HOPELESS CAUSE TO HOPEFUL WIN

9 May 2018 will live forever in the minds of Malaysians as the day we thought would never come—and yet it did. It was the black swan of black swans; the perfect storm of perfect storms.

Going into the campaign, no one thought that I would win in Lembah Pantai. From the outset, the odds looked stacked heavily against me:

• • The incumbent, Nurul Izzah Anwar, had vacated the seat, and Barisan Nasional (BN) was playing it as though she was “running away” in fear;

• • The government had just completed a redelineation exercise, blatantly gerrymandering Lembah Pantai such that: two key areas that previously supported Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), namely, Brickfields and Jalan Puchong, were carved away to other constituencies; and about 8,000 police votes in Bukit Aman, which is seen to be traditionally a BN vote bank, were carved in;

• • I was up against Raja Nong Chik, an experienced UMNO “warlord” who was once a federal minister;

• • I was a political “novice”, having never run in an election before;

• • PKR's traditional ally, Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), was running against both Pakatan Harapan (PH) and BN, which meant the Malay vote was split.

In this light, it is not difficult to see how I was the “dark horse” in this fight.

Yet all of these factors combined to become the perfect smokescreen, giving the impression that Lembah Pantai was a walkover for BN— thereby enabling my team and me to operate as political underdogs.

Knowing that we had nothing to lose, we ran a “guerilla-style” campaign, offering myself as an upstart and “clean-slate” candidate in direct contrast to BN's Raja Nong Chik. We created huge posters (some as large as the sides of buildings) unlike any seen before; we challenged BN to a debate (which they obviously refused to attend); we even made a video that featured me in Gol dan Gincu, a popular TV series that I had acted in many years ago. I suppose all of these got people talking, on top of the general sentiment favouring PH.