GEORGE TOWN, April 18 — Five years ago, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak pledged to build 9,999 units of affordable housing in the Air Putih constituency in hopes of winning over voters in the predominantly ethnic Chinese area.

Air Putih is caretaker Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng’s constituency, a DAP stronghold after the party’s landslide victory back in 2008.

Despite Barisan Nasional’s (BN) promise of affordable homes in a state known for highly inflated housing prices, Lim easily defended his seat with an even larger majority (7,744 votes) as compared to 2008 (4,061-vote majority).

This time around, BN component party MCA, which will field a candidate to challenge Lim, aims to focus on local issues to gain voters’ support.

MCA Bukit Bendera division chairman Tang Heap Seng said they will look into issues that affect the constituents such as traffic congestion, floods and cleanliness.

"This is a chief minister’s constituency so his performance as an assemblyman here should have been A+ as compared to other constituencies, but this was not the case,” he said.

Air Putih is a recent constituency that was carved out in 2004 after a redelineation exercise and was held by MCA back then.

Tang admitted that it will be a tough challenge for MCA to go up against a top DAP leader, but hoped this time around MCA could at least gain more votes compared to 2013.

MCA’s young and relatively new candidate at the time, Tan Ken Keong, only managed to garner 1,882 votes in 2013, which was just 16 per cent of the total votes cast; while in 2008, MCA’s Tan Yok Cheng managed to garner only 2,540 votes, which was about 27 per cent of the total votes cast.

"We have to be practical, we know we won’t be able to win the seat back, but we aim to at least increase our number of votes to about 3,000, higher than in 2008,” he said in an interview with Malay Mail.

There are about 12,752 voters in the constituency that consists mainly of housing estates with the busy Jalan Air Itam snaking its way through to the popular tourist destination, Penang Hill.

Tang said it is possible that some voters, who are unhappy with the Pakatan Harapan (PH) administration due to the worsening flood issue, could possibly return to BN.

"So, we believe that we will be able to increase our votes from 2013, especially when our team has been working hard on the ground for the last two years,” he said.

He said the PH administration has had 10 years for the people to evaluate its efficiency in running the state.

"Now, people can compare their 10 years to the ones before that and draw their own conclusions,” he said.

Though BN managed to retain 10 state seats in Penang in 2013, three of its components, Gerakan, MCA and MIC, failed to recapture any.

This time around, Tang said they have a sliver of hope as some voters have indicated that they are unhappy with Lim’s way of managing the state.

Tang, who is also Penang MCA secretary, said they hope to recapture at least one seat in Penang.

"Of course, we aim to win back all our 10 seats in Penang, but realistically, we are hoping to at least win one seat so that we can be the checks and balances in the legislative assembly,” he said.

Tang said MCA and BN’s strategy this time around will be vastly different from that of 2013.

There will not be any lavish free dinner events to try and sway voters as seen in 2013, he said.

Tang believed such events will only backfire on MCA, as they did back in 2013, so the party will revert to the old-fashioned way of reaching out to voters directly through community work.

"We hope the people will give us a chance again as we have many fresh and young faces who are ready to serve them,” he said.

BN has yet to officially announce its candidates for the general election, but Tang is tipped to be going up against the DAP incumbent in Air Putih.

Tang, who was a municipal councillor in 2004, was uncertain of his candidacy, but said he would leave it up to the leadership to make the announcement.

The 14th general election will be held on May 9 after an 11-day campaign period that will kick off after nominations on April 28.