Pakatan Rakyat has to reach out to the rural population if its ambition to take over Putrajaya in the 13th general election is to see daylight.

Perak Pakatan chief Mohd Nizar Jamaluddin said the BN has successfully kept the Orang Asli, rural Malays, including Felda settlers, and the Indian plantation workers in the dark for the past 53 years by controlling and manipulating the mainstream media.

nizar speech 010510 This strategy was seen working in the recent Hulu Selangor parliamentary by-election where Nizar ( right ) said the BN engaged in money politics and adopted the tactics of threats to ensure BN candidate P Kamalanathan's victory.

Their 1,725-vote win, therefore, sounds hollow when taking into account that around RM100 million in handouts was pumped into the constituency, he alleged.

"BN uses public funds in the form of election handouts at every by-election and state election in the country and they are racists when dealing with voters and yet they label my political speeches in Hulu Selangor as seditious ," said the former Perak menteri besar.

Pakatan is facing an uphill task in reaching out to the rural population and competing with BN's well-oiled ‘propaganda machinery', he added.

Divide and rule

Pakatan is colour-blind and practises equal rights for all Malaysians, whereas BN continues its divide-and-rule racist policy.

Nizar was commenting on police reports on allegedly seditious elements in his speeches lodged against him by three BN members yesterday.

He was speaking at a DAP dinner at Kanthan Baru in Chemor last night, attended by about 1,000 local residents.

Besides the PAS Bukit Gantang MP, the other speakers were DAP state secretary Nga Kor Ming and ousted Pakatan speaker V Sivakumar.

Nizar said the corruption allegations brought in 2008 against former Pakatan exco members Jamaluddin Mohd Radzi and Mohd Osman Mohd Jailu were BN moves to topple Pakatan's 10 month rule of Perak.

Both the accused were freed on April 23 of the charges.

Their acquittal occurred only after the BN took control of the state, Nizar noted.

However, he declared, the people of Perak will wait for the coming general elections to teach the BN that people's power is supreme in the country by returning the Pakatan with a bigger majority.

He said for the next polls, they are also targeting the BN's Tambun parliamentary seat and Manjoi state seat.