OUT of the 27 parliamentary seats it is slated to contest, Amanah, one Pakatan Harapan’s newest parties, is most confident of winning the Kota Raja constituency in Selangor.

This is despite going up against two political giants – Barisan Nasional and PAS – which analysts said will split the votes three ways and benefit the ruling coalition.

Amanah is so confident of its chances in Kota Raja that it wants to field its president, Mohamad Sabu, who has not won a parliamentary contest since the 1999 general election.  

Mohamad better known as Mat Sabu along with incumbent Kota Raja MP Dr Siti Mariah Mahmud and Amanah division chief Jaafar Sahamsudin have been nominated as potential candidates by Amanah’s local leaders.

Mat Sabu, however, declined to comment on talk that he would be fielded in Kota Raja.

He would only say: “Other seats have also nominated me as their candidate”.

Dr Siti Mariah, a two-term MP, is also rumoured to be moved to another parliament or state seat.

She along with Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad are two of Amanah’s most recognisable national leaders. They and four other MPs left PAS in 2015 to form Amanah, a progressive Islamist party that is open to both Muslims and non-Muslims.

Amanah is part of the PH coalition together with DAP, PKR and Bersatu.

The former doctor and medical lecturer from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) is confident of her chances if she is fielded again in Kota Raja.

She attributes the strong support from Kota Raja residents to the dedication and hard work of her service centre team and friends.

In the 2013 general election, she contested as a PAS candidate and won Kota Raja by 29,395 votes – the highest winning margin of any candidate from the Islamist party.  

In the 2008 polls, she won by 20,751 votes. Kota Raja has 128,043 registered voters.

“That victory was due to team work,” she said when met at her service centre recently.

Choose carefully

On the day The Malaysian Insight visited the service centre, Dr Siti Mariah was giving out ang pow to poor Chinese residents in the area.

Squeezed between Klang and Shah Alam, Kota Raja is a mostly middle- to low-income area whose voters work in it its factories and industrial parks.

Despite being Malaysia’s richest state, Selangor has pockets of poverty and deprivation, particularly in places like Kota Raja, where incomes have not been able to match the high cost of living.

“We’re seeing more and more people coming to the office asking for aid,” said Azmi Jusoh, the head of the Kota Raja parliamentary service centre.  

Factory worker Siew Mai is one of those who has benefitted from the service centre which helped her sign up for all the Selangor government’s schemes for which she qualifies.

“They helped me with a medical card which gives me and my family RM500 a year to spend on private clinics,” she said of the Selangor government’s Kad Peduli Sihat scheme.

“I have come to the centre three times, they are very good. Today, I got ang pow for Chinese New Year.”

Chinese residents make up a quarter of Kota Raja’s more than 128,000 voters with Malays (44%) and Indians (29%) making up the rest.

BN has always fielded candidates from its MIC component party and that trend is expected to continue in the 14^th general election.

PAS, on the other hand, is looking to recapture Kota Raja by fielding Meru assemblyman Dr Abdul Rani Osman.

Also a practising medical doctor, Dr Rani is famed for his service ethic and commoner’s touch.

Although her own party gives Kota Raja an A+ in terms of winnability, Dr Siti Mariah is not so sure.

“The party needs to carefully consider whatever changes it wants to make,” she said of Amanah’s plan for who will ultimately contest Kota Raja. – March 3, 2018.