Modest and courteous campaigning through religious programmes will be adopted by both the Barisan Nasional (BN) and PAS candidates to get close to voters in the Kuala Besut state seat by-election.

Apparently, programmes such as breaking of fast with the local residents and holding of religious talks at the surau and mosques will be intensified by both parties in keeping with the spirit of the holy month of Ramadan, as the majority of voters here are Muslims.

Kuala Besut BN by-election coordinating secretary, Che Ku Mustafar Che Ku Mat said hopefully, the spiritual programmes would enable the residents to get to know the BN candidate, Tengku Zaihan Che Ku Abd Rahman, 37, better although he was no stranger to them.

"So far, the programmes planned for our candidate's campaigning mainly involve the breaking of fast with the local community and performing Maghrib, Isyak and Tarawih prayers with the congregation followed by listening to a religious talk.

"InsyaAllah (God willing), besides honouring the month of Ramadan, relations between our candidate and the local community will be closer, other than getting to know their problems better," he said when met by Bernama.

For example, he said, today Tengku Zaihan was scheduled to join the locals for tarawih prayers at Al-Naim Mosque, Kampung Alor Teratai, here,

Kuala Besut-born Tengku Zaihan, an engineer with the Drainage and Irrigation Department, was yesterday announced as the BN candidate for the by-election. PAS, meanwhile, chose businessman Azlan Jusoh, 48, as its candidate.

The Kuala Besut by-election has to be called following the death of its incumbent assemblyman Dr A. Rahman Mokhtar from BN on June 26 from lung cancer.

Azlan who regards himself as the underdog in the contest for the seat, said spiritual programmes were more suitable in getting closer to the voters as religion was close to their hearts.

"The party has so far informed that the campaign this time would be more religious-based. But we will meet to discuss on other possible programmes," he said.

The Election Commission has fixed July 12 for nomination of candidates and July 24 for polling.

The Kuala Besut state constituency has 17,683 registered voters. Out of this number, 17,463 are Malays, 125 Chinese and the rest, from other races. Most of them are fishermen.

Bernama learnt that there are no major issues here except for the shallow waters for toursim activities and for the fishermen, and irrigation problem faced by the padi farmers.