COMMENT Kampung Melayu Majidee, located in central Johor Baru on the route to Kota Tinggi, has long been an Umno stronghold that has invariably thrown its support behind the BN candidate for Parliament representing the state capital.

But that BN-favouring pattern has not been reflexive because when their perennial preference for MP and current incumbent, Shahrir Abdul Samad, entered a phase of open rebellion against Umno 25 years ago, the electorate there split their votes between him and his BN challenger in a by-election that Shahrir won in stirring fashion, an indication that Kg Majidee's voters could not be taken for granted.

However, Shahrir did not sustain his iconoclasm for long, drifting in and out of that mood over the years, a square peg in the round hole of Umno conformism, while Kg Majidee's voters, besides that one instance in the 1988 by-election when they did not vote as a bloc, gave only one other example of their capacity to listen to an alternate voice...