Congrats PAS and Umno for a restrained contest

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Finally, the Manik Urai by-election is over, with the narrow victory to the PAS candidate Mohd Fauzi Abdullah over the BN candidate Tuan Aziz Tuan Mat.

The by-election result should not surprise anybody. Manik Urai is a rural constituency in Kelantan that is a proven fortress for PAS through many general elections. In fact, Umno has won in this state constituency twice only in all the long years of our nation’s independence.

The incredibly high voter turnout of 87.3% is probably due to the declaration of polling day on July 14 as a public holiday to entice more civil servants to the polls. It is also an indication that Kelantan voters in the rural constituencies are generally much more involved in community politics than say, apathetic urban voters in their alienating surrounding.

The high voter turnout can also be due to the intense campaign conducted by both PAS and Umno, involving the appearance of their national heavyweights in the constituency throughout the campaign period.

Although there have been minor incidents on polling day in Manik Urai, the by-election campaign so far has been quite free of the kind of rather vitriolic negative demonisation that we have had to witness in the few by-elections in recent past.

While the verbal scuffle has been intense both on the ground and in the media, as is expected of any by-election in which both competing coalitions mobilise their national resources to the small constituency, the tone of the electoral contest has been restrained from both sides.

Both Umno and PAS can be congratulated for conducting their campaign by arguing on issues like oil royalty and development, rather than zeroing in on personal attacks. In retrospect, Umno’s biggest mistake was probably the promotion of their candidate as an educated bureaucrat while belittling the PAS candidate as a mere fishmonger, in a constituency where a great majority of voters are not very educated rubber-tappers and fishermen.

During the campaign period, there has been great media interest in the PAS internal discord as is evident in the conspicuous absence of PAS deputy president Nasharuddin Mat Isa. His appearance in the final days of the campaign and his gesture of respect for party spiritual leader Nik Aziz Nik Mat did show the deep political maturity of PAS as a whole.

But PAS victory in Manik Urai has settled nothing between this Islamist party and their nemesis Umno in their long-running feud for political domination within the Malay rural heartland. They will battle each other all the way to the finish line in the next general election.

The PAS victory is also a morale booster for the Pakatan Rakyat coalition at a time when the public bickering between the three peninsular components of the coalition continues unabated.

But even professional politicians must be getting exhausted by this long series of by-elections since the March 8 general election. Do they not feel distracted from their wide range of political duties and weary from non-stop electoral politicking that requires their long absence from their office and their home?

Certainly, media organisations and media professionals must be weary to the bone of covering by-election after by-election. Perhaps a reprieve from more by-elections will be welcome by all principle participants, so they can all go back to the comfort zone of their regular business.