2248: We make our way to Ocean Restaurant about 4km away. Here the DAP is hosting a large dinner for a few hundred guests. Outside, a couple of hundred other people are trying to peer through every open window and door. Perhaps 800 in all. At the main table are top DAP and Pas leaders. The response from the crowd seems positive.
We have seen enough; it doesn’t look as if the Pakatan will encounter any problems in securing the Chinese vote despite the mainstream media’s - and Karpal’s - best efforts in highlighting the Pas-DAP divide over the issue. As we walk to the car park, we hear a familiar voice on the microphone (was it Kit Siang?) inside the restaurant, “Jan 17 will be a tryst with destiny for the people of Kuala Terengganu.”
2100: We land up at Pulau Kambing, KT, where a small PKR ceramah is in progress near some low-cost flats. Saifuddin Nasution is speaking and Anwar is about to arrive. The crowd is multi-ethnic.
Anwar’s plane is delayed, the talk goes, but then he shows up. He tells the crowd of about 500 that the hudud controversy is a non-issue. “The BN folks hate to see us united and want to split us. In the five Pakatan-ruled states, do you see any problem over this issue?”
He refers to the front-page story in the latest edition of the PKR newspaper, Suara Keadilan, which highlights Najib’s allegedly unfulfilled promises of allocations for mosques and other institutions made during the Permatang Pauh by-election. “Don’t be swayed by whatever they promise. If they offer you aid, take it and then vote for us!”
Pas youth chief Salahuddin Ayub address the crowd next and highlights the issue of the oil royalties and points out that Terengganu has one of the highest poverty rates in the country.
We bump into a few media people and the conensus is that Pas has a 60:40 edge (optimistically) or a 55;45 edge (realistically).
An independent Chinese-language journalist who has been here right from the start of the campaign tells me she has been doing street polls. For the Chinese, she says, their concerns tends to centre on issues of accountability and corruption. “The hudud thing is not a big issue here.”
A DAP worker later seems to concur, suggesting it could be 50-plus:40-plus in favour of Pas.
This ties in neatly with what Kassim had told me a couple of hours ago.
2000: We stumble upon an open-air curry centre and order capati for dinner along with carrot-and-apple juice. I ask the Indian guy what his prediction.
“God knows,” he replies. I guess he has a point. He looks busy, as he furiously caters to his waiting customers, most of them Indian.
The capati is excellent. Dry and great texture.
Nearby, we spot a BN road-side operations stall. It appears empty. I look more closely. No, there is someone inside. He is watching television!
1900:Time for some dinner, so we head out to the streets. Walk up to a Pas election operations stall and run into a Pas supporter by the name of Kassim.
I ask him about the ceramah schedule. He eyes us curiously and I ask him who he thinks will win.
“Oh, Pas,” he replies.
And the majority this time?
“Dua ribu,” he predicts, without hesitation.
What’s the difference this time compared to the 2008 general election?
“The last time we had a candidate from out of town (Mat Sabu); this time we have a local guy.”
And what do you think are the main issues?
“Corruption, wastage of public funds, poverty.”
How was the money wasted?
“The Monsoon Cup, the pasar warisan, which is more like a white elephant, the Crystal Mosque. That Crystal Mosque cost hundreds of millions,” says the Pas supporter, clad in Muslim attire. “We have enough mosques - what we need is aid for the poor. Look I can show you right here (in the middle of town), if you go further inside (off the main road), you can see the poor households.”
1817: I notice some hugely important comments by blog reader Pelanuk about poverty reduction in Terengganu:
…the fundamental fact of the matter is that Terengganu is a disaster zone (in terms of poverty reduction), and that’s the context.
1. At the per capita GDP level, Terengganu is way above the country average. Yet it has amongst the highest poverty rates in the country — and except for the five years under Pas, that “achievement” is all Umno’s, counting from the start of NEP in 1970. Now what does that tell you?
2. With the revision in the Poverty Level Income in 2004, at the peninsula-wide level, the poverty rate increased from 3.1 per cent to 3.6 per cent, i.e., by some 20 per cent, more or less in line with the increase in the PLI. But in the case of Terengganu, it increased by at least 50 per cent (if one takes the count from 2002 and assumes there was no decline between 2002 and 2004), and possibly doubled, if one assumes that it continued to decline at the same rate from 2002 to 2004…
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