The past week has been crazy with activity for campaigners.

At our Bilik Gerakan, which serves as an operations centre for Sivarasa Rasiah, the PJ Selatan parliamentary candidate, volunteers have been busy stapling, nailing, sawing, cutting, folding, taping, stringing, and telephoning for hours and hours on end. We have been dealing with a myriad of tasks made urgent because of the tight timescale we have been given for campaign work.

In the evenings, teams of people have gone out to decorate PJ Selatan with banners, flags, and posters, riding lorries, climbing trees, hammering poles, fastening strings, attempting to claim some public space in the face of the avalanche of Barisan Nasional material.

When I drive to our Bilik Gerakan in the morning, I assess our handiwork in the streets. I am glad when I see our wooden placards strategically placed where cars stop, and smile broadly when I catch sight of our innovative invention (as yet unparalleled by the competition) - twin flags hung high upon tree branches that always sway gently at all times of the day.

Part of me cringes, however, when I see wide open areas without a smiling Siva, or when I notice missing gaps where posters have fallen off because of unfastening staples. We have not had the luxury of purchasing commercial advertising space that allows us to have big billboards to plaster our messages. Neither have we been able to indulge in the lavishness of using contractors, paid workers, huge trucks and special equipment.

Our people are all volunteers - none of them paid for what they do, all of them willing to do what they can, in these days leading up to elections on Sunday. This, for me, is the beauty of the campaign; people of all backgrounds, walks of life, and cultural identities banding together to do the most labourious of tasks, working into the wee hours of the morning, side by side with fellow campaigners whom they would otherwise be unlikely to meet.

All has not been fair in this playing ground, however. In the first few days of working as a campaigner - my first ever experience in Malaysia - I heard of a couple of volunteers whose jobs were threatened (and indeed, one who lost his) because of their desire to campaign for someone they believe in.

What disturbs me most is not that these sort of events happen, but that they have become part of the internalised 'rules' by which we operate in Malaysia. It has become normal for people to make comments such as "be careful you don't get locked up under the ISA", or "I would help too, but I don't want to lose my job", when they find out that I am campaigning for a Keadilan candidate.

I have never been embarrassed to say that I am not a party person. I am neither a member of Keadilan, nor do I see myself getting immersed in any current political party in the near future. I campaign because I believe we need people like Sivarasa to bring up important issues for discussion in Parliament, and because his track record indicates that he is a man of integrity.

In the face of such comments (including the very middle class "you can't really put this on your CV, can you?") I believe that it is my fundamental right as a citizen in a purportedly democratic nation-state to choose who I campaign for. In my mind, penalising people for showing support to the candidates of their choice is tantamount to political oppression, and a challenge to our civil and political rights as specified in the federal constitution.

Our country is in a sad state if we automatically label support for a non-Barisan Nasional candidate as 'anti-government behaviour'. Our future in Malaysia is in trouble if we cannot see the difference between 'the government' and the ruling coalition. Without such discernment, we run the risk of accepting any leader to be a legitimate representative of the people of Malaysia, and are in danger of feeling compelled to accept their election as being fair.

I often explain that it is precisely because I believe in contributing to a democratic government that I take any role at all in Malaysia's current spectacle. Most of the time this falls on deaf ears, but just sporadically, it prompts people to think differently about the construction of the election system.

Come polling day, I will step out and exercise my right to vote. I will then take my place among thousands of other volunteers as a polling agent, checking the authenticity of identity cards and monitoring the process of the election in an independent capacity.

In this small way, I hope, I have exercised my civic responsibility as a Malaysian citizen. In the meantime, I continue to staple posters, fold papers, distribute leaflets, unpack chairs, pack lorries, and hang up flags hoping that others too, will have the courage to support a person they believe in, notwithstanding the fact that they do not run under the colours of the dominant.