The campaign for the Port Dickson parliamentary by-election intensifies as it enters the second week with a surprise announcement that Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad will be campaigning for Pakatan Harapan candidate Anwar Ibrahim in Port Dickson on Monday.
This will see Dr Mahathir and Anwar sharing the campaign stage for the first time in 20 years.
“If he comes, this will be the first time I will be sharing a stage with him after 20 years and we will bring down the thunder in Port Dickson,” Anwar was quoted as saying during his campaign in Kampung Nelayan Telok Kemang yesterday.
Anwar, with his reputation as PKR de facto leader and former Deputy Prime Minister, is seen to have the advantage, with the Harapan election machinery led by Aminuddin Harun making sure that he attended between seven to 10 programmes daily to win the hearts of the voters.
In fact, since the very first day of campaign, Anwar has never stopped reaching out to the people of various races in Port Dickson – from a meeting with the Sikh community to joining the Chinese community at a lantern festival, giving a ‘tazkirah’ (religious talk) to the Muslims at a mosque and dancing like a Tamil superstar MGR at a cultural event organised by the Indian community.
Despite being named by political analysts as the favourite candidate to win the by-election, Anwar did not appear to have taken it for granted.
His campaign is properly scheduled to begin at 8 am by having breakfast with the locals or going on a walkabout at public places around the town centre or nearby areas.
In the afternoon, the PKR president-elect will usually hold meet-and-greet programmes with the locals, while at night, he will give talks at two or three locations which usually ended at around midnight.
Ini several series of his talks, Anwar, who has been agreed to replace Dr Mahathir as the country’s eighth prime minister, has raised various issues which include the country’s financial problems, the reasons he contested the Port Dickson seat, and the things he would do if elected to represent the people in the parliamentary constituency.
Going all out
He has gone all out in calling on the voters to go to the polls on Oct 13 and to let him win with a big majority.
“In any election, you can even win by one vote, but for me to win with a small majority, it will be quite embarassing. Many will have a lot to criticise me,” he said during his campaign in Kampung Baharu recently.
Meanwhile, the other six candidates, who kicked off their campaigns much later than Anwar, seemed to have intensified their efforts, especially independent candidate Mohd Isa Samad and PAS candidate Mohd Nazari Mokhtar.
However, four other independent candidates, namely Anwar’s former aide Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, social media personality Stevie Chan Keng Leong, management consultant Kan Chee Yuen and former lecturer Lau Seck Yan seemed to only engage themselves in limited campaign programmes.
Financial factors and the lack of campaign machinery have probably forced them to focus only on going on walkabouts and distributing campaign flyers at public places.
“We don’t have money to organise a programme or a public talk, so we just go to the ground to meet with the voters,” said Stevie Chan.
Mohd Isa, on the other hand, opted for house-to-house visit which he described as more comfortable and effective, especially after having held the Bagan Pinang Umno division chief post and Negeri Sembilan Menteri Besar’s post for 22 years.
Mohd Isa’s announcement that he would contest the Port Dickson seat as an indipendent candidate two days before the nomination, was quite surprising to many because he has to quit Umno and because Umno and Barisan Nasional had earlier announced that they would boycott the by-election.
Meanwhile, Mohd Saiful Bukhari launched a fund raising campaign to seek for public donations to help him get through the campaign period. He has so far raised RM2,500.
Lau, the sole female candidate who is using the rabbit logo, and Kan who is using the pen logo, are not making any agressive campaign.
The Port Dickson seat was left vacant when incumbent Danyal Balagopal Abdullah announced his resignation on Sept 12, to make way for Anwar to contest and return to Parliament.
In the 14th general election, Danyal Balagopal, 68, won the seat with 17,710-vote majority, defeating VS Mogan of BN and Mahfuz Roslan from PAS.
Port Dickson has 75,770 registered voters, 43 percent of whom were Malays, Chinese (33 percent), Indians (22 percent) and others (two percent)
- Bernama