In Kedah, BN ditches hudud for education, graft fight to win over Chinese

ALOR SETAR, April 28 — The Barisan Nasional (BN) has switched its election focus to boosting vernacular education and tackling corruption in a bid to win Chinese support in PAS-led Kedah, after the community chose not to bite the hudud bait.

The strict Islamic penal code that provides for amputation of limbs for crimes such as theft no longer scares the Chinese in the northern state five years after living with an Islamist government, prompting the BN coalition to ditch its fear-mongering tactic for development issues instead.

“In Kedah, how many Chinese schools did the state government build and how much did allocation did they give? The federal government gave a lot, only last year it was RM500 million,” caretaker Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin (picture, second right) said before a 1,500-strong crowd last night at the private Keat Hwa secondary school here.

But the BN deputy chairman appeared defensive about his coalition’s efforts in battling corruption while on the stump ahead of the May 5 polls.

“On the corruption issue, the opposition makes all sorts of accusations to bad mouth the government even though we have made all sorts of improvements to the MACC,” he said, referring to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission by its acronym.

Throughout his speech, the second-most powerful man in the 13-party BN did not raise the spectre of hudud, unlike in other states and its controlled mainstrean media where the religious law has been used as campaign fodder to draw support, even though the PAS-PKR-DAP federal opposition pact has consciously left it out of their joint election manifesto.

“Hudud? I am confident it will never be implemented because Malaysia is a democratic country,” Lai Hon Kheong told The Malaysian Insider when met at the BN event.

Lai, however, expressed disappointment with the state government for the lack of business opportunities.

“Projects? All projects are the federal government’s. If we were to count on PAS’s projects, we would be beggars,” he said.

Another Chinese, who wished only to be known as Ooi, said that for the past five years PAS had run the state, there had been no major changes and Kedahans did not feel there was any growth.

“What has PAS done? They did not do anything in five years... this time, we give to the BN so they can make it better,” said the teacher.

Alluding to Muhyiddin’s earlier speech, he said the state government had handed out aid to Chinese vernacular schools only once throughout its five-year term.

While the Chinese form the minority in Kedah, the voter group, which are concentrated in the Alor Setar state capital and towns like Sungai Petani and Kulim-Bandar Baru, contribute significantly to the state’s economy.

The Chinese were said to be the biggest demographic group that voted against the BN and led to coalition’s greatest losses in Election 2008. Ahead of the 13th general election, they are also seen to be solidly backing the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) federal opposition pact nationwide.

But according to Kedahan Lai, this may not be so as times have changed and the Chinese want different things now, namely for the government to be stricter with corruption, seen as a widespread and deep-rooted problem that has been sucking dry public funds.

“In 2008, it was because of Pak Lah and the increase in oil price. Because of that the Chinese community rejected BN,” he said, referring to the then-Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi by his moniker.

“Even though this time they seem strong, the government must also settle and not close the real big corruption cases just like that,” he said.

Kedah had fallen to PAS, which won 16 out of 36 state seats in Election 2008, and six out of the 15 parliamentary seats there.