Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Campaign only to where cars can go, OK?

The end of the road for cars...

..the beginning of the road to Sarawak's vast interior!


I came across a party chief in a certain town who told me that his team will set a limit to campaign to where cars can reach because his party members cannot go further than that. I was stunned because there are many constituencies in Sarawak where the car's reach is only a minority of the constituencies! Beyond that the campaigners need to walk, take boat, or if they afford, fly in! Of course not many campaigners, except those from ruling parties, can afford to fly in with a helicopter. So they need to walk, hike, and take boats to those outlying areas where the voters are scattered. In researching about Bengoh constituency for making the film we can confirm that Bengoh is one such constituency! While some folks may say that the voters in each kampong (village) is too small for the campaigners to give them much priority the truth is-the combined number of voters in all these kampongs are significant!



Camerawoman Niloh is ready for a solo trip to the interior!


Pushing this argument further the small towns in such constituencies may have more voter concentration-and easier to campaign to, the voters may not be the crucial voters! The candidate who can reach farther into the interior will have an edge over those who set the reach of cars as their campaign limit!   

But of course the campaigners cannot leave their campaigning to the official campaign period of 10 days if they want to cover the interior. They need to start early so that all voters are given exposures to all candidates and parties.Only then there is a real fight and voters afforded real choices! In another word where the car stop is actually where the real `battle field' starts!For a real campaigner he/she will need to go to where the voters are, not limit his/her visit to where it is convenient to him/her!

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