All in a day’s work for ‘Ah Mu’: Painting walls, playing a piano, doing push-ups

SINGAPORE — From doing push-ups with a resident to helping a family repaint the walls of their HDB flat, lawyer Murali Pillai’s social media campaign for the Bukit Batok by-election is focused squarely on burnishing his folksy appeal.

“When my team suggested that I should be on Facebook so as to allow residents to be updated on the campaign trail, I took some time to decide. I didn’t have one in the last GE,” Mr Murali, the People’s Action Party (PAP) candidate, told TODAY in a written reply via email.

Calling his social media strategy “friendly, accessible and real”, the 48-year-old has taken to posting videos of him playing a piano at a resident’s home, and conversing in Mandarin with the elderly on his Facebook page.

“It’s been some time since I played and I tried my hand on the only piano piece I know,” Mr Murali wrote on Facebook, in a post dated April 22.

In another clip, he was seen doing push-ups with Mr Razali, 66, after the Bukit Batok resident demonstrated how he kept fit at home. “I am amazed with Mr Razali! At his age of 66, he can do more push-ups than I do. I certainly need to learn how to keep up with him,” the PAP candidate wrote on Facebook on April 21. Mr Murali said over the weekend that he had helped Mr Razali find two job offers through a community job placement programme he has proposed.

So far, Mr Murali has gathered about 4,000 “likes” on his Facebook page. His rival in the Bukit Batok by-election, Dr Chee Soon Juan of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), has over 47,000 “likes”.

The PAP candidate says he isn’t concerned with his social media numbers. He told TODAY: “As I have just started on this social media journey, I don’t have any expectations on the numbers or ‘likes’. My goal is simple: For it to be a platform, to gather residents’ feedback so that we can help them further and to also share my lessons and stories about this community, that I learnt during my visits.”

His most popular video, by far, is a self-introductory piece to Bukit Batok voters called “Introducing Ah Mu”, a nickname Mr Murali has picked for himself. The video has earned over 700 “likes”, close to 400 shares, and over 77,000 views since it was first posted on March 30.

In the subtitled video, Mr Murali starts off by greeting a resident and asking whether she has eaten in a mixture of Mandarin and Hokkien. The PAP candidate then goes on to introduce himself — in Mandarin — as Murali Pillai, or “Ah Mu” (阿穆) for short.

Some netizens, taking his cue, have also addressed Mr Murali as “Ah Mu” in their responses. Facebook user Irene Lim said, “Well done, Ah Mu! (As an MP)… can learn to speak Mandarin to talk with residents!”

But earlier this week, in a slight departure from the focus on his “down home” appeal, Mr Murali introduced an element of star power in his campaign by showcasing the endorsement of local football icon V Sundramoorthy, 51.

The two of them are childhood friends, according to a 3-minute clip that featured the duo bantering about their kampung football days and what it was like growing up poor.

Sundram, endorsing Mr Murali’s candidacy, said: “I believe he can run the constituency well. He is down to earth and he knows what he is doing.”