Khalid confident despite low turnout at CNY do

Selangor Menteri Besar Abdul Khalid Ibrahim remains confident of retaining his hold on the Bandar Tun Razak parliamentary seat in the coming general election, despite a lower turnout at his Chinese New Year open house today compared to MCA's event in the same constituency.

Khalid (right) is both Bandar Tun Razak MP and Ijok assemblyperson.

Bandar Tun Razak, one of the 10 parliamentary seats won by Pakatan Rakyat in the Kuala Lumpur Federal Territory, is one of the constituencies that MCA has been working hard to wrest back.

Today’s Chinese New Year open house, organised by Bandar Tun Razak PKR division at Bukit Anggerik, attracted an estimated 1,000 people, falling way below the 10,000-strong crowd that thronged MCA's open house last Sunday.

Khalid, however, claimed his open house attracted about 4,000 people.

Khalid said in any case, the attendance did not reflect the political trend in Bandar Tun Razak, as many of those present the MCA event were outsiders.

“(The attendance) has no problem because many buses fetched people (to MCA's event). Those are not Bandar Tun Razak voters. Bandar Tun Razak people are very smart when it comes to election,” he said.

Citing his victory in 2008 against the then MCA deputy minister Tan Chai Ho, Khalid trumpeted that he has more than a 60 percent chance to retain the seat.

“In the last general election, we expected it to be a 50:50 contest but the result turned out to be 60:40. This time I expect it to be better than 60 percent, so the result would be better than this,” he said.

Khalid beat Tan by a slim majority of 2,515 votes at the last general election - he bagged 28,123 votes against Tan's 25,608.

[More to follow]