Tenang fight heats up

It is sizzling on the ground and steaming in cyberspace.

PETALING JAYA: The heat is rising in Tenang as campaigning goes into overdrive mode both on the ground and in cyberspace.

It would be a tough fight between PAS’s PAS’ Normala Sudirman and Umno’s Azahar Ibrahim, said Serdang MP Teo Nie Ching of DAP.

She said Chinese voters were receiving Normala well, but added that the activities of the so-called 1Malaysia NGO could sway them towards the Umno candidate.

“The 1Malaysia NGO is giving out goodies to the people,” she said.

Among the many Pakatan Rakyat bigwigs campaigning for Normala is DAP secretary general Lim Guan Eng. According to online reports, he received a hero’s welcome in Bandar Labis Tengah, but jeers and heckles in Felda Chemplak Barat.

Tenang lies within the Labis parliamentary constituency, which is held by MCA’s Chua Tee Yong, and the Chinese-based party has been aggressively campaigning for the Umno candidate. It has gone high-tech, sending four I-Pad teams out for house-to-house visits to help voters check which polling stations they were registered with.

The Chinese make up 38.3% of the 14,511 voters in Tenang. Malays account for 48.9% and Indians 12%.

The Tenang campaigns have also hit what is increasingly being referred to as Twitterjaya, the sphere where Malaysians interact with each other through Twitter.com.

Supporters of both BN and Pakatan Rakyat are relentlessly firing salvos of tweets at each other.

A person known as ‘davred1199′ challenged Kedah Gerakan youth chief Tan Keng Liang to explain his party’s apparently contradictory position with regard to Malay and Islamic issues.

“Why whenever PAS is in the pic, u bring out hudud? Why u never bring out Ketuanan Melayu when Umno in the pic?”

One ‘M Poobalan’ noted: “Miracles happening in Tenang. Grandma gets new roof, uncle gets MyKad, MinnalFM Ponngal function, hampers. Anything 4 schools n temple?”

The blog author of Another Brick on the Wall said Indian parties within BN were competing among themselves to win Indian votes for Azahar.

He predicted that BN would win the by-election, but with its majority reduced from the 5,000 it got in the last election.

“To achieve a majority of 5,000, that is equivalent to one third majority for the nearly 15,000 voters, Malay votes will not be enough,” he wrote.

Indian support for BN

Meanwhile in a another development, MIC president G Palanivel said that the Indian support for for the BN candidate was improving.

“I was there yesterday and met various groups. Their support is firming up. There are more than 1,750 Indian votes. Of these, 1,400 over are in the MIC branches,” he said.

He noted that a huge number of Indians turned up to greet Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak during his visit to Tenang before nomination day and also on the nomination day itself.

“MIC machinery is working round the clock to ensure a good victory for BN. Our presence is visible everywhere but we are not taking it lightly,” he said. - FMT