PAS's Black Ops to awake lethargic Kuala Besut

As usual, UMNO's campaign is boring, predictable and tame.

UMNO's pre-election psywar was on the right note when they managed to get PAS to appoint Dato Husam Musa as Election Director for PAS. By doing so, it brings out the local rivalry of being a Kelantanist district inside Terengganu.

Then, they slowed the pace down. Hardly much flag, no posters till last few days, and not much ceramah.With Ramadan and local constituencies are mostly farmers and fisherman, who would like to stay after Terawih prayers for a ceramah? 

PAS play it slow too. After all, there is hardly much local issues to play on for PAS. 

So they end up cooking up false allegations and using national level issues. The issues played up was so boring that there was back and forth over family support issue.

BN's Tengku Zaihan whose got a large family held a family gathering in which there was a pledge of support from the family.

PAS quickly rebutted by reforwarding an SMS purportedly of some family members pledge to support PAS candidate Che Long. At the same time, PAS had some old timers to rermind that Tengku Zaihan's grandfather was a PAS man.

Before going further, PAS claimed that Che Long was an UMNO member that left to join PAS. The reply to that was Che Long was an ungrateful Malay. He benefitted from UMNO and move on to PAS to secure contracts from Husam.

The answer to the PAS membership of Tengku Zaihan's grandfather was that his father is an UMNO activist. At the same time, videos came out to have testimonial of former PAS members praising UMNO. UMNO can't resist this overused ploy to claim 500 PAS members jump over to PAS.

Che Long story has another twist too. There is a claim that his grandfather was the man who set-up UMNO in Kuala Besut.

Subsequently, both sides had family members testifying to vote their family members or vote the opposing candidates.

That should gives a feel of how boring the campaign here in the midst of Ramadhan.

Anwar came to Kuala Besut after supposedly returning from Makkah. Or was it only to Jeddah?

In a public show of unity, Hadi was together on stage. Imagine how uncomfortable that is for Hadi who knows that Anwar actually boycotted him and has things up his sleeve and Anwar knew Hadi is trying to block PAS entry into Terengganu.

That night's audience was 50,000 as UMNO bloggers tried to tease PAS. It was merely 500 for a space prepared for 5,000. It was a let down.

Despite many PKR leaders are seen in Kuala Besut public by themselves or with PAS leaders, the underlying sentiment is tense between PKR and PAS. This culminated with three PKR potential candidates for last GE filing a lawsuit for unsinuating them as pil kuda distributors.   

The real pil kuda distributor, Rahman botak is not in the three. PKR's Election Director for Terengganu's Yahaya Zakaria start to give macho statement that PAS is afraid of their growing strength. Yeah ... sure.

Yahaya is Rahman botak's man.

Husam is also not saying put. He is not about to let all this bother him. Winning will raise his profile amongst PAS delegates for the next Muktamar as potential PAS President.

His black op has started today. Everything was employed in the last 24 hours - critical posters, flashmob, false SMS, false posters, mahasiswi campaigners, cybertroopers, false accusations, money politics and you name it what else not used.

Surely it had liven up the rather lethargic campaign.  

While UMNO is only doing personal touching, kissing babies from Wanita campaigners, motor boys bearing gifts and no ceramah, no risalah, and no hard play. Pok Yeh as they call Dato Idris Jusoh, run a tight ship that no picture get released by "his" cybertroopers without his clearance.

Kuala Besut is sensitive and aggressive campaigning will backfire, he claims. But PAS can do?

It looks old school but PAS can get away with murder. Not UMNO.

This afternoon PAS was giving away free petrol for all bikers. Corruption? No it is still acceptable and within EC regulation. Imagine if UMNO had done that like BR1M program for all.

Certainly that is a great ploy to get the youth support. Kuala Besut has a majority of 40 and below.

So far, there is no counter black out seen from UMNO side. But then again, maybe it is not necessary for poor Internet connection Kuala Besut.

So ... how will things stack up?

UMNO's last majority is slightly more than 2,000. One PAS blogger had predicted more than 4,000 majority based on initial poor response to PAS ceramah. There was also a prediction of more than 3,000 from a  PKR insider.

Probably it is a wee bit to much. Only a handful voters wish to return back to Kuala Besut to vote after already returning back two months ago. After voting again, they will have to return back again in two weeks time for Hari Raya.

Turnout could be lower than during GE.

Frankly, we sense political lethargy have set in because opposition's intense campaigning and ceramah have been going on for the last 10 years.

It means a lower majority is in the offing. A source claim Husam has turned confident and claim he can win back that 2,000 votes and gain enough to edge out BN. Dato Kadir Jasin says here it is not impossible  

Nevertheless, Kadir said he does not have his hands on the pulse of Kuala Besut. As far as the PAS blogger who predicted a win for BN, he saw some positive development but acknowledged that this is Derih Jusoh territory.

Campaign comeback hardly could make it in time to win. So we predict a BN win albeit lower majority.

That lower majority has no implication and relevance. Nothing really changed.. 

-Another Brick in the Wall