Sometimes first impressions are all what a voter ever gets in a by-election. The candidate, having to cover every nook and cranny in the constituency, will get to have only one look at a place and its people, make instant contact and then it's off to another stop.  

Whirl is all, so trying to convert a fleeting moment into a lasting impression would confirm the panache of a formidable campaigner.

normala sudirman at dap dinner in tenang Normala Sudirman, the former teacher who is the PAS candidate for the Tenang by-election, dropped by at the opening of the DAP's operations centre at Tenang Stesen yesterday evening.

The centre is located in a row of shophouses in a lane across from the Multi-Purpose Hall in this obscure stop on the approach to Labis town.

You know a place is insignificant in Malaysia when the Multi-Purpose Hall is the most prominent building in the vicinity.

So when Normala, now fast being referred to as ‘Cikgu Mala’, told the knot of about 200 people who had gathered on the street in front, that she had shopped with her teacher husband along the row in the past, the crowd craned to hear her above the strain of an inadequate public address system.

tenang by election 200111 dap operation room launching This wasn't going to be easy because Normala had been preceded to the speaker's lectern by campaign veterans Lim Kit Siang, M Kulasegaran and Dr Boo Cheng Hau of DAP, Dr Siti Mariah Mahmud of PAS and Chua Jui Meng of PKR – by no means, a small supporting cast.

But Normala was undaunted by the luster of her supporting retinue and went on to make the kind of instant contact no impressive talk about issues of national import tends to in a small town.

When Normala followed up with ‘Xin Nian Quai Le' (‘Happy New Year’), the crowd knew that this was a candidate after their heart and quickly settled to hearing what she had to say further.

Puny before the might of BN

Then you knew why PAS dipped into its reservoir of Wanita talent to pluck a candidate for trial in an Umno bastion.

That impression was instantiated by the perceptible nod of approval and widening smile of Siti Mariah, the PAS MP for Kota Raja, as the latter – a veteran campaigner compared to novice Normala – listened in obvious satisfaction to what her PAS neophyte was saying.

NONE This was that in the past, the different races in Malaysia gathered for occasions such the one she was now addressing in single race file – Malays in their bailiwicks, Chinese in their kongsi, and Indians in their temples. `

But since March 2008, Normala said she observed, a change had occurred under the aegis of Pakatan Rakyat where the people of Malaysia were unafraid to come together to listen to the ethnically diverse leaders of Pakatan.

She described the change as a happy augury for a new Malaysia whose beginnings in Johor, she said, would be enhanced if Tenang supplied the fifth Pakatan representative to Johor's current four reps (two PAS and two DAP) in its state assembly.

NONE By investing the commonplace with national significance, by telling humdrum folk that they were important despite their being puny before the might of the BN, Normala told the people that the only thing they had to fear was fear itself.

She rounded off her speech by saying that the people had to put aside any feelings of helplessness and join in the country's gathering wave of change.

The cheering at the finish of her speech, warmer than for the speakers that preceded her, suggested that ‘Cikgu Mala’ had used her fleeting moment at Tenang Stesen's DAP operations centre  well.