source<\/a><\/p>\nKUALA LUMPUR: How do you fight a wakil rakyat who has developed and looked after his parliamentary constituency for more than 30 years?
\nWhen you can’t unseat the person who is also a party leader and a long serving minister, the only thing to do is to say that the incumbent “has overstayed his welcome”.<\/p>\n
For that reason alone, opposition contender Dr D. Jeyakumar believes a strong candidate like him should be fielded in the Sungai Siput constituency to send a message against Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu.<\/p>\n
Dr Jeyakumar is a member of the unregistered Parti Sosialis Malaysia who has contested against Samy Vellu twice in 1999 and 2004.<\/p>\n
In 1999, first-time contender Dr Jeyakumar, who contested under the DAP banner, managed to reduce Samy Vellu’s majority to 5,259 votes.
\nHowever, Samy Vellu bounced back in 2004, defeating Dr Jeyakumar who changed the party banner to Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR).<\/p>\n
The incumbent won with a 10,235-vote majority.<\/p>\n
“Whoever is taking on Samy Vellu may not win but we have to teach him a lesson by reducing his majority drastically.”<\/p>\n
He is confident that at least half of the 33 per cent Malay voters and all of the four per cent Orang Asli voters in the constituency would vote for Samy Vellu.<\/p>\n
The opposition’s hope? The possible swing votes from the Indian and the Chinese voters, allegedly angry with the government, to reduce the incumbent’s majority.<\/p>\n
“We can do this only if the opposition coalition is united. We have to agree on a common ground and stick to it consistently,” said Dr Jeyakumar, who also claimed that his party had made inroads in the nearby Buntong, Jelapang and Bercham state constituencies.<\/p>\n
To date, the opposition’s electoral pact has only left Jalong state seat to his group.<\/p>\n
Perak MIC chief Datuk G. Rajoo said the opposition was free to put up a fight but they should know that Sungai Siput voters still wanted Samy Vellu.<\/p>\n
He said voters, especially the senior ones, would remember Samy Vellu’s contribution in turning a sleepy constituency into a modern town, benefiting people of all races.<\/p>\n
“He has the support of all the races. He is in Sungai Siput every weekend, tirelessly attending to the problems of the people there.”<\/p>\n
Rajoo, a four-term Hutan Melintang state assemblyman, also said Samy Vellu’s leadership was still needed not only by the MIC but by the Indian community as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every weekend is spent in his constituency to solve people’s problem. Taken care of people’s problem for last 30 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[130,225],"class_list":["post-1289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indian","tag-election-2008","tag-politicians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}