BARISAN Nasional’s Lokman Noor Adam is fond of repeating a story in the campaign trail at Sg Kandis. It is a story that symbolises what the by-election means for the former ruling coalition and its lynchpin party, Umno.

The story is of how a disabled old woman he visited in the constituency handed him a cash-filled envelope as donation for defeated former prime minister Najib Razak.

Lokman, the Malay supremacist party’s newest firebrand, said this act of charity towards Umno shows that the people want the party back, more than two months after it lost federal power in the 14th general election.

“Everywhere I go in Sg Kandis, people shake our hands, they want Umno to win,” Lokman said in recent ceramah in Sg Kandis, a semi-urban seat bordering Klang and Shah Alam.

Lokman and Umno are turning the by-election into a referendum on the first two months of Pakatan Harapan’s rule.

The story of the old woman drums home two main messages – that voters regret voting for PH and they want Umno back.

A sub-message is that voters don’t believe the government’s narrative of grand corruption committed by Najib, hence the reason for the woman’s donation.

These points are part of the storyline pushed by the new Umno leadership under president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who is seeking to prove that he has what it takes to rebuild Umno.

Such a narrative, said political analyst Hisomuddin Bakar, is crucial for Umno because even if it loses Sg Kandis by a slim margin, it would prove that Umno’s revival is on the right path.

In GE14, PH’s candidate, the late Mat Shuhaimi Shafiei, defeated the BN and PAS candidates by 12,480 votes. The August 4 by-election was called following Shuhaimi’s death from cancer.

A BN victory in Sg Kandis, which is unlikely, will be a significant boost to Umno as it struggles to chart a path in the new political landscape.

Umno is also looking to consolidate its voting base among Malay-Muslims by playing up racial and religious sentiments – that the PH government is jeopardising the special position of Malays, Islam, the Malay rulers and Bahasa Malaysia.

Status quo 

 The problem, said Hisomuddin, is that BN’s narrative is unlikely to work in Sg Kandis.

“The BN strategy of aggressively attacking PH motivates their supporters. But it alienates voters,” said the executive director of the Ilham Centre.  

“Voters we’ve spoken to say it’s way too early to judge the PH government’s performance. Voters told us PH has to be given an adjustment period to get used to being the government. It’s going to be status quo for Sg Kandis.”

Local religious figure Mohd Zawawi Ahmad Mughni is contesting under PH. According to a study by think-tank Institut Darul Ehsan (IDE), his local stature gives him a considerable advantage over Lokman.

IDE’s executive director Prof Mohammad Redzuan Othman predicts that the race and religious rhetoric will lead BN to only capture votes from its members, who number about 11,700.

This is almost the same as its GE14 performance where its then candidate, Kamaruzzaman Johari, garnered 11,518 votes.

“From our surveys, Umno and BN are unlikely to do better than they did in GE14. Umno is only going to get votes from its members.”

By playing up the race and religion card, Umno is foregoing Indian and Chinese voters, who make up 16% and 12% of the constituency’s 50,800 voters.  

Because it is a suburban seat in Selangor, Sg Kandis’ Malay voters are more politically savvy and are also less swayed by racial sentiments, compared with rural voters, said Redzuan.

“They have been ruled by PH (and its predecessor, Pakatan Rakyat) for the past 10 years. And they have not seen anything in those 10 years to show that PH threatens Malays or Islam,” he said.

Selangor Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari is even more dismissive of Umno’s campaign in Sg Kandis.

“For 10 years, Umno has played up race and religious issues in its attempt to take over Selangor. And it has failed time and time again.”

In the 2008 general election, PH’s predecessor, PR, captured 35 out of 56 state seats.  In the next general election in 2013, PR expanded its holdings to 44 of 56 state seats.

In GE14, BN was reduced to five out of 56 state seats in Selangor.

“Our biggest challenge is actually getting people to come back and vote,” said Amirudin, who is spearheading PH’s campaign in Sg Kandis.  

“Because (the by-election) is so close to the general election, we are afraid that people don’t see the urgency to come back to vote.” – July 27, 2018.