Clash of heavyweights in Arau

KANGAR: The Arau parliamentary seat is the focus of the 14th General Election (GE14) when it involves two prominent figures namely incumbent Datuk Seri Dr Shahidan Kassim, who is also former Perlis mentri besar and PAS spiritual leader Hashim Jasin.
Although the Arau parliamentary seat is actually a three-cornered contest among BN, PAS and PKR candidates, but Datuk Dr Rahman Daud of PKR is being overshadowed by the popularity of the two big names.
Hashim has his own record of winning the Arau parliamentary by-election in 1998 with a majority of 1,323 votes, defeating Shahidan's brother Datuk Ismail Kassim, but BN wrested the seat in the 1999 general election and has been defending the seat since then.
In GE13 five years ago, Shahidan won the seat after beating Datuk Dr Haron Din, who was then PAS deputy spiritual leader with a majority of 1,371 votes.
Many predict that this time the battle between BN and PAS for the seat is quite intense because of Hashim's re-appearance as he now holds a fairly influential position in his party while Shahidan, who is also caretaker Minister in the Prime Minister's Department has a strong influence there.
Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) political analyst Md Shukri Shuib said Hashim's success in 1998, was merely due to "good fortune".
"The atmosphere at that time was very different, BN was facing internal crisis due to the weakness of its machinery. The economic crisis also had a slight influence on voters at that time.
"Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim who was the deputy prime minister at that time, had a crisis with the then prime minister (Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad), so the conclusion, Hashim won the seat in 1998 not because of his own factor," he told Bernama.
Md Shukri said Shahidan was a "champion" in Perlis who was hard to beat due to his outstanding performance coupled with the strong support from the grassroots.
In addition, Md Shukri said other factor that would ensure Arau remained as a "fixed deposit" for BN was that Perlis as a whole was not a strong target for the opposition because the state only had three parliamentary seats and was also less productive, unlike Selangor, Penang and Perak.
In contrast, UUM Institute for Malaysian Political Analysis (Mapan) director Dr Kamarul Zaman Yusof said that the Arau parliamentary seat could fall to the opposition in the GE14.
Since 1999 general election, he said the seat only involved two-cornered fights among BN and PAS candidates, but now the three-cornered contest would make the competition more open.
Meanwhile, Shahidan said he was optimistic that he could defend the Arau parliamentary seat.
The Arau parliamentary constituency has 48,740 voters who are mostly farmers. — Bernama