'Slaughter in Rantau': Anwar waiting for post-mortem report

During the 14-day campaign period, PKR president Anwar had crisscrossed Rantau, sang and danced, in his bid to urge voters to cast their ballots for Pakatan Harapan candidate Dr S Streram.

However, Streram was trounced in last Saturday's by-election.

According to Anwar, Negeri Sembilan PKR is now in the process of conducting a post-mortem to determine the reasons for the defeat.

"Post-mortem report is being prepared. I am waiting for the report from the state,” he told reporters when met at the sidelines of an event in Sunway University today.

Umno acting president Mohamad Hassan, who is also the former Negeri Sembilan menteri besar, won the Rantau seat for the fourth time with a majority of 4,510 votes against Streram.

Harapan was defeated in all but one polling district in Rantau. It only managed to retain Bandar Ekar, which has the highest proportion of Chinese voters (42.1 percent) and third highest proportion of Indian voters (35.4 percent).

Even so, Harapan's support in Bandar Ekar witnessed a decline from 70.3 percent in the last general election (parliamentary level) to 60 percent in this by-election.

This is in contrast to Harapan capturing half of the 14 polling districts in the last general election at the parliamentary level.

BN also swept the polling districts of Pekan Sagga (63.7 percent Indians) and Linsum (48.3 percent Indians) which have the highest and second highest proportion of Indian voters in Rantau.

In the last general election, Harapan won 51.98 percent of the votes in Pekan Sagga whereas BN received 44.23 percent and PAS 3.78 percent at the parliamentary level.

The outcome in Rantau marked Harapan's third consecutive by-election defeat after Cameron Highlands and Semenyih.

Harapan had won the four previous by-elections since the last national polls, namely Sungai Kandis, Balakong, Seri Setia and Port Dickson.

Meanwhile, Anwar said the Harapan presidential council meeting next week would discuss the Sandakan by-election on April 27, including its potential candidate.

"I think (the presidential meeting) will be held next week. We will give full support to the DAP candidate," he said.

Harapan is likely to field Vivian Wong, the daughter of the former Sandakan MP Stephen Wong, who died on March 28. - Mkini