KUALA SELANGOR, Nov 15 — Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) candidate for Kuala Selangor Datuk Seri Dzulkefly Ahmad said that he is taking a more humble and on-the-ground campaign to counter Datuk Seri Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz’s expensive events and aggressive social media outreach.
“How I have campaigned... you may have realised that I’m more low profile in this race but I will make sure I’ll reach there first in the end.
“When the parents are waiting for the students to come out from school, I’ll wait for the children to come out and approach them.
“Some (who see me) but cannot stop will just wave, or the motorcyclist will just stop (and approach me),” said Dzulkefly when approached by reporters after his event titled “High Tea with Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim” this afternoon.
He jokingly called himself an “autist in this race”, in reference to his campaign style which focuses on house visits and interactions with the local voters.
In contrast to him is Barisan Nasional’s candidate and caretaker finance minister Tengku Zafrul’s campaign, which often hosts grand events with special guest appearances, such as yesterday night’s programme with caretaker prime minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob that saw 1,000 attendants despite a heavy evening rain.
Although Anwar personally came to support Dzulkefly this afternoon, the PH chairman has only attracted a crowd of around 250 attendants.
However, Malay Mail noticed that Dzukefly’s events had the support of Malay, Indian, and Chinese, while Chinese were visibly unnoticeable in some of Tengku Zafrul’s events.
During his speech, Dzulkefly said that PH pledges to bring Malaysia’s ranking in Transparency International’s (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI) to the top 10 ranking in five years’ time should PH be given the mandate to form the next government.
“This is not a rhetoric...only a government with a lower CPI can attract foreign investors and our CPI rates have fallen since we were thrown out by the betrayers,” he said.
He added they also pledge to table a Whistleblower Act to protect lower-ranking officials when they lodg any graft reports against their higher officials, strengthen the open tender process to avoid any risk of exploitation, and place the Malaysia Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) under the purview of Parliament.
“We are confident that with these three initiatives, our country will make it to TI’s top ten nation that is free of corruption,” he added.
At the same time, guest speaker Anwar chided Tengku Zafrul for only giving subsidies or “goodies” during the election period to win over their votes.
“There’s also a positive side for him to come down the field because he hasn’t seen what a flood is, and the reality of people suffering poverty.
“He was a leader of a bank corporate so this can educate him what is the real social issues,” said Anwar and the crowd cheered in response.
Incumbent Dzulkefly is currently in a four-cornered fight against BN’s Tengku Zafrul, Perikatan’s Nasional’s Mohd Noor Mohd Sahar, and Gerakan Tanah Air’s Mohd Shaid Rosli.
Although Dzulkefly won Kuala Selangor with an 8,498 majority in 2018, his win here is not guaranteed as he admitted that the almost 30,000 new voters’ voting pattern still remains unpredictable to him.
