Umno shifting voters, say PKR reps

The apparent strategy is to boost Malay numbers in mixed constituencies.

SUBANG JAYA: Umno is trying to recapture Lembah Pantai parliamentary seat and the Sri Setia state seat by putting their members on the voter lists of the two electoral districts, according to PKR’s Nurul Izzah Anwar and Nik Nazmi Ahmad.

Nurul Izzah is the MP for Lembah Pantai and Nik Nazmi is the state assemblyman for Sri Setia. Both were Umno seats before the 2008 general election.

“Umno is shifting their members into my constituency from Subang Jaya because of the slim majority that I had in the last election,” said Nik Nazmi at a tweet-up function here yesterday.

Nurul Izzah said she had received information that some Seputeh constituents were changing their voting addresses to Lembah Pantai.

Apparently, the Umno strategy is to increase the number of Malay voters in mixed constituencies by shifting them from areas where BN has no hope of winning in the next election.

Subang Jaya is held by DAP’s Hannah Yeoh, who won the seat in 2008 with a majority of 13,000 votes. Seputeh is also a DAP stronghold. Teresa Kok won it in 2008 with majority of 36,492 votes.

Nurul admitted that it would be hard to prove these allegations without the cooperation of the Election Commission, whose neutrality many Malaysians doubt.

Nik Nazmi also spoke of Pakatan Rakyat’s lack of effort to woo the support of civil servants.

“Pakatan is not doing enough to engage with civil servants,” he said. “Although many of them are Malays and conservative, it does not mean that all of them are Umno supporters.

“They currently have the misconception that if Pakatan were to take over Putrajaya, non-Malays will rule. We need to correct this.

“They need to know that our politics is not race based.”

Efforts to win over civil servants and the rural community are among PKR’s key concerns in its current nationwide campaign to regain the support and confidence it lost during its divisive internal elections last year. - FMT