THE smell of fresh paint in Taman Sentosa, one of the poorer districts of Malaysia’s capital, can mean only one thing: elections are at hand.

The walls of the numerous public-housing blocks in the area are gleaming, all painted within the past year. The redecoration of one block, 1A Pinang, was finished only on January 3rd, and the lucky residents got some shiny new guttering as well. The caretaker says it is the first time the place had received any attention since it was built 20 years ago. And lest anyone forget to whom they owe their good fortune, prominent signs up outside every block remind them: the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition government. The paint-job is a federally funded project in an opposition MP’s constituency.

A general election must be called before the end of April, and it might be the tightest ever. The BN has never lost an election since Malaysia’s independence from Britain in 1957. Last time round, however, in 2008, the party suffered its greatest rebuff at the polls, losing its two-thirds parliamentary majority as well as five out of 12 contested state governments. This time the opposition People’s Justice Party (PKR) and its allies, led by the veteran Anwar Ibrahim, hope to go one better, so the BN is leaving nothing to chance.
Taman Sentosa is in the Lembah Pantai constituency in central Kuala Lumpur, and what happens there will decide the fate of the election as a whole. It had always been a BN stronghold but was lost by a narrow margin in the electoral meltdown of 2008. The new MP was Nurul Izzah Anwar, the daughter of Mr Anwar, who won by just 2,895 votes. If the BN can wrest back this seat they will be safe; if the PKR win again they will know they have a chance of ending the BN’s run in power.

It has thus become a totemic race, and Nurul Izzah believes that the BN are not only deploying paint brushes to give them the edge. The constituency used to have 149 postal votes, but the total has now jumped to 2,180, she says—all policemen, traditionally BN supporters. As in other urban constituencies the overall number of voters has risen since 2008, by about 15,000. Many of these live elsewhere but have registered to vote in Lembah Pantai, and Nurul Izzah claims that hundreds of these are known BN voters, which could make a big difference in a tight race.

Lembah Pantai is a bellwether seat in another way, offering a snapshot of Malaysia’s ethnic diversity—the characteristic that usually dictates how elections are won. The constituency is 54% ethnic Malay, 25% Chinese and 20% Indian, more or less reflecting the national balance. The BN, and specifically its main constituent party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), is traditionally the bastion of Malay interests, whereas the PKR does better with the minorities, as it advocates the ending of the comprehensive system of quotas and privileges that favours Malays in the universities, the civil service and elsewhere. Thus the PKR, for instance, argues that all government contracts should be open-tender rather than skewed towards Malay-owned companies. The PKR argues that such policies have merely encouraged corruption and done little for poorer Malays.

But, Nurul Izzah concedes, her party has to be “careful” on this issue for fear of alienating Malays. Her party’s position, therefore, is nuanced, advocating government help for the poor and students, for instance, based on “needs” rather than race, but at the same time protecting the special position of Malays in the civil service.

At the other end of Lembah Pantai is trendy Bangsar, symbolic centre of Malaysia’s booming economy of the past few years. Here it’s all posh boutiques and frappuccinos, home to the young, professional and fashionable who now form an important swing vote in the electorate. Much less wedded to the old race-based politics, they should be a natural constituency for the PKR. But here again the party will struggle, as young professionals have welcomed liberalising legislation, such as abolishing repressive national-security laws, pushed through by the prime minister, Najib Razak. Hip Bangsar types might be persuaded by the BN’s claims to be the proven party of reformasi, Mr Anwar’s old battle-cry. Nurul Izzah is finding that no vote can be taken for granted.