PSM central committee member S Arutchelvan said PKR leaders brushed off the party’s warnings on the three-cornered fight that led BN to win the Semenyih state seat.
“Before the election, we (Arutchelvan, PSM president Nasir Hashim, Sungai Siput MP Dr Michael Jeyakumar) met PKR leaders such as Anwar Ibrahim, Tian Chua and Xavier Jayakumar on naming the candidate.
“Anwar told his PKR members not to announce candidates for the Semenyih seat yet after I asked for more time to talk to the party,” he said, but PKR leaders went against their word and announced their candidate for Semenyih.
This move irked PSM. “Because PSM is so small, they didn’t give a damn,” Arutchelvan said.
He added that PKR was preoccupied with its internal issues before the election, such as the seat allocation, and PSM was “completely ignored”.
He was commenting on comments by Merdeka Center for Opinion Research executive director Ibrahim Suffian at a forum on Saturday that it was important for parties to take note of their “failures” when engaging in three-cornered races, like the one in Semenyih.
Ibrahim said these lessons should not be forgotten in the next general election (GE14). “If the opposition fails to understand the history, they will repeat it (the mistakes),” he had said.
PSM and PKR both fielded their candidates (Arutchelvan and Hamidi A Hassan) in the Semenyih election, which was eventually won by BN’s Johan Abd Aziz.
Johan won with 17,922 votes, gaining a 4,757 majority, compared with PKR’s Hamidi (13,165 votes) and PSM’s Arutchelvan (5,568 votes) in the last 2013 election.
Ibrahim said if the two parties had combined the votes from their supporters for a single candidate, the total would have surpassed the votes obtained by BN.
PSM recently announced that it will contest the Semenyih seat again, along with the Kota Damansara, Port Klang and Sri Muda state seats.
The party also wants to run for the Subang, Hulu Langat and Hulu Selangor parliamentary seats, paving the way for multi-cornered fights between PSM, Pakatan Harapan and BN.
Arutchelvan said in a situation like this, PSM had no choice but to lock horns with the opposition and the ruling coalition although the situation was difficult.
“We stand in elections because we want to highlight issues, not that we want to win or that we have any chance to win.”
He said Pakatan Harapan does not highlight bread-and-butter issues facing the urban poor or Orang Asli rights but only talks about 1MDB.
“What is the purpose of a political party like PSM if we do not stand in elections?” Arutchelvan asked.