S'WAK POLLS Wearing the familiar BN-blue shirt, the 61-year-old Marudi candidate Penguang Manggil makes his appearance at a longhouse in Bakong.

About 1,000 people crammed into the longhouse’s common area to see him and the Deputy Minister of Rural and Regional Development Alexander Nanta Linggi, who is campaigning for him.

The people cheered at their speeches, and those of the local community leaders who spoke before them. Despite the strong show of support, there is a look of seriousness in Penguang’s face.

Penguang is one of 229 candidates vying for a seat in Sarawak’s state legislative assembly.

Unlike many of those candidates, however, Penguang is also facing an opponent that won’t even be appearing on the ballot papers.

“It should have been plain sailing,” he said during an interview later, “if not for the interference of Parti Tenaga Rakyat Sarawak (Teras) members.”

Penguang is contesting against PKR’s Elia Bit and the independent Loius Jalong for the Marudi seat.

All three candidates are making their maiden appearance on the political arena.

The constituency has been held for four terms by the state caretaker Assistant Minister of Public Utilities (Water Supply) Sylvester Entri Muran (photo), since 1996.

Sylvester had been a member of the Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP), but left the party in May 2014 to join its splinter party Teras, which is considered a BN-friendly party.

While some Teras incumbents got to contest in the state election as BN direct candidates, this was not the case for Sylvester.

He still holds significant influence in Marudi, and it is understood that some of this supporters will be voting for PKR in protest for not fielding Sylvester.

The phenomenon has even caught the attention of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.

“Don’t think that if our candidate is not contesting, we won’t support the new BN candidate. We must support whoever is chosen by BN.

“That is what loyalty to BN is about. We wear the BN shirt, so the heart must be with BN as well… don’t wear the shirt but the heart is elsewhere. The shirt and the heart must both be with BN,” Najib urged during a campaign stop in Marudi on April 30, according to a Berita Harian report.

On the opposite side of the electoral race, Elia is riding on the discontent over Penguang’s nomination to reach out to more voters.

Longhouse chiefs and villagers who are aligned to Sylvester have been asking to see her, whereas she would otherwise be snubbed.

For Elia, a 28-year-old who had just completed her Masters studies in information warfare recently, it is awkward to be told that she is their second choice, or that she is merely the instrument of their revenge.

Nevertheless, it is still a rare opportunity to tell them what PKR stands for. And she sees change coming.

“I can see that they start thinking like this, because of the way they speak,” she told Malaysiakini in an interview.

“When we gave them the chance to speak in our first meeting, they were very, very rough. Full of anger and bitterness.

“They talked. They cried. They shouted. They talked about how disappointed they were. They shouted about bringing down SPDP and those kind of things,” she said.

She said she merely listened and acknowledged their disappointment on the first meeting, but started to talk about PKR’s campaign messages and its achievements in Selangor on subsequent meetings.

There, the tone amongst Sylvester’s supporters begin to change. The disappointment is still present, but they also begin to talk about PKR’s virtues.

“Of course they would say that Slyvester Entri is also good, but now they say that PKR is also a good party. We can trust them.

“We start to have that kind of momentum already. They are starting to open their eyes,” she said.

To help garner support, she is also pledging that the present community leaders would be retained if she is elected.

This is in contrast to Penguang’s approach of pledging that he would endorse whoever is elected by the villagers themselves.

In Sarawak, community leaders such as longhouse chiefs (tuai rumah), village chiefs (ketua kampung), penghulu, pemanca and temenggung are appointed by the state government.

In practice however, the government merely appoints whoever is endorsed by the local state assemblyperson.

This can result in tension and conflict if the post is given to a pro-BN appointee who does not receive the support of the villagers. Sometimes, the discontented villagers would even go to the extent of physically ‘breaking’ a longhouse in two.

When queried, Elia (photo) declined to hazard a guess on how many of Sylvester’s supporters can she draw to her side by polling day on May 7.

“People are too unpredictable,” she said.

She won’t have much ground to cover, however.

During the 2011 state election, Sylvester won a convincing victory despite a four-corner fight by polling 3,202 votes ahead of his closest contender, PKR’s Gerang Dagom.

When the 2013 general election came about, polling is held at the parliamentary level. In Marudi, that means constituents would only be voting to decide on the Baram parliamentary seat.

In that race, the then SPDP candidate for Baram, Anyi Ngau, won only by a slim majority of 194 votes against PKR’s veteran anti-Baram Dam campaigner Roland Engan.

Based on Malaysiakini’s analysis of the 2013 results, BN support in Marudi was only 885 votes ahead of PKR’s at the time (out of a total 9,538 votes).

This analysis accounts for some of the minor changes to Marudi from last year’s redelineation exercise, but not the handful of advance and postal voters present.

Marudi will be heading to the polls this Saturday with a total of 10,040 voters.

Despite having only a precarious edge over his PKR opponent, Penguang is still confident that he will emerge victorious, even if the potential sabotage means he would have to work hard until the campaign period ends.

He claimed that since September last year, almost 3,000 former Teras and PKR members have joined SPDP.

Penguang has been mixing up his campaign with both high-profile events like the one with Alexander yesterday and the one with Najib last week, and low-key meet-and-greets with villagers and chieftains at their longhouses.

He is there to speak on BN achievements and promises, as well as his own promises to abide by the will of the people in endorsing community leaders, and ensuring that there will be no disparity in allocations provided to the longhouses between his supporters and non-supporters.

He is also there to dispel some myths that had been making their rounds in the constituency even before he was selected as the BN candidate.

One such myth, he told Malaysiakini, is the allegation that SPDP is no longer with BN while Teras has become a BN component party, whereas the reverse is true.

This is why he has been going all out with the BN-blue and making public appearances with the ruling coalition’s heavyweights, he explained.

Another myth is that Sarawak caretaker Chief Minister Adenan Satem had purportedly promised on several occasions that Sylvester will be running for his fifth term in office in Marudi.

Some villagers speaking on the condition of anonymity had told Malaysiakini they are voting for PKR because Adenan had broken this promise.

However, Penguang explained that this had been a misinterpretation.

He said on one occasion, Adenan had in fact said that Sylvester was considered a “potential candidate”. On the other occasion, the chief minister said Sylvester was considered “winnable”.

“Tan Sri Adenan never said Sylvester is the candidate […] but of course they (Sylvester and his supporters) twisted the facts and kept saying that Adenan has already announced, when in fact he hasn’t announced,” he said.

When Penguang was finally named as candidate, it backfired on both BN and Sylvester, he said.

Nevertheless, he said he had been visiting various longhouses throughout Marudi since September last year, with 82 longhouses visited as of the time of the interview yesterday afternoon.

He said the support he received was good, and indeed, the audience at his functions readily cheered for him during the speeches.

“With the support I (have) received and the responses that I have, I am very confident. It is only a matter of the (margin of) majority (over the other candidates).

“Hopefully, those people won’t be confused anymore,” he said.