It has been an intensive campaign for the Penang votes. As the campaign enters its final stretch, the information bombardment has given way to psychological warfare.

THE street-fighter in Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik was on full display when he took the stage at a ceramah in downtown Penang.

His hair flopped untidily over his forehead and his hands were flying left, right and centre as he warmed up to his subject. He grew so animated at one stage that he had to pull out his white handkerchief to wipe off the saliva from his mouth.

“Don’t let the Opposition take you to Holland,” he said.

Common cause: Dr Lim (left) listening to MCA president Datuk Seri Ong Ka Ting at Rifle Range in Penang on Wednesday night. With them is Dr Koh.

Being taken to Holland, pronounced locally as “hor lan,” can be loosely translated as being led up the garden path although there is another rather naughty interpretation that is better left unsaid.

The nickname the Hokkien chaps in Gerakan have for their flamboyant former president and now party advisor is “lau chiow” or old bird. He had the crowd rolling with laughter but his main message was urgent and serious.

He appealed to Penang voters not to deliver a “repeat of 1990,” the general election which saw the Barisan Nasional lose its two-thirds majority in the state.

Umno had won all 12 seats, Gerakan only 7, and MCA and MIC lost all their seats.

He said that when he knew the DAP was gunning for then Chief Minister Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu, he had quickly lined up “3 PhDs in the wings just in case”. And that was how one of the “PhD candidates” Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon became Chief Minister.

Dr Lim said Umno, holding the most number of state seats, could have easily claimed the Chief Minister post but he managed to argue and win his case with the then Prime Minister. But the concession was the creation of the Deputy Chief Minister post for Umno.

“I still get cold sweats when I think of the 1990 general election,” he said.

The Chinese seats in Penang are again at stake and Dr Lim appeared to be again getting cold sweats as he appealed to the Chinese voters at a ceramah in Jelutong where he was boosting the morale of his man Dr Thor Teong Ghee who is facing a tough fight against DAP’s Jeff Ooi.

The campaign, now that it is in its final stretch, has been more psychological warfare than anything else.

Politics is a numbers games and crowd size matters in an election campaign. People talk about crowds at this and that event and they get carried away by the talk.

As such, both sides are playing the numbers game to the hilt.

The Barisan brought in its political firepower on Wednesday night, with the Prime Minister leading a team of Barisan top brass before a massive crowd in Rifle Range.

Rifle Range is an anti-establishment area in the Bukit Bendera parliamentary seat and incumbent Datuk Seri Chia Kwang Chye had only 24 hours to prepare for event but the organiser in him pulled it off flawlessly.

It is really a big deal to have the Prime Minister and Chia could not have been more delighted because although he had begun very strong, his DAP opponent Liew Chin Tong has been catching up over the last week.

The massive crowd at the opposition rally last Saturday had been the talk of the town and the Barisan event in Bukit Bendera was a sort of return volley. It was probably also to counter another mammoth opposition rally at the Han Chiang stadium last night.

In fact, when Barisan leaders began going for PKR de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, their target was less the Malay voters than the Chinese middle ground especially in Penang where he is a crowd magnet.

They wanted to remind the Chinese of Anwar’s previous record in the government which had been damaging to the Chinese education cause.

The Prime Minister’s presence in Penang during this last stretch shows his commitment to check the opposition tide.

Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi entered “enemy territory” last night, making a heartfelt appeal to the people of Permatang Pauh to help the Barisan revive the area and to discard the politics of sentiment and sympathy.

He did not touch on Anwar but he told the crowd that he loves Permatang Pauh as much as he loves his own constituency Kepala Batas.

The DAP campaign had started out with guns blazing and for a while it had seemed that the Barisan was simply taking the bullets.

Said Dr Lim: “The Barisan is peaking now. We let them shoot and finish their bullets. Now we’re the ones with the bullets and we are chipping away at their arguments.”

All the shooting will end at midnight and the body count will be known by the evening of March 8.