In a drive to win over semi-rural constituencies, PKR is enlisting the help of volunteers from urban seats to perform community service there.

Previously, PKR vice-president Rafizi Ramli said, the party lacked the money to carry out this type of work consistently and its people are also too concentrated in towns.

“For example if you want to run a futsal game. Firstly it is costly, one game costs about RM3,000 or RM4,000. And then if the same person keeps doing it every two weeks, he’d give up.

“That’s why when you have reinforcement from the cities, where they do a very specific task such as voter registration, that frees the time and resources of the local team to do a bit more of their own grassroots work.

“That’s why connecting and deploying them on the ground with very specific grassroot work - that is our strategy now,” he told reporters when met at a function in Subang last night.

He explained that in urban areas where opposition parties including PKR already have a strong foothold, the voting patterns are strongly influenced by the issues of the day and it is of less importance that voters get to meet the election candidates.

On the other extreme, voting in rural areas is driven less by issues and more by grassroots work, such as through hosting games, gotong-royong programs, free clinics and being seen by the people.

Semi-rural constituencies lie in between these two extremes.

Through such community service, Rafizi said it would also be an opportunity to uncover the issues faced by the people.

For instance, he said when the current Kelana Jaya MP Wong Chen had been canvassing votes in Bentong, he came across a village that was without water supply.

The party subsequently raised funds to provide them with water filters.

“The moment they are on the ground, they will be able to see the real issues and I think the urban volunteers are a lot more resourceful. They will be able to go back, with their ingenuity and creativity, and serve the community.

“If you do that constantly - even if you have like two community services per area per month - within 30 months we will win (the election). Because you only need about 1,000 to 1,500 votes (per seat),” he said.

Earlier, Rafizi was speaking to a group of about 50 participants for the programme, dubbed ‘Innovative Volunteerism for Keadilan’ (Invoke).

In his talk, Rafizi appeared bullish about Pakatan Harapan’s chances at the next election and claimed that the coalition only needed a vote swing of about two percent in the Malay electorate to win the majority in Parliament.

This is because there are 30 parliamentary seats that BN won in the last elections only by a small margin.

Of 30 marginal seats, 24 contested by PKR

The challenge however, is the fact that most of these seats are semi-rural or rural seats, which require people to campaign on the ground.

Rafizi added that no amount of addition support for DAP would help win control of the federal government as the party already has the support it needs.

Of the 30 marginal seats, 24 are being contested by PKR.

“That means what separates Malaysia from change is that 30 seats. PKR is going very targeted now.

“It is no longer about the big issues because I don’t think BN can defend themselves. Even if we did nothing, they would fumble every day. That’s why we are going very ‘micro’ now [...]

“But elections are not won based on sentiment, especially since sentiments usually work very well in the urban areas. But when you go to the marginal seats, the semi-rural seats and all that, it is really about what you do on the ground,” he told the participants.

He also told the participants that the Invoke programme is meant to provide an avenue for young professionals to effect change, without having to register as a party member and become embroiled in party politics.

The programme would recruit new volunteers in batches of about 40 to 50 a month, he said.