In Batu, ex-teacher Kohilan banks on former pupils’ support, ears on ground for BN win

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 17 — MIC vice-president and former teacher Datuk A. Kohilan Pillay has his work cut out for him in the Batu parliamentary seat which he is contesting for the first time but hopes to count on former students and his nine-item election manifesto to win votes.

Kohilan, who was born in nearby Batu Caves in Selangor, views himself as a local boy in Batu as he attended primary and secondary school here.

Prior to the 15th general election (GE15), Kohilan did not know he would be contesting Batu, but said he has always been familiar with the place and its residents.

“I didn’t get any hint. Of course, previously, I was in Gerakan for 28 years. This Batu is all the while a Gerakan seat. Without knowing that I’ll get a seat here, I actually always come here, mingle with my friends in Sentul Pasar.

“Somehow, I’ve been appointed to be a candidate, so I was glad that my friends are like a pillar in supporting me in winning this coming election,” he told Malay Mail when met recently at BN’s campaign base operating out of Yayasan Warisan Batu’s premises in Taman Bullion Mewah.

While he had started his teaching career as a lecturer in economics, Kohilan said he used to run a big tuition centre at his house in Batu Caves from 1992 to 2008 where he provided lessons for primary, secondary and tertiary education, saying: “Believe it or not, with 500 students, like a mini school. Most of the children, they are from here, Sentul area, from Taman Wahyu, Taman Murni, Taman Intan Baiduri, the surrounding area. Because Batu is surrounding almost two-thirds of Gombak parliamentary seat or as they call it Batu Caves.”

Kohilan said many of his former students from the tuition centre are Batu voters and said they had even made TikTok videos to promote him, noting: “So they have that kind of bonding with me, now I won’t say as teacher and student, but I call in term of friends, now they have become my friends.”

“For ceramah, they are coming, even they call me to their house to meet and greet their parents. They even tell their children, ‘Must vote for BN’, so these are the factors motivating and encouraging me from time to time,” he said.

In his previous campaign for the 2013 election in Puchong against DAP’s Gobind Singh Deo, Kohilan said he had carried out big ceramah but ended up with insufficient time to listen to residents’ problems.

As a result, he has now modified his campaign method to cover more small-scale dialogues and meet-and-greet sessions in Batu.

His daily campaign schedules in Batu are tightly packed, featuring walkabouts including visits to different schools to mingle with parents, visiting residential areas, and opting for ceramah with small groups for a more personal touch and better bonding to “capture their hearts and minds” and to get their votes.

He said his smaller dialogues might involve as little as 10 to 20 persons where he might visit an apartment block by block on different days or times to hear complaints, while he has “ceramah kelompok” or small political talks with 50 to 100 voters — sometimes organised with the help of associations or the neighbourhood watch Rukun Tetangga or other groups — where he would tell them why they should vote for BN.

For large-scale ceramah that might see a turnout of a few hundred voters and feature other speakers, he said these are usually held closer to polling day.

Party flags and banners are seen during an election campaign in Sentul, Kuala Lumpur November 11, 2022. ― Picture by Firdaus Latif

How to stand out as ‘number nine’

Saying there were too many candidates in Batu this time, Kohilan said he could not even do the usual show of fingers as candidates might do in posters, as his is number nine. He has chosen to instead spend time guiding voters — especially senior citizens — to choose his number in the ballot paper.

With Batu voters being more familiar with Pakatan Harapan’s P. Prabakaran and former two-term Batu MP Chua Tian Chang, Kohilan will be relying on the instantly recognisable BN logo of weighing scales or “dacing” as well as by touting his candidate number.

He agreed that the BN logo which is familiar is an advantage to him.

“You see, for that, I will tell them, please vote for logo ‘dacing’, No. 9 is dacing, followed by my name. So to familiarise them with No. 9, I actually came up with this manifesto, this manifesto has nine teras (cores),” he said.

For his election manifesto for Batu, Kohilan said he took six days to prepare it, incorporating promised solutions or policies for problems that he had identified from going house-to-house to Batu voters during the campaign period.

He had also engaged with Rukun Tetangga and the associations of individual blocks in apartments, and also asked the Residents Representative Councils (MPP) that liaise between DBKL and the residents, noting: “So when I met them, I said, ‘I want you to tell me what the problems are here’, so they told me all the problems. Based on the problems, I decided to come out with manifesto accordingly to every area.”

Viewing education as the key to success, Kohilan said the first pillar of his manifesto is to set up a free tuition centre in every housing area for Batu students to provide a conducive learning environment for them, especially those from B40 or lower-income communities.

“Today, I see many of my children, they are doctors, lawyers, you know, with their own profession. So I’m happy to see the children with a good education background, and today, of course, they will bring a good message to their children, that education is very important, as I have seen that education has changed their lives,” he said.

Flags are seen during an election campaign in Sentul, Kuala Lumpur November 11, 2022. ― Picture by Firdaus Latif

The three things in Batu

Asked to sum up the three main issues that he wants to help Batu voters with, Kohilan said the first issue is to have affordable housing as the population here is increasing annually.

He said those who come from other states to work in Kuala Lumpur are attracted to a semi-urban area like Batu which is less expensive than the actual city centre and as it has infrastructure and good connectivity via railways.

“That is the reason people come in, they want to stay here, but the problem here is they don’t have affordable houses. They can’t go and buy a house which is RM900,000 or RM1 million, so this is the biggest issue,” he said.

He said land was actually given to developers to build condominiums and medium-cost apartments and low-cost or affordable houses but said such developers had completed the higher-end housing but delayed building the affordable component in their projects.

“If elected, I will put pressure, I want development to take place,” he said, adding that he will raise the issue of affordable housing in Parliament and also work with DBKL to monitor the progress of the construction of the affordable houses.

People gather during an election campaign in Sentul, Kuala Lumpur November 11, 2022. ― Picture by Firdaus Latif

The second issue that he wants to tackle is traffic jams and its related issue of insufficient parking, noting that a housing unit for example may have three or four cars as children who have grown up do not have affordable housing where they can move out to

To cater for the future, he hopes to push for multi-storey parking in Batu, and also wants to work with DBKL to resolve traffic congestion — especially on Jalan Ipoh and around the school-lined Jalan Sentul Pasar leading to the Sentul market — using methods such as traffic diversions or one-way traffic flow systems.

A general view of Pasar Sentul in Kuala Lumpur November 11, 2022. ― Picture by Firdaus Latif

The third main problem will be floods, as he said Batu has undergone much development while the size of the Batu river passing through the area remains the same.

He plans to speak to the Department of Irrigation and Drainage (JPS) to ask them to not only deepen the river, but also widen it; while also hoping to propose for river diversion works to be carried out.

In the fight for votes from the 113,863 registered voters in Batu this Saturday, the 10 candidates in chronological order on the ballot papers are lawyer Siti Kasim; Chua otherwise known as Tian Chua; PH’s Prabakaran; Parti Rakyat Malaysia’s Zulkifli Abd Fatah; Too Cheng Huat who is using the name “Too Gao Lan”; Parti Pejuang Tanah Air’s Wan Azliana Wan Adnan; Perikatan Nasional’s Azhar Yahya; Parti Warisan Sabah’s P. Naganathan who will be using the name “Nathan Batu”; Kohilan himself and influencer Nur Fathiah Syazwana who is better known as Cleopatra or “Cleo”.

In 2018, Prabakaran won 38,125 votes in Batu, which represented a 24,438 vote-majority over Gerakan’s current president Datuk Dominic Lau who garnered 13,687 votes for BN, while Azhar won 10,610 votes and independent candidate Datuk VM Panjamothy won 383 votes.