SV will surely retain Sg Siput

The article below was reported in the Star today (Feb 15).

Even an army will not stop me, says Samy Vellu

KUALA LUMPUR: Even an army will not be able to stop MIC president Datuk Seri S Samy Vellu from defending his Sungai Siput seat.

"An army can come but I know how to fight it out," he said of reports that the Opposition could be fielding a candidate against him.

"I will defend woh foong (Cantonese for Sungai Siput)," said Samy Vellu, who has held the seat since 1974.

He said he had the full support of the various communities in Sungai Siput and that he had built Tamil, Chinese and Malay schools, hospitals and community colleges in the constituency.

"The people in Sungai Siput are with me. They are my strength. I have strived for them and served them.

"I have made Sungai Siput a very beautiful town. Not only that, I have solved every problem of the community. I have made Sungai Siput a really good place to live in," he said.

Samy Vellu was confident there would be no Indian vote swing away from the Barisan Nasional.

"The Indian voters are all at home and not in the streets," he said referring to the recent Hindraf protest.

On the Barisan supreme council meeting yesterday, he said president Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi gave a lot of advice to members.

"We will abide by a policy which is unity in the coalition. The Barisan must be united to gain victory."

I have few problems with SV confident talk here, especially this particular paragraph:

"The people in Sungai Siput are with me. They are my strength. I have strived for them and served them."

Let’s look at the 2004 results for Sungai Siput:

• There were a total of 46,783 voters

• 19,029 voted for SV

• a combined figure of about 11,400 voted for the two opposition candidates

• and there were 927 spoilt votes

• on top of that only 30,806 people turned out to vote that day

That means, of a total of 46,783 voters in Sungai Siput, only 19,029 voters support SV. The remaining 27,754 (more than 50 percent) either didn’t support him or had no reason to turn up to vote for him! That does not make him a very popular MP at all.

OK lets leave that aside as it doesn’t matter at all. That’s why SV is so confident.

We now look at his voter breakdown.

Malays make 31.4 percent of the total voters here, followed by Chinese at 41.4 percent and Indians at 22.5 percent.

Let’s assume that after all that he had done to enrich the Malays, he gets the wholesome vote (translates to about 14,100 votes), which he always does.

His problem would be in getting in the Chinese votes and the Indian votes.

Looking at the Indian votes, they only constitute 22 percent of 47,000 – which means roughly about 12,000 voters. And Chinese votes stand at about 18,800.

That means SV would have to get the whole of Malay votes and at least 50 percent of the Chinese and the Indian votes respectively to win with a slight majority.

I am not sure about the Chinese votes. He might even get more than the 50 percent. After all he has brought development to the constituency. And the Chinese are NOT angry with MIC.

But the same can’t be said about the Indian voters. PSM, the party which might oppose SV, has done extensive grassroots work in Sungai Siput. Even if the entire Indian voters cast the votes for the PSM candidate, he would still fall short of beating SV.

Maybe SV is misreading that ground sentiment by openly saying that “the Indian voters are all at home and not in the streets.”

Even if that is not the case, the MIC president is not in a position to lose the election. Simply because he does not need the Indian votes to be retained.

All he has to do is take care of the Malay populace and the Chinese businesses, and he is on his way to the Parliament once again, most pleasantly on his 72^nd birthday.

As for the Indians, they can remain to be angry, but perhaps without being able to do anything concrete! However their protest vote would surely send the message across!