By Election - LLoud support for both sides

By Debra Chong

TAIPING– After a night of roaring rains, the pale blue sky streaked with feathery white clouds promised a return to the tranquillity that Taiping is named for yesterday morning.

But that peace was soon shattered. The armies (of supporters) for both the Barisan Nasional (BN) and Pakatan Rakyat (PR) were on the march even before dawn, to reach the nomination centre for the Bukit Gantang by-election battle before 9am.

Streaming in from every slip road and side lane, the supporters and campaigners for the two political giants spiritedly shouted slogans, sang songs and waved their party flags wildly in the air, though some wore it cloaked to keep off the early morning chill, made colder the closer they got to the town council office at the foothills of the famed Lake Gardens.

Hemmed in by the court complex on one side and the district offices on the other, the PR party on Jalan Kota soon resembled a religious Mardi Gras.

The party song blared on repeat through someone’s speakers while other revellers took up the battle cry of “AllahuAkbar” and “Takbir” at intervals. Bands of masked men, women and children sporting Pas candidate Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin’s face on cardboard, wandered about freely, snapping pictures on their camera phones even as a helicopter circled overhead and closer to the ground, small flocks of switftlets twitted merrily as they chased each other above the rooftops.

Two streets away, on Jalan Taming Sari, the BN troopers gathered.

Among the sea of Malay faces was a small representation from the Indian Progressive Front (IPF), a small component party in the BN.

Their faces unsmiling, they hefted aloft banners portraying the de facto Perak menteri besar Datuk Zambry Abdul Kadir, made larger and held higher than the drooping banner showing the BN candidate Ismail Saffian.

They stayed silent mostly, a sharp contrast to the festivity on the other side.

The quiet was punctuated by sharp cries of “Daulat Tuanku!” and “Hidup Barisan!” by a small band of Malay men wearing dark blue bandanas patterned with the iconic BN scales in white around their heads and a gold sash over their shoulders with the words “Malay Youth Assembly” in Jawi.

Palm-sized button badges featuring Perak ruler Sultan Azlan Shah against a royal yellow background were pinned to one shoulder.

A spokesman who only wanted to be known as Nazri said they were there to defend the crown against “traitors”.

As if on cue, the men began to chant in Malay: “Rise up! Rise up! Fight the traitors!” spurring the listless crowd onwards.

By 9am, the two factions could hardly be contained within the confines of their allocated meeting places. The masses rushed forward, ignoring the policemen on duty at the sidelines.

The PR army swarmed up the slopes to occupy the entire length of hill overlooking the town council office as well as the square.

The BN contingent, meanwhile, had landed themselves in a tight spot. The police had unrolled a length of barbed wire that stretched all the way from the council’s walled fence and across the road all the way to the far side of a playing field in front of the nomination centre. The same cordon kept the PR supporters out of the field on the other side, some 50 metres away.

By 9am though, the ascending sun was beating down on the BN supporters and cast a glare right in their eyes while the PR enjoyed the cool shade between the leafy trees on the high ground.

The temperature rose a notch higher when top BN leaders, led by incoming deputy prime minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, walked Ismail inside the town council compound.

The PR supporters, squeezed into a tiny plot of land behind the town council office, booed aggressively at the multiracial team where minutes before, they had cheered deafeningly for the equally multiracial team of leaders from the opposition front.

“Bribery! Bribery! Bribery!” they chanted, and failing to rattle the tight group of BN men, who included controversial new Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin, switched to yelling out “Altantuya murderer!”

That too did not faze the Umno veterans who merely smiled and waved back at the angry crowd.

Sadly, the BN supporters failed to follow the example set by their leaders. DAP chairman Karpal Singh recounted how he was attacked by a band of unruly Umno supporters who rained filled mineral water bottles at his van while moving through the packed street after taking a wrong turning.

He urged incoming prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to stop what he called “the culture of violence in Umno” to ensure a smooth and clean campaign in the hot parliamentary seat.

Yet the greatest threat to campaigning appears to come not from human hands but divine intervention.

In the afternoon, the sky opened and poured forth another deluge, further swelling the already swollen river and lakes. In some places, it flooded, causing traffic to slow and delay the many dinner talks and post-dinner talks planned for the night.

The torrential rains look likely to continue, hampering the campaign efforts for both sides. Not for nothing is Taiping known as the wettest spot in Malaysia. (TMI)