Mandarin and football liven up sluggish Mahkota campaign

September 22, 2024

Mandarin and football liven up sluggish Mahkota campaign

KLUANG: After a sluggish week of the Mahkota by-election campaign, it was the fluent Mandarin of the Umno candidate and the football obsession of his Perikatan Nasional counterpart that have been talking points.

The manner in which the two candidates have attempted to woo votes also highlighted the vastly different strategies adopted by Barisan Nasional and Perikatan Nasional.

PN’s Haizan Jaafar, better known as “Coach Haizan”, has relied on talking about sports, an approach that seems to be working well with the youth but not on a larger scale as he mostly talks only about football.

His rival, Syed Hussien Syed Abdullah of BN, who speaks fluent Mandarin and has a Chinese nickname, “Sai Fu Xing” has a better approach to the Chinese community.

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However, both candidates have been told by their campaign bosses to tone it down, for different reasons.

Campaign strategy

BN has campaigned intensely to appeal to Chinese voters, who hold a kingmaker role as they comprise 34% of the 66,318 electorate.

An Umno leader who did not wish to be named said Chinese voters will play a crucial role in the Sept 28 by-election. “We are working hard to ensure a strong turnout from them, as their support is essential for us to succeed.”

The party has even seemingly given a reduced role to Umno Youth chief Dr Akmal Saleh, whose statements in the past have rubbed the Chinese community the wrong way.

However, Akmal has denied that his diminished role was due to his clash with DAP’s Teresa Kok who he had labelled an “old nyonya” following her criticisms of a proposed halal certification rule.

PN on the other hand seem to be ignoring Chinese voters, focussing instead on the predominantly Malay areas. Malays make up 56% of the constituents.

A leader from PN, who spoke on condition of anonymity said the coalition hopes the Chinese voters will not turn up for polling day.

“We know a big portion of Chinese voters live outside Mahkota, with most of them being in Johor Bahru, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

“We are very confident among the Malay voters. If the turnout of the Chinese voters is low, we can win this seat,” the source said, adding that PN had retained the Sungai Bakap seat in Penang in July with a bigger majority because of a low Chinese voter turnout.

Less talk, more walkabouts

With “ceramahs” noticeably losing its appeal in terms of pulling in crowds – the attendance is mostly of party workers from outside Mahkota – both PN and BN have taken an alternative route.

PN has organised smaller scale ceramahs, while BN is sticking to the traditional approach of visiting the communities and its leaders, including Malay NGOs and village heads.

The coach and ex-vernacular school student

A PN leader said they have told “coach” Haizan to not constantly harp about sports and focus on local issues. “We have advised him to talk about his experience as a local councillor in this area.”

An Umno leader said they have also told Syed Hussien to not oversell his Mandarin speaking capabilities. “The Chinese community is just one segment of the voters, we also have to ensure the Malays are comfortable with the candidate,” he said.

The Mahkota by-election was called following the death of assembly member Sharifah Azizah Syed Zain, 63, on Aug 2.

Sharifah Azizah won the seat in 2022 with a majority of 5,166 votes against candidates from PH, PN, and Warisan.