KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 7 — An inscription on a monument in Malacca describes how important the port city was to Europe in the 16th century: “Whoever holds Malacca, holds the throat of Venice”. Four hundred years later, the same could be said of Selangor and its relation to Putrajaya.In May, Barisan Nasional supremo Datuk Seri Najib Razak told a gathering in the Selangor capital, Shah Alam, that the coalition must win the state back “with any weapon”.
Besides being the country’s richest state, a quarter of Selangor’s population are migrants as far as Perlis, Sabah and Kelantan. The money and the ideas that gestate in the Klang Valley are taken back to the most remote corners of Malaysia where they can be translated into votes.
It is why Pakatan Rakyat (PR) activists are passing out packets of propaganda to youths and families travelling back to their kampungs so that the pact’s message gets spread far and wide.
“One of the ways we get old folks in the kampung to support us is to get our supporters, who work in the Klang Valley, to persuade their parents and relatives when they balik kampung,” said Rosli Md Nor, a PAS activist in northern Johor when talking about strategy in rural areas.
Political odds-makers like to claim that the PR can still retain Selangor. Their arguments are based on the assumption that the more urbanised a state, the more its residents have access to new ideas, hence the more pliable they are to PR propaganda.
read more at TheMalaysianInsider.com
