Guided by past defeats, Harapan to discuss Tg Piai election strategy tomorrow

Pakatan Harapan leaders will discuss their candidate and strategy for the upcoming Tanjung Piai by-election in Muar tomorrow.

The coalition’s election committee chairperson Muhyiddin Yassin will chair the meeting.

Speaking to the media today, he said Bersatu will be contesting the seat as this was the case in GE14, though their candidate has yet to be decided.

Muhyiddin believed that Harapan will apply lessons learned from previous by-election losses as it prepares for the Nov 16 poll. Of the past eight by-elections since GE14, Harapan won five, but lost in Rantau, Cameron Highlands and Semenyih.

“We have taken into account the experience of the past, in the Semenyih (by-election) and also when we contested other seats previously. We have received a lot of feedback and have conducted many post-mortems.

“For Tanjung Piai, we will come up with a more effective strategy [...] and we might need to explain some issues which the rakyat do not understand.

“Many issues have cropped up in the past few months and some of them have gone viral on social media. There are certain issues, policies and Harapan programmes which have been misunderstood. We will explain these,” the Bersatu president said.

The seat fell vacant following the death of Bersatu's Dr Mohd Farid Mohd Rafik on Sept 21. Farid was also a deputy minister in the Prime Minister's Department.

Mohd Farid Mohd Rafik

In the 14th general election, Farid defeated MCA's Wee Jeck Seng with a wafer-thin 524-vote majority in a three-cornered fight for the 53,528-strong seat.

The upcoming contest will be a litmus test for both Harapan and the Umno-PAS alliance amid race and religious issues dominating the Malaysian political landscape.

BN has yet to decide on its candidate, but both Umno and MCA’s grassroots members have called for their respective parties to contest the traditional MCA seat.

Muhyiddin, who is Home Minister, was speaking to the press after the launch of the National Security and Public Safety Policy (Dasar Keselamatan dan Ketenteraman Awam). - Mkini