PETALING JAYA, April 28 — Malaysians were today urged to return to their hometowns to participate in the 14th general election (GE14), with songs that riffed off classics Balik Kampung and Rasa Sayang.
A group of supporters of first-time election candidate Maria Chin Abdullah spontaneously sung lines from the two popular songs with modified lyrics calling Malaysians home despite the midweek polling date of May 9.
Activist Meera Samanther said the supporters from the Joint Action Group for Gender Equality (JAG) had created the songs on the spot.
“The song… we created it just now... And then started singing,” the vice-president of Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) told Malay Mail when met here outside the nomination centre for Petaling Jaya.
As they waited for the nomination process to end, the group taught each other how to say “return home to vote” in Tamil and Mandarin.
They sang “Balik Undi” (“come back to vote” and also “Rasa sayang hey, rasa sayang sayang hey, balik kampung undi, rasa sayang sayang hey”.
Meera said they sang the songs as the campaigning period had yet to start, and they could not campaign for Maria yet.
She said they were here “to support Maria... who has worked with us for many years, she’s one of the early activists and we were part and parcel of the same group working for the same issues”. Maria was formerly the executive director of the women’s right group Empower.
Meera said the JAG group of supporters wanted to “get the hype up” for the Undi Rabu initiative, saying: “It’s a carnival atmosphere.”
Maria recently gave up her position as election watchdog Bersih 2.0 chairman and declared that she would be contesting GE14.
She is expected to be nominated as Pakatan Harapan’s candidate for the Petaling Jaya parliamentary seat.
