Mukhriz chats up a very young voter in Kubang Sepat
This is what you need if you’re a candidate in the elections. You need stamina first of all. Otherwise whatever energy you have will flag by the time you’re done with the fifteenth visit to a ‘ballot box’ community for the day. And you’ve only done 80 of these so far and still have 70 more to do by the time election day comes round. Forget about sleeping or eating properly, or seeing your loved ones at a decent hour of the day.
Next, you need a voice that just never gives out. Because you make speeches at each and every stop, and if you’re any good, they aren’t all the exact same speech but tailored to each community you visit.
Then you need a strong stomach. Because everywhere you go, especially if you have a pretty rural constituency, you’re expected to eat. Not that that’s bad because the food is often very very good. But you’ll eat several times a day and you just pray that none of it works badly in your stomach because you really can’t afford to be sidelined by diarrhoea.
And you need great facial muscles because you need to smile, smile and smile. You need to charm the socks off the kampung folk and it better be genuine because they can see if it isn’t.
This is what you need if you’re just following a candidate around: the patience to put up with perpetually getting lost and therefore being late for his next appointment. Or worse still, missing him altogether.
I went up to Jerlun yesterday to follow my brother Mukhriz around and see how an election campaign works. It’s been elections 101 in double-quick time for me. But it’s been instructive and interesting to say the least.
Jerlun is a rural constituency with some 40,000 plus voters, about 90% of whom are Malay. It’s lots and lots of flat padi fields, at the moment just harvested and dry, with only Gunung Keriang looming up like an elephant to break up the landscape. It’s not all that big in size but because the roads have to go round the padi fields, going from one place to another takes time. And places here have pretty colourful names like Lana Bulu, Matang Bonglai, Batas Bengkok, Bukit Hantu, Kampung Melele, Kampung Putat, Sanglang and Kodiang.
Local Kubang Sepat political chieftain cum wise guyI first caught up with my brother at a place called Kamoung Sepat. The minute I arrived, I had to sit down to sample Mee Rebus Kampung Sepat (which by the way, is delicious) with two local gentlemen who had a way with one-liners in their thick Kedah accent which would put many a city stand-up comedian to shame. They are proud of being Kubang Sepat born and bred and knew that their roles as local political chieftains are not to be ignored.
The Kubang Sepat ladies and I indulge in some girl talkAfter eating I went into the hall to chat with the women, my brother having already gone off to his next stop. This is a very poor community but they turned up in their best clothes, curious to see who this new guy was. With me, they wanted to know about our family. What number am I in the family? What number is Mukhriz? How many children do my parents have? How many do I? (“ONLY three?”) Some of the young ones giggled and said they thought my brother was ‘segak’ (handsome). Apparently there had been rampant stealing of his posters by the younger female constituents.
The ladies and I were warming up to some real girl talk when someone said I should really move on if I wanted to catch up with Mukhriz at the next stop. One whole round of salams and photos followed before I could climb back into the car and leave. Then we were off, looking for the next community hall.
Which, in fact, we never found. I don’t know what they did before there were handphones but even with constantly calling people in my brother’s entourage, we never caught up with them. We drove down flag and banner-lined country roads, made several turns, stopped to check with whoever’s supposed to be in the know…but we never caught up with them.
It did mean that I got a look at a large part of the constituency. It’s poor. I’m not sure what one can do to bring development there. They have schools, not much industry and problems like large numbers of single mothers.
In 2004, the BN candidate won by only about 2000 votes majority. Indeed in many areas of Jerlun, PAS is very strong and you can certainly tell by the numbers of green flags and banners. You see banners that say, “Give Islam A Chance” strung up across kampung lanes. So it’s not a place where the BN candidate gets an easy ride.
We finally decided to give up for the day and return home (which is the family house in Titi Gajah). In the evening, there would be another programme visiting some MCA centres. I went home to rest and change.
My brother had no such luck. He didn’t get a chance to come back so a change of clothes had to be dispatched to him. I don’t know where he changed into them but he looked fresh enough by the time his wife and I caught up with him at the MCA gathering in Alor Biak.
The Ketua Cawangan MCA Alor Biak gives his opening speechThe Chinese in Jerlun are only 8.6% but they’re an active community. At Alor Biak, the ‘hall’, which apparently is normally a hairdresser’s garage, was filled with mostly middle-aged Chinese men, tanned and swarthy. The programme started with the head of that MCA division giving a speech in fluent Kedahan. He said he supports BN 100% but had two questions to ask the candidates ( the candidate for the state seat of Air Hitam, Dato Othman Aziz, was also present). One was why the local Pemuda UMNO spent all their time fighting with the local MCA and Gerakan folks, and secondly, why was it that there are government officers who seem to discriminate against the Chinese community. These were questions he would like answered by whoever gets elected.
But he said there was no way he could support PAS because he said he used to attend their ceramahs and their candidates were always talking about sending the Chinese and Indians ‘home’. So there was no way he or his friends could support them.
He pointed out that there were no jobs there in Alor Biak so people went elsewhere to earn their living. “Tapi,” he said, “orang Cina sini sayang kawasan ni. Nanti pilihanraya, depa balik ke kawasan nak undi.” (I really wish I could catch the total flavour of the way he talked.)
Then the two candidates did their thing and then we ate. Luckily we opted to just have kuih at this stop, because at the next one, another MCA gathering in Air Hitam, they served a full meal.
Mukhriz and his wife Norzieta laughing at a joke, Air Hitam MCA gatheringI rather enjoyed these Chinese community gatherings for their sheer informality. People had no qualms about sitting in the front row and talking on their phones while the candidates did their spiel. The womenfolk were casually dressed but obviously enthusiastic about their election work. Everyone speaks fluent Kedahan but appreciated hugely the few words of Mandarin that the candidates attempted.
After an hour, my brother had to once again move on and my sister-in-law (who is five months’ pregnant) and I decided that we’d head home. But before we did that, we agreed to drop by the Bilik Gerakan run by the local Wanita UMNO.
Dato Maznah and Puan Bashariah run the numbers by us, Air Hitam, JerlunWanita UMNO Jerlun is headed by a formidable woman, Dato Maznah Hamid, otherwise known as the Iron Lady. She’s a plump affable nonstop talker who was born in Jerlun. The ladies there feel that she should have been made the candidate for the constituency but she herself brushes it off as unimportant. Instead she’s marshaled her ladies to do all the operations work for my brother’s campaign.
If the candidate is the head in any constituency, the local Wanita are the arms, legs, eyes and ears of it. The Jerlun ladies briefed me on the simple yet sophisticated way they campaign, which essentially involves going house to house and persuading voters with strong arguments. Who needs fancy pollsters when these ladies can pretty much tell you which household is going to vote for whom?
Puan Bashariah, the second-in-command in Jerlun, is a 62-year old who has 30 years of experience in running election campaigns. And her enthusiasm and energy hasn’t seemed to wane at all. She has a big board up with all the statistics that she needs and both she and Dato Maznah keep the other ladies motivated each day right up til polling day. When we met them, it was already 11pm and they were not about to go home yet. Some lived far and had to contend with going home at odd hours of the night.
We talked about what their husbands thought of their work. They all laughed and said they had understanding husbands who just made do while election season was on. Puan Bashariah was also organizing her son’s wedding in the midst of all this, and handed me an invitation for the majlis perkahwinan on March 8 itself.
The Wanita were well aware of their importance to the campaign. They were disappointed that more women, especially their head, had not been fielded as candidates and that the few who were in Kedah were given very difficult seats. But they said they were loyal enough to still roll up their sleeves and work for whichever candidate they were handed. However, after the elections, they were going to demand something in return from Mukhriz. If he wins, he has to pay attention to the women and their problems in that constituency. And they have a few, including, by the way, because of the fishing communities along the coast, a drug and AIDS problem.
This morning I went down for breakfast only to find that, having returned at 3am, my brother was already out of the house. I could only catch up with him at his 11am programme, which in fact began at about 11.45am. That’s the nature of campaigning. You can schedule all you want but something will come up to mess it up.
The second stop was at KEDA Ponchan, which is a community hall run by the Kedah Development Authority mostly for single mothers. There, they are given training in sewing and food production. There are also micro-credit programmes for them run by Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia.
After the various speeches, during which time I could smell the ikan kering being fried, we sat down to eat. Very simple food; white rice, some meat dipped in kuah asam made with lots of tomatoes, onions and chilli and the ikan kering. I had meant to eat and run as I had a plane to catch but the food was so delicious, I finished my entire plate of rice and then ratah’d ( ate the food without any rice) some more.
Another round of salams and photos, then I had to dash off. Meantime my brother was already on his way somewhere else.
Little boy in non-BN colours, KEDA Pochan, JerlunObviously in following only my brother around, this is a very BN-centred account. I would have liked to have also gone to see the PAS candidates on their rounds. But apart from the flags and banners, you actually don’t ever come across them. I guess the constituency’s big enough that you can go around without ever bumping into your rivals. It’s all very civil though, with none of the type of heckling that you expect from rival camps. Sometimes the flags are even all mixed up with one another.
But it’s another few days yet. Nobody is resting until polling stations close and the counting starts. It’s an endurance test like nothing else.
