Dyana gains ground with Teluk Intan Chinese: Not because they love DAP but more so they 'HATE' BN

In her nine-minute ceramah last night, Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud urged a mostly Chinese crowd to reject racial politics but her message, delivered in her mother tongue language of Bahasa Malaysia, seemed to resonate little with those who gathered to listen to her.

To the townfolk of Pasir Bedamar, a DAP-held state seat in Teluk Intan that comprises nearly 70 per cent Chinese voters, all that matters is the party that the young Malay candidate represents and not her race.

“Her race doesn’t matter; you put any Tom, Dick and Harry, DAP will win,” Andrew Kok, a 50-year-old plantation manager, told The Malay Mail Online after Dyana Sofya’s ceramah at Jalan Pasir Bedamar here.

Some in the crowd spoke positively of Dyana’s opponent Gerakan president Datuk Mah Siew Keong and even called him a “good man”, but said the former Teluk Intan MP is from the “wrong party”.

“His party ‘tak ngam’,” businessman Chew Kar Ho, 33, said, using a mix of Malay and Chinese in an often-used phrase that means “unsuitable”.

The positive sentiment among the Chinese who attended Dyana Sofya’s ceramah ran contrary to DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang’s gloomy forecast - as 40 per cent - of his party’s chances of winning the May 31 by-election.

He had attributed his prediction to BN using Dyana Sofya’s ethnicity to pull non-Malay support away from the DAP.

Yesterday, Lim even said he had never campaigned this hard before in any election and that it was necessary as he was genuinely worried that Dyana would lose the Chinese vote.

But last night’s crowd in Pasir Bedamar suggested that the DAP veteran’s fears could be unfounded.

A 30-year-old Chinese female clerk told The Malay Mail Online that the Chinese in Teluk Intan generally vote along party lines, not the candidate.

“Mahu ubah,” she said, using the DAP tagline for “change”, when asked why she supported the DAP opposition party.

The clerk, who did not want to be named, also complained about the rising cost of living, an issue that Dyana Sofya touched on during her brief campaign speech.

“When you go to the market with RM50, that will only get you a small plastic bag of things,” Dyana Sofya told her several hundred-strong audience.

“Two to three days ago, the prime minister said electricity tariffs must be increased. He said he had no choice. I think this prime minister has gone mad,” the law graduate added.

Pasir Bedamar is one of two state seats in the Teluk Intan federal constituency. In Election 2013, the DAP’s Terence Naidu beat People’s Progressive Party (PPP) president Datuk M. Kayveas for the seat with a 13,037-vote majority.

Next Saturday, Dyana and Mah will engage in a straight fight for the Teluk Intan federal seat, which was abruptly vacated after the unexpected demise of DAP’s Seah Leong Peng on May 1.

Mah had won the Teluk Intan seat in 1999 and 2004, but lost it to DAP’s M. Manogaran and Seah in 2008 and 2013 by 1,470 votes and 7,313 votes respectively.

The Chinese comprise the largest group of voters in Teluk Intan at 42 per cent of the electorate. The Malays form 38 per cent, and the Indians 19 per cent of the 60,349-strong electorate. - Malay Mail