IS PAS abandoning Umno in the Semenyih by-election?

Not according to operatives of both parties who were busy going house-to-house to meet voters and holding joint programmes in the Malay enclaves of the constituency.

“We’ve not had any instructions to stand down,” said Fuad Johari, a member of the Kantai Permai PAS branch as he stood helping to direct traffic for a function in the middle class Malay neighbourhood of Taman Kantan Permai, which is part of the Semenyih constituency.

“The only instructions we’ve had is to be together with Umno,” Fuad joked as he stood shoulder to shoulder with Shamsul Zainuddin, his new-found colleague from the neighbourhood Umno chapter of Kantai Permai.

“Take a picture of us so the whole world knows (PAS and Umno are together),” said Shamsul, as he, Fuad and Umno Kantai Permai youth chief Amir Hamzah posed arm-in-arm and gave the thumbs up to confirm that both parties are indeed working together.

This is the reality on the ground in Semenyih despite claims that PAS had agreed to not support Umno – which is contesting as part of the Barisan Nasional coalition – in the by-election.

BN’s Zakaria Hanafi is taking on Muhammad Aiman Zainali of the Pakatan Harapan ruling coalition, Parti Sosialis Malaysia’s (PSM) Nik Aziz Afiq Abdul and independent candidate Kuan Chee Heng.

But of the three parties, PH is BN’s biggest rival as it won Semenyih in the 14th general election by a 8,964-vote majority.

This time, BN is betting on PAS’ support to give it a fighting chance of beating PH in the March 2 polls. Going by the results of GE14, BN is hoping that PAS will be able deliver an extra 6,996 votes.

Together with the 14,464 votes BN received in GE14, the opposition coalition would get 21,460 votes, thus putting it within reach of winning Semenyih. In comparison, PH won Semenyih by 23,428 votes.

But yesterday, Prime Minister and Pakatan Harapan chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad repeated his claim that PAS had inked an agreement stating that it will not support BN.

BN and PAS leaders denied this. Umno Supreme Council member Tajuddin Abdul Rahman had even said the Islamist party’s president Abdul Hadi Awang will come to campaign for BN in Semenyih.

Instead of throwing a spanner into the PAS-BN joint campaign, Dr Mahathir’s allegation seemed to embolden PAS members to work harder with BN.

“Their members seem be more passionate about working with us. The more people repeat these allegations, the more aggressive PAS members work with us,” said Khadijah Idrus, another Umno Hulu Langat activist.

Khadijah spent the whole morning yesterday going house-to-house with members of the PAS women’s wing in Kantan Permai when news came in later in the afternoon that Dr Mahathir had repeated his allegation.

“PAS members with me were telling their supporters that it was not true. PAS will back BN and they urged their members to come out and vote for BN. They seemed to be very spirited in telling their members to vote for BN,” said Khadijah.

Kantan Permai has 4,817 voters, the second highest of all of Semenyih’s 25 voting districts. The district is almost 95% Malay and is mostly middle class, with most residents being either active or retired civil servants.

In GE14, it was one of two voting districts where PAS had strong support, the other being Bukit Mahkota. In Kantan Permai, PAS garnered 1,272 votes, more than BN’s 811. PH managed to capture 2,329 votes, mostly from first-time voters and those below 30 years old, said local BN officials.

Shamsul and Fuad said the biggest challenge for them is getting voters and their own supporters to take the by-election seriously and to come out and vote as many see Semenyih as insignificant.

“We are first identifying our members and going and meeting them to convince them to come out or to come back to vote. Between us and PAS, we believe we have about 3,000 members (in Kantan Permai). After that we will focus on the fence sitters.” – February 18, 2019.