From Gelang Patah, Bentong to silence – Zaid rues DAP's attitude

GE14 |Former law minister Zaid Ibrahim denied that he is upset with DAP for not fielding him as a candidate in the coming general election but admitted feeling slighted over how he was treated.

“Disappointed yes, but not to the extent of wanting to retaliate in the way some people thought I was doing with my tweet,” he said in a blog posting this afternoon.

He was referring to his Twitter posting on Tuesday which described DAP as a “Chinese party in Pakatan Harapan”, which courted brickbats.

Zaid, who joined DAP in February 2017, also revealed he was offered the Gelang Patah parliamentary seat in Johor 12 months ago, where the incumbent is DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang.

“I was quite excited because it was an urban seat and the kind of constituency I thought was suitable for me.

“But after three months, I was told that the offer was conditional on something else. It was then later withdrawn,” he added.

Following this, Zaid claimed that a second-liner in the DAP leadership told him that he could contest the Bentongparliamentary seat in Pahang if he was interested.

The incumbent in Bentong is MCA president Liow Tiong Lai, who retained the seat in the 2013 general election with a wafer-thin majority of 379 votes against environmentalist Wong Tack, who was making his political debut under a DAP ticket.

However, Zaid said he turned down this proposal.

“I said it was not a constituency that was suitable for me. I am not a giant killer and have limited resources since I have been unemployed for the last eight years,” he added.

After this, Zaid claimed there was total silence on the subject of the election and seat allocation in the last six months.

“In fact, I was not very involved in the party's activities.

“When I sent a text message on March 27 this year to the party's key men to ask if there would be any seat for me to contest, I was not even granted the courtesy of a reply.

“So it's not the issue of not having a seat that bothered me, but the attitude that was shown,” he said. -Mkini