Don’t shoot rakyat in the foot, ABU warns PR
Alyaa Alhadjri, The Sun Daily
Pakatan Rakyat will be “shooting the rakyat in the foot” if they fail to resolve all overlapping claims for seats come nomination day tomorrow, warned advocacy group Anything But Umno (ABU) chief Haris Ibrahim.
Haris said any three-cornered fight involving more than one PR candidate against Barisan Nasional will dash the people’s hope for change after the 13th general elections.
“Politicians should remember that the seats belong to the rakyat who are merely giving them a ‘temporary occupation license’ for five years,” Haris told theSun on Wednesday.
“In the situation where there is more than one PR candidate, the desire for change would be impossible to achieve,” he stressed.
Haris said this was proven during the Bukit Selambau by-election in 2009, when PKR’s candidate S. Manikumar trounced MIC’s Datuk S. Ganesan, despite presence of 11 other ‘Independent’ contenders, whom he claimed were planted by BN.
“PR only had one candidate, so the people were not confused,” he said.
Saya Anak Bangsa Malaysia representative A. Jayanath meanwhile said PR had more than five years since 2008 to prepare for the polls and as such it was “very disheartening” to hear of their last minute jostling for seats.
Jayanath noted that the political tsunami in 2008 when BN was denied their customary two-thirds majority in Parliament was due to straight fights in most constituencies in the peninsular.
“The feeling on the ground is ‘why are we left with this choice?’ (between two opposition parties),” said Jayanath, citing as an example the expected three-cornered fights between BN, PR and Parti Sosialis Malaysia in Semenyih and Jelapang.