Mat Sabu likely to stand in Kota Raja in Klang Valley debut

It will be his fifth attempt to make a parliamentary comeback after a losing streak since 2004.

Amanah president Mohamad Sabu.

PETALING JAYA: Veteran politician Mohamad Sabu is likely to make his debut as a Klang Valley candidate at the coming polls, as the former PAS leader attempts to return to Parliament after more than a decade.

Well-placed sources in Amanah, the party he helped found in 2015, said the firebrand orator better known as Mat Sabu may contest in Kota Raja, Selangor, which PAS last won through Siti Mariah Mahmud.

Siti Mariah is among dozens of senior PAS leaders who left the Islamist party for Amanah, following divisive party elections which saw the Islamist party voting conservative leaders into power, culminating in PAS breaking away from PKR and DAP.

Mat Sabu was last elected as MP in 1999, when he won in Kuala Kedah in a general election which saw PAS’ best electoral performance on the back of Umno’s loss of Malay support following Anwar Ibrahim’s dramatic sacking a year earlier.

He lost the seat to Barisan Nasional (BN) in 2004, and failed again to make a parliamentary comeback in 2008.

Months later, Mat Sabu lost a by-election in Kuala Terengganu, seen as an attempt by PAS to strengthen the party in Parliament.

The former three-term MP again lost in Pendang to BN’s Othman Abdul in the 2013 polls.

Mat Sabu, once PAS’ most vocal leader, has taken on senior government leaders in the past. He made his electoral debut when he contested against Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in 1982, and in the subsequent polls, he stood against Anwar Ibrahim in Permatang Pauh.

In 1990, he defeated Kelantan Umno strongman Annuar Musa in Nilam Puri. He went on to win the two other general elections in 1995 and 1999.

When contacted, Siti Mariah declined to comment, saying she was ready to stand wherever the party wanted her to contest.

The Kota Raja seat which she first won in 2008 has a seizable percentage of Indian voters, with Malays making up less than half of the electorate.

The pro-opposition sentiment in the Indian community, months after the Hindraf rally in 2007, is said to have played a major role in PAS’ victory in Kota Raja in 2008. - FMT