PUTRAJAYA, Nov 17 — For a taste of the carnival atmosphere in the 15th general election (GE15) campaign, just take a drive into the 49 sq km federal administrative capital of Putrajaya.

Ever since Nomination Day, the royal blue Barisan Nasional (BN) flags have been lining the roads in the major neighbourhoods here, some merely one foot away from each other. Everywhere you go, you cannot escape the billboards showing the familiar, grinning face of its incumbent MP Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, also known as Ku Nan.

It was as if BN’s election campaigning here was stuck 10 years in the past, when there was no social media, no chain WhatsApp text messages, no TikTok clips.

Then again, Ku Nan has dominated the seat since it first appeared as a federal seat in the 2004 general election. Prior to 2018, he would only face one Opposition candidate — almost all of them parachuted from elsewhere, leading him to warn Putrajaya voters against "instant noodle” candidates.

"Reject these ‘instant noodles’ candidates who would suddenly appear during election, when all this while during the good and bad times they had never even asked how we are doing, what more extend any aid,” he posted on Facebook in October, urging voters to express their feelings on the ballot.

Ask most Putrajaya voters and they would be aware of how Ku Nan has been extending his aid, and his team has capitalised on this goodwill by labelling him Putrajaya’s "ketua kampung”, or village head.

During the Covid-19 lockdown, his team had sent food essentials of rice, cooking oil and others to voters, or boxes of raw fish. Every year, voters would receive inviitations to events where they would be presented birthday gifts ranging from "kain samping” to wallets. During Ramadan, he would sponsor dates and meals for breaking fast daily at the Precinct 8 food court.

So many households have been recipients of sacks of rice and tins of biscuits with Ku Nan’s face on them that the mere mention of a biscuit tin would evoke a response from locals.

In recent years, however, his majority has dwindled from 5,541 votes in 2013 to 3,372 in 2018. Similarly, his popular vote also fell from 63 per cent in 2013 to 45 per cent in 2018 — a far cry from 80 per cent back in 2004.

So, this year, Ku Nan’s campaigning had started early, following the lull when he had been charged and eventually found guilty of accepting a RM2 million bribe in 2020, which was since overturned last year.

In the weeks leading up to Nomination Day, he held several youth-oriented events in different neighbourhoods in Putrajaya, with free food trucks, band performances and lucky draws promising Yamaha mopeds as the grand prizes.

Malay Mail visited one such event in a futsal complex in Precinct 18 on October 29, where hundreds attended in droves, causing traffic to back up in Jalan P18 due to the many cars parked on the roadside.

During that event, the lucky draw promised five Y15ZR mopeds, five Xiaomi Black Shark gaming phones, 100 units of Samsung A04s mobile phones, 100 units of Samsung tablets, 10 units of Tomaz gaming chairs, and 22 units of KYT motorcycle helmets. By conservative estimates, this would put the total retail price of the prizes at least worth RM182,000 just for that one event.

He was accused of offering RM300 in travel claims for those who return to Putrajaya to cast their ballots, which he has denied.

Here come five new challengers

Next to join BN in erecting their flags was Perikatan Nasional’s (PN) dark blue, whose candidate — caretaker education minister Datuk Mohd Radzi Md Jidin — is promising "Era Baharu” or a new era in his bid to replace Ku Nan, and asked voters to "bersama mencipta sejarah” or to create history together.

Prior to the 2018 election, Radzi was a lecturer in Tasmania, Australia, before he returned to challenge Umno warlord Tan Sri Annuar Musa in his hometown of Ketereh. He was handed a heavy loss by Annuar and PAS candidate Wan Ismail Wan Jusoh, garnering a mere 10 per cent of the popular vote.

Since he was elected deputy minister of economic affairs under the then Pakatan Harapan administration, he has made Putrajaya his home in the posh Precinct 10 neighbourhood where many top civil servants live.

On the same weekend when Ku Nan was giving away mopeds, Radzi was meeting students in Precinct 11 and Precinct 16 — at times with his trademark slogan "Nothing beats hard work” on his T-shirt — and took the advantage to hear parents express their grouses.

In the past year, Radzi had also taken a leaf out of Ku Nan’s playbook, giving gifts and pocket money during events such as the Aidilfitri celebration.

As a PN candidate, he has also relied a lot on the grassroots network among mosque committees in Putrajaya — many of them members of a loose group called Geng Surau Putrajaya that is friendly towards Islamist party PAS and its deputy president Datuk Seri Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man who regularly led prayers in its affiliated suraus and mosques. Radzi would regularly make appearances in these houses of worship.

"Of course he would say that he has already done them,” he told reporters last week in reply to Ku Nan’s team’s claim that most of his proposals in his manifesto have already been proposed by BN before.

"At this stage, he should already stop giving out proposals, he should implement them instead. But he is still stuck with the old context, things and stories of things that already exist and he has done. I wanted to offer something new.”

Compared to PN, Pakatan Harapan (PH) would only erect its flags and billboards roughly three days after Nomination Day, with its red flags dwarfed in numbers by the two government coalitions.

A spanner was thrown into the works of its campaign early on after the pact’s national leadership nominated neurobiologist Noraishah Mydin Abd Aziz — who had only joined PKR one month prior — to contest the seat that has previously been canvassed by Parti Amanah Negara and its grassroots activist Aktivis Sejahtera led by the Youth chief for FT PH and FT Amanah, Asmaaliff Abdul Adam.

Noraishah’s disability, which sees her using a wheelchair, also caught the grassroots by surprise. Still, Putrajaya PH has since rallied behind her with the added manpower of the former lecturer’s network of students and youth activists.

"I do not understand why every single reporter asked me if I am overwhelmed to go up against Ku Nan and Radzi Jidin. The answer is no,” she said last week.

"Ku Nan and Radzi Jidin cannot and have not looked after the people of Malaysia the way they should. They do not have the capacity nor the desire.”

The fourth major coalition, Gerakan Tanah Air (GTA), placed as its candidate former civil servant Datuk Mohd Rosli Ramli who is the deputy president of the Islamist party Berjasa.

His nomination came as a surprise considering that GTA’s leading component Parti Pejuang Tanahair is more well-known in Putrajaya. After all, Putrajaya was the brainchild of GTA and Pejuang chairman Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who had always made his Perdana Leadership Foundation office in Precinct 8 his political base. Pejuang also has moved its headquarters to the IOI Resort City just outside Putrajaya’s border.

Berjasa’s presence in Putrajaya is in its infancy, with both the party and Rosli only making their presence felt in early October this year — it would benefit from GTA contesting under Pejuang’s white flag and invoking Dr Mahathir’s legacy in Putrajaya.

"We want to make Putrajaya great again,” Rosli said on his social media this week. "Yes, we are advanced. But we have been stuck on this level for years ... We want to return Putrajaya’s fangs, admired by enemies and respected by the world.”

As a strategy to increase his profile, Rosli had last week challenged his opponents to a debate — but had only invited the two men Ku Nan and Radzi while ignoring Noraishah. The duo had ignored his invitation.

Rosli is part of the party’s professional face, but he is still linked with the hardline Islamist group Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (Isma) which has made Berjasa its political front. He had only recently resigned as chairman of Studio Kembara Sdn Bhd which produced the blockbuster Mat Kilau, together with former Isma leader Abd Rahman Mat Dali. He has also endorsed Islamist lobbyist Aminuddin Yahaya who used to lead Isma and the Ummah coalition, and is now contesting Temerloh.

The rest of the contenders are consumer activist Samsudin Mohamad Fauzi and lawyer Lim Fice Bee — whose campaigns were both muted.

Buses can be the answer to car woes

Putrajaya was founded as a federal territory in 2001, and in the two decades since, its reputation as a smart and planned city had dwindled as its infrastructure was treated with neglect since the administration of Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and during Ku Nan’s tenure as federal territories minister.

Originally planned to be serviced chiefly by public transport, failure in implementation has seen almost all locals completely dependent on their cars and motorcycles to get around. This has impacted visitors the most, as they enter the city to complete their business and transactions with government agencies only to find trouble looking for parking spaces.

In recent years, it was common to find cars parked on main roads in front of the Putrajaya Hospital or the government complexes in Precincts 1 to 3. The solution to this problem seemed to be merely paving green fields for more car parks.

With the local bus network Nadi Putra’s service deteriorating since its privatisation in 2018, so did the Putrajaya Sentral transport hub which is now a shell of its old self amid construction of the MRT’s Putrajaya line.

Rosli was the first to include a bus trip as part of his campaign repeating his mantra — but now to "make Nadi Putra great again” — as he called for public transport here to be upgraded.

However, none of his five-point manifesto vowed to address public transport. Instead, he has proposed more multi-storey parking lots and artificial intelligence-assisted traffic lights.

Noraishah also attempted a bus trip the day after, but she was curtailed by the fact that none of the buses was accessible to wheelchair users. She said she waited one hour and fifteen minutes just for a Nadi Putra bus in Precinct 2 — one of the busiest government areas here — only to be told that buses with wheelchair access were broken.

Under her manifesto’s point of strengthening public infrastructure, Noraishah proposed a feasibility study to return Nadi Putra to public service, or to finance its operations to be more efficient so that locals would rely less on personal vehicles.

She also proposed an upgrade towards the public transport information system, and collaboration with mobility providers such as Kumpool, Beam dan Tryke to ensure a trip within Putrajaya would only take a maximum of 15 minutes.

Similarly, Radzi also pledged an upgrade of the local bus systems with higher frequency and better comfort, while at the same time building more multi-storey parking lots and park-and-ride complexes.

Ku Nan did not include any upgrade of public transport in his manifesto, besides promising the system of Nadi Putrapay card so students can use the buses for free.

Campaigning by top guns was left towards the end, with PH chairman Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and PKR deputy president Rafizi Ramli expected to stump for Noraishah in the neighbouring Desa Pinggiran Putra tonight, while PN’s Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali is also expected to speak in Precinct 8’s community hall at the same time.

Both BN and PN have also delivered campaigning materials to voters’ homes, with Radzi printing his manifesto while Ku Nan presented his report card.

The Election Commission recorded a total of 41,426 registered voters in Putrajaya for GE15, more than double the 27,306 in 2018. Almost three in 10 are between the age of 30 and 39.