The MCA does not intend to give up the parliamentary seat, but Umno feels the seat should go to it.
It remains to be seen if MCA will get its way as Umno is putting up a strong demand to contest in the federal constituency of over 100,000 voters which was previously won by former Selangor menteri besar Abdul Khalid Ibrahim.
Umno’s Bandar Tun Razak chief Rizalman Mokhtar said the MCA had been contesting in the constituency for the past five terms but that many Umno supporters preferred a Malay candidate for the parliamentary seat.
“Due to that, Umno has demanded the seat several times from our leaders, but it will depend on negotiations with other component party leaders.
“The leaders say they will place a candidate that is likeable and winnable,” he told FMT.
Rizalman said Umno had been serving the people in the constituency for 15 years and he believed a Malay candidate would do well.
“They (the voters) want a Malay candidate,” he said.
Almost 54% of the voters are Malays, followed by 36% Chinese and 8% Indians.
The Bandar Tun Razak parliamentary seat was won by former PKR leader Khalid in the 2013 general election when he defeated the Barisan Nasional’s (BN) MCA candidate Tan Kok Eng by 11,832 votes.
Khalid is now an independent candidate after PKR sacked him for refusing to vacate his Selangor menteri besar post in 2014.
Rizalman said if the redelineation exercise were to be completed and approved before the coming general election, about 20,000 voters, the majority of them being Chinese, would be transferred to either Cheras, Bukit Bintang or Seputeh.
“The majority of voters then would be Malays,” he pointed out.
However, the MCA’s Bandar Tun Razak chief YK Chew says Bandar Tun Razak has always been the party’s seat.
“MCA has to contest the seat because it is under the BN spirit that it is allocated to MCA. But we leave it to the BN leadership to decide.”
He said in the spirit of BN, no one should argue about which was the majority race in a constituency as every component party was given a chance to contest in either a parliamentary or state seat.
“Everyone has their own opinion. It (Bandar Tun Razak seat) is still status quo. BN has allocated the seat to MCA, irrespective of what the composition of the ethnic group is at the constituency,” said Chew.
Chew, who is a lawyer, said in politics, everyone, including him and Rizalman, hoped to be named as a candidate.
“But under the spirit of BN, there will be a way to resolve the issue,” he added.
http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2013/04/28/fate-sends-mca’s-tan-to-bandar-tun-razak/