Dyana's Shortlived Fame

TO DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang, Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud's candidacy in Saturday's by-election in Teluk Intan was a brilliant idea to give a semblance of Malayness to the party's Chinese DNA.

It is a decision that Kit Siang is likely to regret making although he won't publicly admit it.

For the past two weeks during campaigning for the parliamentary seat, Dyana was the pretty face of Malaysian politics and she was popular with press especially the online portals. But her fame was shortlived.

After losing the parliamentary seat by a majority of over 7,000 votes in the general election just a year ago, the Barisan Nasional represented by Gerakan, wrested it back from DAP. Although it was by merely a 238-vote margin, it was a huge swing never before seen in any general or by-election, especially within just a year.

DAP's sense of buoyancy and its confidence that it would retain the seat even if it fielded a young Malay woman was boosted by the notion that this was the way forward for Malaysian politics as the political tsunami in the last two general elections was triggered by Generation Y.

Most observers, too, had predicted an easy win for DAP, with the by-election taking place a week after the party's overwhelming victory in the Bukit Gelugor by-election. And especially against the Barisan Nasional candidate from Gerakan, the party that was virtually wiped out in last year's general election.

To them it counted little that Dyana was a political novice contesting against the Gerakan president himself, Datuk Mah Siew Keong, who at 53 was twice her age.
Mah had also lost twice in Teluk Intan previously although it is his home town.

Despite initial reservations and against the backdrop of Gerakan's humiliation in the last general election, the choice of Mah has turned out to be a masterstroke.
But as the election campaign wore on, it became apparent that an upset win by Barisan was on the cards, especially with Dyana's obvious fumblings and blunders in dealing with issues.

It was the double-edged sword of hudud and Perkasa that did her in.

For a Muslim to come out openly to say that she's against hudud, the Islamic penal code, is surely a no-no among Malay voters.

There must have been plenty of PAS supporters in Teluk Intan who would have voted for her had she only kept her mouth shut on such a religiously sensitive issue. Who is she anyway to oppose hudud?

A columnist from The Star, Joceline Tan, wrote on Monday that Dyana's stand on the issue had offended PAS supporters and some of them had sent text messages, attributing the loss to her objection to hudud and implying that she had been punished not only by voters but by Allah.

I cannot put it better than Joceline.

Another fire the young woman had to put out was on Perkasa, the Malay NGO, of which her mother is a member.

As Joceline put it, "DAP had demonised Perkasa and condemned anyone remotely connected to Datuk Ibrahim Ali (who is Perkasa president)."

A picture of Dyana and her mother with Ibrahim at a Perkasa event also went viral on the internet.

While the Malay voters who had wanted to vote for her didn't do so because of what she said about hudud, the Chinese similarly felt the same because of their repugnance towards Perkasa.

The low voter turnout, only 66.7% as against 80.7% a year ago, also showed that many who took issue with her on these two matters simply stayed at home during the weekend instead of troubling themselves by going to the polling stations.

And why were there so many spoilt votes, one might ask, which at 543 is bigger than the Barisan's majority.

The turnout was definitely disappointingly small for an urban constituency such as Teluk Intan but it was not unexpected.

Many outstation voters did not think it worthwhile to return to their hometown because it was only a by-election where the stakes are not as high as during the general election.

Political analyst Prof Dr James Chin of Monash University of Malaysia explained that normally those living outstation need to have much stronger reasons to return to places where they are registered as voters in a by-election, unlike in a general election.

He said voters take a general election more seriously because they realise there could be a change of government.

I found it amusing when DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng blamed the party's defeat on "voters intimidated by the threats of development politics and gangster politics".

Since when has development politics not been part and parcel of Malaysian elections? By the way, who's playing gangster politics?

And when Guan Eng said the party had no regrets in fielding Dyana – clearly the choice of his father Kit Siang as she is his political secretary – I don't know how many would believe him.

By Azman Ujang, The Sun Daily