MIC to maintain nine seats in GE15 amid bid to formalise PN

MIC president S Vigneswaran expects his party will continue to contest in its nine traditional seats in the next general election but added that his party is open to seat swaps.

This comes amid a push by Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to formalise Perikatan Nasional (PN) for the 15th general election, which if realised, will require coalition partners to concede seats to Bersatu to contest.

"We will still contest in the nine parliamentary seats we contested before this (in the 14th general election), Vigneswaran (above) told Malaysiakini.

He was asked if MIC may cede some seats in light of Bersatu being part of the same PN coalition with MIC.

MIC is part of the PN coalition by virtue of its membership in the BN coalition, which is led by Umno.

In the last general election, MIC contested in the parliamentary seats of Tapah, Sungai Buloh, Hulu Selangor, Kapar, Kota Raja, Port Dickson, Segamat, and Cameron Highlands.

MIC only won the seats of Tapah and Cameron Highlands. MIC later 'lent' the Cameron Highlands seat to Umno after an election court overturned MIC's victory there on grounds of vote-buying.

MIC will likely clash with Bersatu in Tapah and Segamat in the next general election.

MIC's M Saravanan won the Tapah seat with 16,086 votes against Bersatu's Mohamed Azni Mohamed Ali's 15,472 votes in the last general election. PAS came in third with 4,616 votes.

MIC's then president S Subramaniam also contested the Segamat seat in the 2018 general election but lost to PKR's Santhara Kumar.

However, Santhara had since defected to Perikatan Nasional and the seat is now considered to be under Bersatu.

At the BN level, Vigneswaran said discussions about seat allocation have yet to start, adding, "We are confident that we will discuss it in the near future," he said.

This is amid speculations that Muhyiddin is mulling snap polls if his rivals attempt to pull off a counter-coup.

The Pakatan Harapan government collapsed in late February after Bersatu president Muhyiddin pulled his party out of the coalition government.

Muhyiddin was sworn in as the new prime minister on March 1, after he put together a new coalition comprising Bersatu, PKR defectors, BN, PAS, GPS, PBS, and Star. - Mkini