KUCHING:
It is the Ground Zero of Kuching, plagued by floods and eyed by five candidates
in one of the most watched battles of the Sarawak election.
Walk
around the semi-urban seat of Batu Kitang and someone will pour out their
sorrow about their problems with floods.
One
grocery shop owner recounted how she spent the first day of Chinese New Year
scrambling to move her goods to the second floor as the water level rose.
The
70-year-old grocer, who declined to be named, lives near Sungai Sarawak Kiri
with her younger sister.
“Floods
are a common occurrence here. We have learnt to live with it. We are not rich.
And this has been our home for the past 50 years.”
Batu
Kitang is a new seat carved out of DAP-held constituencies – Kota Sentosa and
Batu Kawah – won respectively by Chong Chieng Jen and Christina Chiew in 2011.
It is one
of the five seats in this state election that are seeing a five-cornered fight.
The other
four seats are Bukit Semuja near Serian, Jepak in Bintulu and the remaining two
in Sibu (Dudong and Bawang Assan).
Voters
fed-up with the flood problems may hold it against Barisan Nasional’s Lo Khere
Chiang, who has been the Padawan Municipal Council chairman for the past six
years.
But he
may see his chances improving since DAP and PKR are challenging each other here.
DAP has
fielded its sole Malay candidate Abdul Aziz Isa, 26, to face PKR’s Voon Shiak
Ni, 46.
Abdul
Aziz has been quite a fiery speaker on his ceramah rounds, rousing the crowd
with talk about GST and oil royalty and drawing cheers with his usage of Mandarin.
Voon, a
lawyer, has been on the ground for the past 10 years and is known for having
set up 13 neighbourhoods’ crime watch.
A hawker,
known only as Li, said Abdul Aziz was not well known enough by the people here
to snatch a victory come polling day.
“Voon may
stand a good chance,” claimed Li, 67.
Batu
Kitang has 17,494 voters; mostly Chinese (54.8%), followed by Malay/Melanau
(20.1%) and Bidayuh (14.5%).
Read more at
https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2016/05/03/batu-kitang-in-the-eye-of-the-storm-semiurban-new-seat-is-one-of-five-seeing-a-tight-fivecornered-fi/#05ieQZRS61CE0yXQ
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