SHIREEN Lee has not lived in Malaysia for 30 years and despite having put down roots in New Zealand, she could not resist the call to return to volunteer for DAP’s Labis candidate Pang Hok Liong.

Lee said she was worried about the Labis federal seat in Johor after reading news that Pakatan Harapan had trouble finding a candidate for the seat, held by the caretaker deputy minister Chua Tee Yong from MCA.

“When I heard that the earlier (Labis) candidate Dr Boo Cheng Hau did not want the seat, I telephoned him to ask him to accept the party’s decision to field him in Labis,” said Lee.

Boo, the Skudai assemblyman, had disagreed with DAP’s plan to field him in Labis and was subsequently dropped as a candidate altogether.

When former DAP Johor chief Pang was pulled out of retirement and fielded as the Labis candidate, Lee felt she had to do something this time.

The contract accountant immediately decided to fly to Malaysia, at her own expense, to volunteer.

“I didn’t know Pang before this but I knew I had to help as Pakatan Harapan must win this time,” said the mother of one.

Pang, the former Bekok lawmaker (1990-1995), will face Chua and a third candidate from PAS. In the last elections, Chua won by 353 votes. Labis has 40,194 voters – Malays (38%), Chinese (45%) and Indians (14.5%).

The Penang-born, who will also vote in Jelutong, flew back to her home state and then hopped on a bus to Labis, a place she had never been to.

“I feel very strongly about helping Pakatan. What I will do here will not benefit me as I am a permanent resident in New Zealand but it will hopefully help Malaysians,” she said when met at Pang’s operations centre in Labis.

Lee is no stranger to politics as her 26-year-old son is now a policy adviser to a minister in New Zealand and she herself had volunteered during ACT Party MP Rodney Hyde’s (2005-2011) election campaign.

And although she has lived in New Zealand since 1988, she keeps abreast of the developments in Malaysia by reading news online.

The computer science and accounting graduate said the ruling government now is “very corrupt” and Malaysians needed to vote for change.  

“Friends in New Zealand said I should let Malaysians live with the consequences of their choices but I couldn’t stand aside and watch.”

Lee is just happy to do simple tasks for Pang, such as organising his campaign schedules and anything that she’s assigned to do.

“I will stop on May 8 to go back to vote in Jelutong and hopefully wake up to a new Malaysia.” – May 2, 2018.