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| Update BN not ready to call a victory |
| Written by Sharon Tan | |||
| Thursday, 09 July 2009 15:24 | |||
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"Every vote will be crucial," he said at a press conference at the BN operations centre today. He said there was an increase in support for BN on a daily basis and the party machinery had been ordered to go all out to canvass for support by getting close to the people and explain to them the BN success stories. "However, our votes are not enough yet to win," said Mustapa, adding that Manek Urai was a PAS stronghold. He said the late assemblyman Ismail Yaacob was an influential figure but BN had an advantage since PAS' candidate Mohd Fauzi Abdullah was not as influential. While he refused to project the percentage of support for BN, Mustapa said it had managed to reduce the percentage of fence-sitters from 15% to less than 10%. "Hopefully by Sunday or Monday, we should be able to reduce it to less than 5%," he said. Mustapa also hoped that the government's scrapping of teaching of Mathematics and Science in English would help to sway some votes to BN as there were many teachers opposed to the policy. On the Kelantan oil royalty issue, he hoped that Petronas would be able to reply to Kelantan's claim on oil royalty by tomorrow. PAS has been drumming up the issue since the start of the by-election campaign. The state is claiming RM1 billion in royalty from the oil extraction at the joint development area by Malaysia and Thailand. "PAS has its own view but we are firm in this. Kelantan has no right to the royalty. We are not a cowboy country. We have laws and regulations and we have the Federal Constitution. What we do, we will abide by the laws. "We hope that when Petronas issues its statement, it would once and for all kill this issue," he said, adding that BN's supporters were not affected by this unlike the fanatical PAS supporters who followed their leaders whether right or wrong. Asked on PAS harping on the issue that BN was belittling its candidate Mohd Fauzi by calling him a "peraih ikan" ("fish seller") instead of a fish wholesaler, Mustapa said he had never put him down. "Everyone has his own strengths. Anyone can contest. But what we are saying is that our candidate is a better candidate. "We want someone who is educated. He is also good but our candidate is better and more capable with his education background. We believe that he is more able to help the people here. Education is not everything but our candidate also has the experience," he added.
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