Rafizi: Accept defeat, stop using Anwar and move on

 

PKR deputy president-elect Rafizi Ramli has called on his rivals in the party to accept defeat and move on.

He said the party can’t afford to delay ratifying the results of the party polls and congress any further as they must begin efforts to build support for the 15th general election.

Rafizi was officially declared as the winner of the PKR deputy president’s race yesterday, edging out rival Saifuddin Nasution Ismail by 16,668 votes.

This was after ballots were purged from the tally by the party’s internal election committee due to irregularities uncovered by an external forensic audit.

Speaking to Malaysiakini, Rafizi said his rivals had hoped that the audit would overturn the results.

“They think because they are close to (PKR president) Anwar Ibrahim, they can make use of the internal machinery to overturn the results.

“I’m confident if there was an election again today, I will still win hands down,” he said.

In a statement later, he said rivals such as former Anwar aide Farhash Wafa Salvador had tried to pressure Anwar to hold re-elections.

Rafizi’s confidence is based on a survey carried out by his analytics firm Invoke before the party polls.

The survey results, sighted by Malaysiakini, showed that 85 percent of 405 respondents favoured the former Pandan MP as party deputy president compared to 13 percent for Saifuddin Nasution, and 2 percent for Farhash.

Overwhelming support

The overwhelming support for Rafizi was almost across the board for each ethnicity and age group, except for those aged 18 to 24.

Here, Rafizi and Saifuddin Nasution tied, polling 39 percent support each, while Farhash was supported by 22 percent of respondents in that age group.

The Invoke survey was conducted between March 1 and April 8 this year. The poll on deputy president candidates had a 5 percent margin of error.

The survey noted that one factor that could have benefited Saifuddin Nasution was support from Anwar.

Anwar Ibrahim (left) and Saifuddin Nasution Ismail

“Anwar is believed to be advocating for Saifuddin Nasution behind closed doors, focusing primarily on winning over existing division leaders and operators to Saifuddin Nasution’s camp.

“This could have had a sizable impact, considering the party’s continued loyalty and fondness to the president.

“But all things remaining fair, the popular vote system should still see Rafizi through – as Saifuddin Nasution would need an almost 40 percent swing to level the playing field and inch out a win,” it said.

Rafizi said today that this survey was what gave him the confidence to contest the party election in the first place.

On the other hand, he said his rivals were presumptuous about their own chances of winning.

“They thought because they are close to Anwar, they can win the election easily.

“They were out of touch with the grassroots and sentiments,” he said.

Can revisit results in future

While most of the dissatisfactions with the official results have come from his rivals, Rafizi too had issues with this.

This is as the purging of votes has changed some results, most notably the election for the PKR Women’s chief.

Previously, unofficial results had placed Rafizi’s ally Rodziah Ismail as the winner, but the official results had Fadhlina Sidek winning by a razor-thin margin.

Rodziah Ismail

Rafizi said that based on what he had learned, a preliminary report on the poll audit presented to PKR’s central committee showed that while there were discrepancies, it was relatively minor.

However, this was not reflected in the scale of votes purged from the official results - with Rafizi noting that there were about 16,000 votes removed from the deputy president race.

Hence, he said, those affected by changes in the official result - at both the division and central levels - do have a right to seek recourse and an internal review.

“But what was announced by the election committee will be respected.

“We can have Fadlina as the women’s chief for now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t revisit the results in the future,” he said.

Rafizi added that his first act once he formally takes the deputy president's office is to get to the bottom of the forensic audit’s impact on the party polls, claiming that there is currently a lack of transparency in the matter.

However, he stressed that for now, the official results must be ratified and the party must hold its annual congress soon so they can focus on efforts such as Ayuh Malaysia to build public confidence in PKR ahead of GE15.

Any efforts to stall this, he said, would only further erode public confidence in PKR. - Mkini