Subscribe in a reader | Subscribe by Email The main impact of Indian revolution is expected to be seen in Kedah and Penang. The anger against Samy Vellu is quite high. MIC candidates surely have a tough time. As for Perak and Selangor, MIC can be more positive, but still have to work hard. In Kapar, Komala not having support of Indians, but the Malay votes will push her to a victory. Unless PKR can do something through its leaders and sway the Malay votes. But swinging 14,588 votes is an near impossible task by any stretch of imagination. Subang too should an interesting fight between two lawyers.
ELECTON 2008: Tough fight for MIC in one parliament and three state seats
S. Retna, BERNAMA
source
KUALA LUMPUR, SUN:
While MIC president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu has vowed that the party will maintain 100 per cent victory in all seats contested by MIC candidates in the March 8 general election, a serious look at things on the ground shows that they seem to be facing uphill tasks in at least one parliamentary and three state seats.
MIC has been allocated nine parliamentary and 19 state constituencies to contest under the Barisan Nasional (BN) banner. With the 13-day campaigning period having reached its halfway mark, the picture on which seats are “sure wins” and “shaky” seems to be clearer now.
According to an MIC insider, the party is rather “concerned” about the Kapar parliamentary seat, which sees incumbent and Wanita MIC chief Komala Krishnamoorthy facing a challenge from S. Manikavasagam of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR). However, statistics reveal that such “concerns” could be unfounded. Kapar has some 112,224 registered voters of which 51.4 per cent are Malays, 35.4 per cent Chinese and only 13 per cent Indians. In the last elections in 2004, Komala, who is also the Education Ministrys Parliamentary Secretary, won the seat with a comfortable 14,588 vote majority. She polled 44,007 votes against a Keadilan candidate who managed 29,419 votes.
The question now is whether that 14,000-vote majority can be overturned or swung away in just one election. And this also does not take into account the low voter turnout in the last election for that constituency. The MIC party insider does not want to discount a possible upset in Kapar. “But the statistics show that Komala will win. If she manages to get the Malays and the Chinese to come out and vote in her favour, it would be good enough. Indirectly if she can increase the voter turnout, which at the last election was around 60 per cent and bring in votes to BN, then she is on solid ground,” he added. “Komalas 14,000 majority in the last election was huge and over-turning it in one election is a herculean task. If the majority was slimmer, then she may face a problem,” argued a retired MIC politician who declined to be named.
Meanwhile, party sources also revealed that MIC candidates contesting in the state seats of Kedah and Penang may have a tough time.
In Kedah, MIC has fielded new faces in S. Krishnan, who is contesting in Bukit Selambau, and S. Ananthan, who will stand in Lunas. Both candidates were introduced by Samy Vellu in the wake of simmering discontent among the Indian community recently. In the 2004 polls, Bukit Selambau, which has about 30,300 voters, was won by Datuk V. Saravanan with a 7,695 vote majority. He beat candidates from PKR and DAP who polled 6,501 votes and 2,120 votes respectively. Krishnan, who is also the Kedah MIC treasurer, will face V. Arumugam, an independent candidate, this time around.
In Lunas, an area with 27,957 voters, Ananthan, who is also Kedah MIC secretary, will take on Mohd Razhi Salleh of PKR. Previouly, MICs S. Ganeson beat PKR’s Tian Chua with a 4,299-vote majority. Ganeson had polled 13,218 votes against Tian Chua’s 8,979 votes
In Penang, MIC candidates are facing arduous battles in Bagan Dalam and Perai. In Bagan Dalam, MIC has maintained its incumbent, P. K. Subbaiyah, the Penang MIC chief, for this year’s battle. In the 2004 election, Subbaiyah won the seat with a 1,967 vote majority over candidates from PKR and DAP. This time, the state seat, which has 17,230 registered voters, will pit Subbaiyah against A.Tanasekharan of DAP. The seat has a majority of Chinese voters (52.2 per cent) followed by Indians (24.3 per cent) and Malays (22.7 per cent).
The most difficult state seat for MIC, political pundits argue, is Perai. It sees an MIC new face, L. Krishnan, who will face DAP’s Prof P. Ramasamy and R. Ulaganathan, an independent candidate. This state constituency has a sizeable number of Indian voters, accounting for 36.6 percent of the total. Perai also has 51.8 per cent Chinese voters and 10.9 per cent Malay voters.
In the last election, Perai was won by MIC’s Datuk Dr K. Rajapathy, who polled 5,060 votes against Chong Eng of DAP, who garnered 4,477 votes, giving a slim majority of 583 votes.
The contest between BN and DAP for control over Penang in this election is expected to have a spillover effect on both Bagan Dalam and Perai, according to most political observers. This time around, MIC has a thing or two to prove to the voters against the backdrop of grouses being openly aired by the Indian community. The party has to reinforce the position that Indian voters are behind the ruling BN government. It also has to show its coalition partners that it is still relevant and has the full support of the 1.8 million Malaysian Indians.
Samy Vellu, when contacted, remains optimistic and is confident that the two seats in Penang would be won by BN. “The level of support is slowly improving. I am happy that we have recovered slightly in Bagan Dalam where our candidate was getting below 50 per cent support previously. It has now gone up slightly and this is good. The situation is different in Perai but it is also recovering,” he said.
