YOUNG Pakatan Harapan leader Abbas Azmi still visits night markets to hand out newspapers and pamphlets – what some people see as relics in this age of Facebook and Twitter.

His PKR counterpart Fahmi Fadzil climbs up and down the towers of low cost flats in Lembah Pantai to visit the sick and the poor several times a week.

In Petaling Jaya, Lim Yi Wei of the DAP inspects broken drains, illegal rubbish dumps and defective street lights as part of her work as a local councilor.

These meet-and-greets have always been the way their elders in Amanah, PKR and DAP campaigned for support back when there were no smartphones or the internet.

And despite the fact that they can reach more people through these technologies, these prospective candidates find that at the end of the day, the old ways are still the best at earning the people’s trust.

As the cyber war hots up ahead of the 14th general election, young candidates like these three are pounding the pavement and pressing the flesh just like how it was done back in the analog age.

The three are among the scores of young faces that PH is fielding in GE14.

Fahmi is expected to defend Lembah Pantai in Kuala Lumpur.

Abbas and Lim are prospective candidates in urban Selangor seats although their specific constituencies have not been confirmed.

“We have our social media campaigns and our messaging over the internet,” Abbas explained when met by The Malaysian Insight after a recent walkabout at a night market in Bandar Seri Putera near Bangi.

The 36-year old Selangor Amanah Youth chief and a coterie of activists had just finished distributing pamphlets and his party’s newspaper also called ‘Amanah’.

“Meeting people face to face allows you to connect with your potential voters. You ensure that they receive your message and you get to gauge their response towards you and your party.”

It’s this last element that a social media campaign cannot achieve as effectively. A warm smile, a handshake, a word of encouragement, are things which candidates use to judge how a resident is likely to vote.

“When Amanah first started and we went on programmes like this, out of 10 people, only six would actually take our papers and pamphlets,” said Abbas.

“After our walkabout, we would find our pamphlets dumped all over the ground. We picked them all up. That shows that people didn’t even read our material and indicates their lack of interest towards us.”

“Now as you can see now, people keep our stuff, they read and they take home. That shows the sentiment to us has changed and that is an important indicator.”

During Abbas’ walkabout, almost everyone took his handouts. When The Malaysian Insight went back to the site of the night market, there were only a few pamphlets scattered among the heaps of rubbish.

Tactile politics

At the low-cost Sri Pahang flats in Bangsar, Fahmi visited diabetic patients and a family supporting a parent who is recuperating from a stroke.

The 39 year-old PKR communications director promised to do what he could to get aid for these patients, some of whom were born in Selangor.

This allowed him to promote Selangor’s policies such as the “Peduli Sihat” scheme which gives RM500 a year to low income families to seek treatment at private clinics and its various micro credit schemes for budding entrepreneurs.

“I need to introduce myself and politics in Malaysia can still be a very tactile experience,” said of the importance of these meetings.

Fahmi also responded to criticism towards the Selangor PH government such as when one resident complained about how hard it was to get work from local councils.

“In those (conversations) not only do we get their almost undivided attention but they can also see how they have our undivided attention,” Fahmi said.  

Lim of the DAP said her work as a councilor allows her to get to know residents and local issues in the area she was likely to contest in, which would hopefully give her an advantage when she seeks their vote.

“I keep in close touch with residents and would go down with Tony Pua (Petaling Jaya Utara MP) when he’s making his rounds.”

Due to the recent electoral boundary delineation, PJ Utara will get additional voters from Selayang Baru, so she and her team will have to double their efforts to meet future new voters.

At the end of day, the rapport and intimacy these tried and true methods produce among voters cannot be replicated by social media, said Fahmi.

After all, these were the methods that have kept PH’s rival Barisan Nasional in power for the last 60 years. – March 29, 2018.