My campaign trail in rural areas

For those who want to hear more from me about my campaign trail in Kuching during the ongoing Sarawak state election, I would like to apologise that I could not write anything until now since my arrival on 5th April.

I will be in Sarawak until 18th April and during this long campaign period I will be taking care and sometimes, even lead the campaign in DUN Batu Kawah in which the DAP is contesting the seat for the first time.

While the DAP generally fares well in DUN Padungan, Pending and Kota Sentosa (Batu Lintang is given to PKR in exchange for Padungan), DUN Batu Kawa is quite a challenging task for the party for reasons below:

(1) The seat has always been a BN stronghold and they are fielding the incumbent, Datuk Tan Joo Phoi from BN-SUPP to defend the seat. Tan Joo Phoi, 59, was the former Padawan Municipal Council and was the Assistant Minister in the Chief Minister Department before the dissolution of the state legislative assembly. Tan has close ties with local Chinese association and he enjoys about 50% of the support from the Chinese in Batu Kawah, which is relatively high compared to other DAP seats.

DAP is fielding a young 26-year-old Chemical Science Master Degree Holder, Christina Chiew Wang See to contest the seat. Christina Chiew, though young in politics, was the assistant to Violet Yong, the incumbent candidate of DAP contesting in DUN Pending, an urban seat in the town of Kuching.

(2) There are high concentration of Roman-Catholic Bidayuh voters (~20%) and Malay Muslims voters (~20%) in these area. Traditionally these are the "fixed deposit" and the DAP has got no strong grassroot before March 8th, 2008.

Our campaign in Batu Kawah has always been concentrating on the Bidayuh and Malay villages and residential areas, besides conventional walkabout in commercial areas.

I am tasked to lead the campaigners from Kuching, DAP Batu Kawah branch and from the Peninsula and bring them to different Bidayuh and Malay villagers and residential areas in Batu Kawah.

The first phase of campaign were basically leafleting in these areas, particularly during Friday prayers (to reach out to the Malays) and Sunday prayers (to reach out to the Christians and Roman Catholic). It is quite an experience for Sarawakian campaigners as they have not done this kind of campaign in rural Bidayuh and Malay areas. We were well-received by the congregations in Kampung Bumbok, Kampung Semeba, Kota Padawan, Batu Kawah Everbright Estate etc.

The second phase will be a more difficult task where I am tasked to lead the campaigners from all over the country to distribute leaflets in rural villages and establish contacts with local point-man and explore the possibility of organizing ceramah kelompok in the village.

Our campaigners managed to establish some contact with local people and we move on to work with them. On 11th April, we had our first ceramah kelompok in Kampung Semeba, in the house of Mr Paul.

Most of the villagers are Roman Catholic Bidayuhs and they are a lot of churhes of different denomination in most Bidayuh villages in Kuching (just like surau in Peninsula).

I was touched that we were warmly received by Mr Paul and his family as the party has never been able to make any inroads into rural areas like this, not even mentioning about holding a ceramah in the village).

There are about 200 villagers attending the ceramah. Invited speakers are Teresa Kok, Tony Pua, candidate Christina Chiew Wang See, Khalid Samad and me as the last speaker. The crowds cheered and clapped when we exposed all the scandals and the failures of the the incumbent ADUN to uplift the living standard of the villagers.

We did a second ceramah the next day in Kampung Bumbok, which is also a Bidayuh-majority area and the reception was very good. Locals came and attended the ceramah to listen to our speeches. Selangor State Assembly Speaker, Dato' Teng Chang Khim also spoken on all the welfare programmes in Selangor. YB Chong Chien Jen, Bandar Kuching MP who is also seeking for re-election in Kota Sentosa explained on all the properties that Taib's family members and their crony companies bought oversea in Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and United States.

Generally the reception from the villagers are very good. One observation is that most of the Bidayuhs who attended our ceramahs know very well that we are not giving them any money, free foods or drinks. Instead a lot of them have to buy their own drinks, including the RM3/can Kingway beers (which is very popular among Sarawakians). Therefore we expect that there should be some improvement in our electoral performance this round in rural areas. We will see what will happen on 16th April.