Zaid: PAS deputy chief offered me seat to contest

Kita president Zaid Ibrahim said today that PAS deputy president Mohamad Sabu had offered him a seat to contest in the next general election, but the offer was made in his personal capacity.

“It’s all speculation people write in the blog, but the closest they got was Mat Sabu. He is a friend of mine and I think he was being very nice to me, but I don’t think it’s a party decision.

“He said, we’ll let Zaid contest, we’ll give him a seat, something like that, but I think he was giving his personal view,” Zaid (right) said told Malaysiakini in an interview at his residence in Petaling Jaya this morning.

However, he shot down talk that he was asked to dissolve Kita in exchange for a PKR seat and that he would join DAP to contest in the general election.

On Wednesday, sacked Penang Kita chief Tan Tee Beng claimedthat Mat Sabu had offered Zaid the Kota Bharu seat to contest in the general election.

This, Tan claimed, had led Zaid to try and dissolve Kita in order to contest on a PAS ticket, as Pasir Mas MP Ibrahim Ali had done in 2008.

However Mat Sabu in a telephone conversation with news portal AntaraPos uploaded on Youtube yesterday denied such an offer and declined to comment further.  

Zaid, a former minister and PKR member, added that he has no plans to stand  in the upcoming polls.

This decision, he said, was arrived at after careful research on the possibility of his candidacy.

“I will not contest, it’s simple, it’s not that I made a decision without checking,” he added.

Difficult to win on his own ticket

Zaid said he had, late last year, spent two months in the parliamentary constituencies of Kota Bharu and Petaling Jaya Selatan to gauge if he could win on his own ticket.

“I wanted to test whether Zaid Ibrahim could win on his own. I found it difficult, because everybody said I have to be in this (party) or that, but I’m not about to join any other party,” he said.

He added that contesting under Kita’s banner was also not viable, as his research showed a win would be difficult under the ticket of a small party.

“But in the unlikelihood that certain political parties offer me (to contest), then I will evaluate, where, why and if there are any conditions attached,” he said.

However, he stressed that if the offer requires him to join the particular party, he would reject it.

“Election is not paramount to me at the moment, I’m not thinking about it, I just hope the opposition will do well,” he said.

Asked if his insistence not to rejoin Pakatan Rakyat and having to rely on his small party meant that his political future was bleak, Zaid replied: “Maybe.”

“My (political) future may not be bright, but I’m quite happy with it. There are certain things I believe in, I will always have a platform of some kind. I’m not going to join any other party... but I will support opposition politics.”