Campaigning for the Rompin parliamentary by-election appears to be muted without many posters and flags seen as the constituency has a large area, said Umno vice-president Hishammuddin Tun Hussein.

 

 He said it was difficult to swarm the area with posters and flags as Rompin spans over 5,390.2 sq kilometres and encompasses three state seats, namely Bukit Ibam, Muadzam Shah and Tioman.

 

 "The sporadic Barisan Nasional (BN) flags seen along the roads in Rompin district is not due the lack of effort but because the district is physically huge. It is as big as Melaka and Negeri Sembilan combined.  

 

 "We have put up posters and flags but the district is very big, so the flags appear sparse," he told reporters after meeting Royal Malaysian Air Force Squadron 322 members at Bukit Ibam near Rompin yesterday.

 

 Hishammuddin was commenting on the Rompin campaign which appeared to have lost the air of festivity in poster fights between BN and PAS for the by-election.

 

 As a result of the situation, Hishammuddin said BN was forced to use a different approach to reach out to Rompin residents by going to the ground in face-to-face contact with voters in the district aggressively.

 

 Hishammuddin, who is BN Rompin by-election director of operations, said his team did not take the by-election lightly, and in fact it is a challenge to the BN machinery to increase the party's majority in each state seat as directed by BN deputy chairman Muhyiddin Yassin.

 

 Muhyiddin, who is also Deputy Prime Minister, had set the key performance indicator (KPI) to increase the majority in each of the 38 polling in the parliamentary constituency after the nomination of candidate on Wednesday.

 

 He said every vote is important to ensure the continuity of socio-economic development in the constituency which had been carried out by its former MP Jamaluddin Jarjis.

 

 In the 13th general election, Jamaluddin retained the seat he had held for almost six terms after he defeated former PAS Dewan Muslimat (women's wing) chief Nuridah Mohd Salleh by a 15,114 vote majority.

 

 The Rompin by-election, which was held following the death of Jamaluddin Jarjis in a helicopter crash in Semenyih, Selangor on April 4, is a straight fight between BN's Datuk Hasan Arifin and Nazri Ahmad of PAS.

 

 The constituency has 19,561 voters in the state seat of Bukit Ibam, 17,394 voters in Muadzam Shah and Tioman (16,339 voters).

 

 - Bernama