March 8,2008 - Down and Out

I was inolve directly with Malaysia General election 2008. From the nomination day until the election day I stayed back in my constituence - Nibong Tebal. Someone very close to me was the incumbent for the Parliment seat.

I spent the two weeks with my two other brothers going around the constituence distributing goodies to all the bilik gerakan and markas yang tumbuh like mushroom after heavy rain. Our duty is motivating this people and getting feedback on the mood of the electorate. What we have done this time mirror what we did in 2004 and we won the seat by 6005 majority. And more effort was put this time in terms of time spent since the campaign period this time was almost 2 weeks compared to 2004 of only 7 days.

We also chip in to give some pep talk and brief ceramah whenever call for to fill in if the penceramah undangan are late or absence.

All in all, we were confident this time around ..goin by what was done for the last 4 years in the constituences and the feed back that we gather..even with negative national sentiment on hindraf and desire of the chinese voters to go for opposition , we still beleive we could pull trough by at least 2000 majority.

The election day

We started at 8 oclock in the morning from my father house sending our calun with DOA Selamat from our local imam. This is the repeat of what we done in 2004. We immidiaetly goes to the polling center in Sekolah Kebangsaan SG Setar. The mood was still on our side.

After lunch the rain comes pouring. We are not able to make our round to all the polling centers not until after 3 pm.

By 5 oclock, we are having nervous feeling as most polling centers with chinese majority are turning in more than 80% turnout. The rain have not stop.

Just to recap Nibong TebAL parliament seat comprise of 45% malay 37% chines and 18% indian.
Rough calculation shows that if we can gather 75% of Malay vote and 30% of non malay vote we be okay.

The result start to come in around 6 oclock. By 7.30 we had all the result on Malay area and we are leading steadily better than 2004. 3000 majority vote in the malay area is good and we need not to loose more than 3000 vote in chinese area.

by 8.00 when the Jawi constituence area result started to pour in, we are shock as we have lost more than 6000 vote in that area. In 2004 we won by 900 votes. SO there you are total swing by the chinese and indian vote wiping out 4 years of hardwork by the most hardworking parliment member I have ever seeen.

In the end we lost by 3000 majority to a new comer from keadilan. Tears flow rapidly. I myself cried coz he did not deserved to loose.

BUt i still remember his last word full of courage - "WE LIVE TO FIGHT ANOTHER DAY"