PARTI Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), trying to emerge from its recent setbacks, has been busy making plans to face the coming general elections.
Yesterday, the party splashed on large TV screens its election campaign leaflets at the opening of its two-day national congress in the Umno stronghold of Johor.
During her opening speech, party president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail told the 2,000- strong crowd of the party's new election pledges.
Among others, she promised to raise the minimum household income to RM4,000 in five years and return Felda to the settlers from the present management, a weapon she said most feared by the BN ahead of the elections.
Not surprisingly, the 59-year-old Wan Azizah did not detail out how the party, the smallest of the three-party Pakatan Rakyat, would implement those pledges.
Johor had been chosen as venue of PKR's eighth national congress as a symbolic of PKR's intention and that of its allies Pas and the DAP, to break the BN's fortress if not, take control of it.
The party's "show of strength" in launching the assault on Johor is believed to be part of the strategy to boost the morale of party members to face the mammoth BN machinery during the election campaign.
PKR hopes to revive the fighting spirit so that its foot soldiers will work hard to win more seats.
Unlike the speech delivered at last year's congress held in PKR's crown jewel Selangor, where she had defended her her husband, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim by describing him as a "God-sent leader" following a bruising internal party elections, her speech this time around merely spelt out her party's plans to help the people.
"PKR is ready to face the people again, even the BN's mammoth machinery," said Halim Roslee, a party supporter from from Senawang, Negeri Sembilan.
PKR began a weekend assault on Johor featuring Anwar and party leaders as speakers at night ceramahs in what is seen as attempts to deny the state from continuing to be fixed deposit for BN.
"It is not impossible. Selangor was also a BN stronghold," Azmin Ali, the party deputy president lamented. Party secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution Ismail was also confident of Pakatan taking over Johor, claiming the current sentiment on the ground is similar to Perak and Selangor prior to Election 2008.
It is uncertain how the party had come to that conclusion; its calculations were probably based on the sentiment of the Chinese in other parts of the country, which remain against the ruling BN.
Since Johor avoided the political tsunami that handed the opposition bloc power in five states and denied BN its customary two-thirds majority in parliament in the March 2008 general elections, PKR would have to do more than just organising ceramahs to realise its dream.
The state BN under the leadership of Menteri Besar Datuk Abdul Ghani Othman had not remain idle; in fact he had started touching base to address peoples' problems directly to check a possible slide in support based on reports that seats in Johor with 40 per cent Chinese voters and above are at risk.
For the record also, Pakatan won one Parliament and six state seats out of 26 and 56 respectively in the 2008 elections. PKR won none.
So the hype of taking over control of Johor from BN thus, could just be another of PKR's day dreams.
Whatever the case is, it is interesting to watch if Anwar, when he winds up the debate at the end of the congress later today, will be able to convince his troops that Pakatan is indeed still on track to Putrajaya.
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