Xavier: Indian votes swinging to Pakatan

By Rahmah Ghazali - Free Malaysia Today

KERLING: Pakatan Rakyat is now confident that Indian votes in the Hulu Selangor by-election will swing to its candidate Zaid Ibrahim by polling day, which is this Sunday.
Selangor executive councillor Dr Xavier Jayakumar said this would be the fruit of two years of a good working relationship between the Pakatan-led state government and the local people.
Indians make up 26.7 percent of voters in the parliamentary constituency. Malays account for 53.9 percent, Chinese 19 per cent and others 0.4 per cent.
Indian votes were split in the 2008 general election. This was due to the rise of the now outlawed Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf), Xavier said in an interview with FMT.
He said Pakatan would do even better among the Indians this time around because they now knew how much better the current state administration was than the previous BN-run government.
"They have tasted it first hand and seen how able the state government is in carrying out its programmes ... to bring about equity and prosperity among the people,” he said.
"It is good in the long run and I am positive that Indian votes will swing towards Pakatan come polling day.”
Xavier holds the Health, Plantation Workers, Poverty and Caring Government portfolio in the state cabinet.
Asked to estimate the percentage of the expected vote swing, he said: "I am not sure about it percentage wise, but a large majority of Indians will be voting Pakatan."
This Sunday’s contest is between PKR's Zaid and MIC’s P Kamalanathan.
So far, so good
Xavier did a walkabout of Ladang Kerling Batu Dua today and bumped into Kamalanathan, who has been on a walkabout marathon around Hulu Selangor to woo the voters. They shook hands, smiled and went their separate ways.
Kamalanathan, a public relations professional, seems to have the upper hand so far, but Xavier, who is the PKR state assemblyman for Sri Andalas , insisted that there was good reason for his optimism. He said Pakatan had been receiving positive feedback from the ground.
"And we have to translate the support into votes and win with a bigger margin,” he said. “It looks good to us but we won't take it easy and will continue the work on the ground.”