former Bakri former MP Chua Jui Meng, and retained Er there.

The DAP will be able to further solidify its position there if it is successful in reaching out to the urban Malays there, who are already open to the opposition.

"Er may not have any higher education qualifications, but he has proven himself capable by raising several issues in Parliament," Johor DAP chief Dr Boo Cheng Hau said.

Lawyer versus the accidental politician
MCA hopes to outshine DAP's candidate by fielding 37-year-old Lee, a lawyer by training. Lee lost his bid for the Bentayan state seat, under the Bakri parliamentary constituency, in 2008. The other two state seats are Sungai Abong and Bukit Naning.

Lee who continued to work in the constituency since the last general election, has been groomed to take on Er, and every aspect of his campaign has been carefully crafted by the MCA.

His packed schedule was prepared by ally Umno with Lee scheduled to meet various stakeholders, including civil servants, General Operations Force officers and men and hospital workers, besides the usual walkabouts and ceramah sessions.

While eloquent in presenting the party's message, Lee appears to be shielded by his party and is reluctant in expressing his personal views.

Malaysiakini approached Lee on two occasions on how he planned to take on his opponent and the young politician could only manage "work hard" and "refer to my manifesto" as his responses.

MCA president Chua has no qualms about putting pressure on Lee, declaring to a half-filled ceramah crowd of some 600 people on Wednesday night that if Lee could not win this time round, he would retire from politics.

Therefor, Chua said, the people should choose wisely. They should "Ubah" in Bakri.

Stronger anti-establishment sentiments
However, Lee faces an uphill challenge as the Chinese community's anti-establishment sentiments in Bakri appear to be stronger. Muar town, which is separated by the Bakri and Muar parliamentary constituencies, is the most urbanised region in northern Johor.

The voters under Bakri comprises 44 percent Malays, 53 percent Chinese and two percent Indians.

DAP bagged up to 70 percent of votes from Chinese Malaysians here in the last general election and this is expected to go up, possibly up to 80 percent or more.

Furthermore, Bakri is only one of two parliamentary constituencies is northern Johor that does not have a Felda settlement, considered traditional BN vote banks. The other parliamentary seat is Muar.

The Malay demograpy in the region is substantially urban and semi-urban, particularly within the state constituency of Sungai Abong which is contested by PAS.

The incumbent Dr Sheikh Ibrahim Salleh (right), who won the Sungai Abong seat with a 1,550-vote majority, is a popular person and is likely to fend off the challenge from BN's Dr Haris Salleh in an area where increasingly, issues of corruption and welfare supersede parochial concerns.

There, in polling districts such as Jalan Haji Abdullah where Malays make up almost 70 percent of the population, PAS was able to capture 52 percent of the votes.

However, in the same polling district, DAP was only able to capture 40 percent of the votes for its parliamentary seat and the number of spoilt votes was four times higher than in the state seat that was contested by PAS.

This means that those who supported PAS at the state level in 2008 were reluctant to also cast their votes for DAP at the parliamentary level, with many resorting to spoiling their parliamentary votes.

Wooing the urban Malays
Therefore, the DAP has to also overcome its "anti-Malay" and "anti-Islam" label if the opposition-inclined Malay voters to back the Chinese-majority party for it to be able to cement its hold on Bakri.

"Because of the Pakatan Rakyat entity, I believe we will be able to increase our Malay votes," said Er, adding that he hopes DAP can garner up to 30 percent of the support from Malay voters.

Acknowledging the limited time available to convince Malay voters during walkabouts, Er and his PAS allies have resorted to distributing newsletters in the hope of getting their message across.

While race still plays a factor, the parliamentary constituency of Bakri and its state seats are increasing becoming an urban -versus-rural divide, except for Bukit Naning, which is still dominated by traditional villages and also plays host to a General Operations Force (GOF) camp.

Besides his reaching out, PKR's Bukit Naning candidate Abdul Aziz Muhammad is also banking on BN's infighting there to wrest the seat from the ruling coalition.

In this state seat, sacked Umno member Md Ghazali Salamun has entered the fray to battle as a third party against the official BN candidate, Saipolbahari Suib. BN won the seat with a 2,895-vote majority in 2008.

DAP is likely to retain the state seat of Bentayan, which has a 74 percent Chinese population, against MCA challenger lawyer Fong Poh Lan. Described by MCA describes as its very own "cili padi" Fong shares the same surname and middle name as outspoken former DAP Batu Gajah MP Fong Poh Kuan.

Overall, the Bakri parliamentary seat is likely to remain with Pakatan, based on the growing anti-establishment sentiment among the Chinese community.

The DAP will be able to further solidify its position there if it is successful in reaching out to the urban Malays there, who are already open to the opposition.