GE13: Parties singing and dancing to the tunes of Indians

By A. LETCHUMANAN
letchu@thestar.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR: The Indian community is being “wooed” like never before with catchy Tamil songs, pamphlets as well as concerts to vote for either Barisan Nasional or Pakatan Rakyat.

For the first time, brochures in Tamil are being distributed in large numbers by candidates on either side of the political divide.

At least a dozen songs in support of Barisan have been uploaded on YouTube, while Pakatan has come up with five, using music from popular Tamil movies such as Kolaveri and Kumki.

Pakatan has also produced a 30-minute drama, Vidyal (Awakening) that features a wayward youth who ends up in prison and reforms after a meeting with Pakatan leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

MIC Youth cultural bureau committee chairman Vijay Emergency said this was the first time that such a large number of songs and videos in Tamil were being used for a general election.

“We have organised Barisan Nasional My Choice concerts throughout the country for the past year and the response has been tremendous,” he said.

Both Barisan and Pakatan are vying for Indian votes in nearly 60 of the 222 parliamentary seats, where the community makes up between 10% and 30% of the voters.

Indians make up about 950,000 of the 13.3 million eligible voters for the May 5 general election.

The importance of Indian votes has been reinforced with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak admitting their significance and value.

Universiti Sains Malaysia political scientist Sivamurugan Pandian said Indians who had voted for the Opposition in 2008 were expected to return to Barisan because of Najib's “feel good” factor.

“Many Indians are appreciative of Najib's efforts to provide assistance to the community which has been lagging behind,” he said.

Sivamurugan said a positive indicator for Barisan was that Indian voters had returned to the coalition, based on voting trends in the 16 by-elections held since 2008.

He said MIC, which is contesting in nine parliamentary seats, might retain the four seats that it now held.

Merdeka Centre executive director Ibrahim Suffian said Indians would be a key demographic ethnic group for both Barisan and Pakatan.

“But Barisan should not take the Indian vote for granted,” he was quoted as saying by an online news portal.

Ibrahim said fielding Perkasa vice-president Zulkifli Noordin as the parliamentary candidate in Shah Alam could hurt the feelings of the community.

Zulkifli had courted protest over remarks made in a video clip that Indians saw as an insult to the Hindu religion.

He had since apologised, blaming it on his past association with former colleagues in Pakatan.

Najib, who is also the Barisan chairman defended Zulkifli's candidacy, saying the lawyer had championed Indian issues such as the construction of a Tamil school and a Hindu temple in the mainly middle-class Selangor state capital.

Although Zulkifli's candidacy outraged many, including MIC vice-president Datuk M. Saravanan, the Shah Alam MIC division said that it had accepted his apology and would support him.