ONE would imagine that with polling for the 15th General Elections (GE15) merely days away, candidates would be shifting to high gear for their campaigning in order to canvass for as many votes as possible.
So, it came as a surprise to me that my incumbent MP for Kluang, Wong Shu Qi, was missing from the constituency during the past few days.
I later found out that she was out campaigning for her DAP comrades in Ipoh – and possibly other parts of the country.
Her absence from Kluang perhaps shows the party’s confidence in retaining the seat which she won with a majority of over 23,000 votes in 2018.
For all intents and purposes, Wong is no DAP heavyweight, unlike the party secretary-general or chairman; her presence outside Johor would not have helped much, more so in places like Ipoh where her party already has a stranglehold.
It is her absence in Kluang which is more telling.
While Wong and her party’s campaigning strategy is of no direct interest to me, it does make me question what kind of MP I want to represent me.
Do I want someone who’s very much on the ground attending to constituency woes like potholes, flooding or the local economy, or someone who is hardly on the ground but can speak up in Parliament?
To be honest, Wong, like most of her fellow former MPs from the DAP, is not very much an on-the-ground type; it’s just that some of the issues they raise, like racial inequality and corruption, can stir sentiments.
And the DAP has capitalised on this over the decades much to its advantage, culminating in its victory in 42 parliamentary seats in 2018 and its entry into Putrajaya.
But as a long-time Kluang resident, I sometimes wonder how much more we want our sentiments articulated in Parliament and at what costs this has on our communal well-being.
Local woes unattended
Rapid growth in Kluang over the years has seen the town’s development becoming more complex. Traffic woes, income inequality and youth unemployment, for example, are areas that need a local Yang Berhormat (YB) to be very much on the ball.
It’s one thing to draft a media statement calling for the Human Resources Ministry to provide more jobs for the youth – it’s another to roll up one’s sleeves and get one’s hands dirty on the nuts and bolts of dealing with actual cases of unemployment in the constituency.
The DAP has a habit of switching their candidates in seats like some kind of political musical chairs: the previous DAP MP for Kluang was born in Kuala Lumpur and stood in Bukit Bendera, Penang, before moving to Kluang for one term and then transferred to Ayer Hitam where he lost and is now vying for the Iskandar Puteri seat.
It’d be difficult to build local connections and understand their sentiments when one is a “roving lawmaker”.
Wong’s current main opponent is Barisan Nasional’s (BN) Gan Ping Sieu who was born and bred in Kluang with deep family roots in the town’s political scene, including an uncle who was the ex-MP here.
To me, the battle in Kluang during this general election is one for the town’s soul. It begs the question of the kind of MP we want to represent us.
Perhaps this question can be asked in many other seats, especially urban ones.
And we voters have to seek deep into ourselves and confront some uncomfortable realities to answer this. – Nov 13, 2022
Timothy Lam
Kluang
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
