LOW Chinese and Indian voter turnout at the Cameron Highlands by-election might derail Pakatan Harapan’s goal of capturing the parliamentary seat, said by-election campaign director Wong Kah Woh.

The by-election is the biggest electoral test for PH since the general election as the ruling coalition will contest in a seat won by Barisan Nasional in the 14th general election by 597 votes.

BN is fielding Orang Asli former police chief, Rahim Mohd Nor, in the hope of gaining the community’s support. The Orang Asli make up 22% of the voter demographic, while PH’s M. Manogaran from DAP twice contested the seat unsuccessfully and is making his third attempt.

To win, Wong said it is imperative that Chinese and Indians come out in numbers to vote. 

“The turnout percentage will the biggest challenge of all,” he told The Malaysian Insight.

“In this election, polling is just 10 days before Chinese New Year. If we are to get the same level of support as we did in the general election, especially from the Chinese and Indian areas, we would need a high voter turnout,” said the Ipoh Timur MP. 

Cameron Highlands is one of the most ethnically diverse seats, as no single community represents more than 40% of voters – Malay (33.7%), Chinese (29.5%), Indian (14.9% ), Orang Asli (21.9%) and others. There are 32,008 voters in the constituency.  

There are 29 polling districts out of which 17 are in the state seat of Tanah Rata held by DAP while 12 are in the state seat of Jelai, held by Pahang Menteri Besar Wan Rosdy Wan Ismail of BN.

In the seven Malay-majority polling districts, PH only managed to win 9% of the total votes in GE14.

Its performance in the nine Orang Asli polling districts was not much better, managing only 10.1% of the votes in these seats. 

“Particularly from the Malays, the support was far less than we received on average nationwide, where we got around 30% plus of Malay support,” said Wong.

PH’s support was the highest in the five Chinese-majority polling districts. PH won 76.9% of the total votes in these polling districts compared with 18.1% for BN. In the five Indian-majority polling districts, PH won 61.4% of total votes compared with 26.8% for BN.

“Our chances are good, as long as the turnout is not less than 70% because we know that those who are coming back from outside (the constituency) mostly will have the tendency to support us,” said Wong.

Turnout at GE14 was 78.4%. 

Going door to door

Wong said PH’s message to boost turnout is to depict the by-election “as a battle between the new government and the old government”.

“They have a choice between a clean government and a kleptocratic government. This is also a battle to ensure that the kleptocratic reign of Umno will never be revived.”

Persuading the Malay ground in the Felda settlements is being done through door-to-door campaigning, to which Wong said the “general response” is positive.

The penetration now is far better than in GE14, when “we did not even have solid ground”.

“(Now) we have a solid base in Sg Koyan (in Jelai) as after GE14, the four PH parties started to work at organising ourselves here.”

PH has also been working in Orang Asli villages in Jelai and Tanah Rata for the past six months since taking over the federal government.

These low-key efforts are where the real work is and not the nightly ceramah which so far appear to have received lukewarm response.

Wong said low ceramah turnout is a norm for Cameron Highlands and evident during the GE14 campaign.

“It’s different here from other constituencies. The usual numbers are 100, 200 people. It will never reach 1,000, 2,000 or 3,000.

“We are not deploying too much resources in a place like Tanah Rata, for example. We have to be clever in our campaigning. This is a tourist destination, so there’s no point carrying an election campaign for the benefit of tourists. 

“We believe in door-to-door campaigning, to reach out to as many voters as possible.” – January 16, 2019.