Add Category
Updated
A couple of hours' drive south of Kuala Lumpur, volunteers for Malaysia's ruling coalition are going door to door with a message about the nation's leader, Najib Razak.
"We have a Prime Minister who is very humble, very relaxed and composed," said Yennie, a local resident aged in her 50s.
"He responds without getting emotional and he has proven that all his efforts fulfil the people's needs. And everything he has done reaches us, including people at the bottom.
"So we are happpy. Why do we want to oppose him?"
Malaysia's opposition parties, which have coalesced around 92-year-old former leader Dr Mahathir Mohammad, are strong in Kuala Lumpur but have little chance of winning rural districts outside the capital.
A brazen gerrymander favours rural voters, opposition MP Ong Kian Ming said.
"My constituency is the largest constituency in peninsular Malaysia with over 178,000 voters. As a comparison the smallest constituency has 29,000 voters. The number of voters in my constituency is five times larger," he said.
The 10 biggest seats are all held by the opposition, while Malaysia's 10 smallest seats are held by ruling coalition Barisan Nasional (BN).
"It is something that is tremendously unfair. The electoral commission has packed many opposition supporters into a small number of mega constituencies like mine," Mr Ong said.
Rural voters say the Malaysian economy is strong and they are better off than they have ever been. They are concerned about financial issues like wages and the impact of Malaysia's GST, not about the issues that attract international attention like corruption or a crackdown on dissent.
The BN supporters the ABC spoke to said they were not convinced about the corruption scandal that has dogged Mr Najib since 2015, and led to the detention of an ABC Four Corners crew in 2016.
The US Department of Justice says $4.65 billion was misappropriated from Malaysia's state investment fund 1MDB.
Hundreds of millions of dollars from the fund ended up in the personal bank account of Mr Najib. The Prime Minister later claimed that cash was the gift of an unnamed Saudi billionaire.
"I say it is false until proven to be true," Yennie said.
"There's no wrong doings, there's no proof," fellow BN supporter Noor Be said.
Malaysian authorities have arrested and charged critics who dare mention the 1MDB scandal, including graphic artist Fahmi Reza.
A new "fake news" law introduced before the election could be used to prosecute anyone who links Mr Najib to the 1MDB corruption.
BN supporters say they are not concerned about the legislation.
"Our Prime Minister is a strong advocate against false news," Ms Be said.
"In Islam, sharing false news is sinful which leads to bad circumstances and eventual hell."
Topics: government-and-politics, politics-and-government, corruption, elections, malaysia
First posted