Speaking to FMT, associate professor Faisal S Hazis, who is with Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s Institute of Malaysian and International Studies, said PH should shoot down the notion as Jeyakumar won the seat by only small margins in the 2008 and 2013 elections.
“During the last general election, he was able to defend the seat but with reduced votes from among the Malays,” he said.
“Jeyakumar himself admitted that despite the work on the ground, he failed to penetrate the Malay electorate because of the strong Malay sentiment played up by Umno before GE13.”
Indian and Chinese voters make up about 70% of the Sungai Siput electorate while Malays form the remaining 30%.
Jeyakumar, a PSM central committee member, won a major victory by ousting long-time incumbent and former MIC president S Samy Vellu in 2008.
He scored a thin majority of 1,821 votes but retained the seat with an increased 2,793-vote margin in 2013 when he was challenged by another MIC strongman SK Devamany, the current MIC deputy president.
Faisal said that letting DAP contest in Sungai Siput would certainly split the votes in BN’s favour and likely result in the loss of a performing MP.
“Jeyakumar is a hardworking MP. He’s always on the ground, he’s people-centric, he doesn’t involve himself in petty politicking and he has no baggage at all.
“You can’t deny that some of the votes that went to Jeyakumar are Pakatan votes. If Pakatan puts another candidate there, then you split the opposition votes.
“This is why straight fights are important if the opposition coalition aims to win the election.”
In September, Perak DAP chief Nga Kor Ming told Malaysiakini that DAP would contest in Sungai Siput following PSM’s announcement that it would field candidates in some DAP seats.
DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng said he left the decision to Nga.
More recently, The Malaysian Insight published an article quoting Jeyakumar as saying that DAP would gift Sungai Siput to BN if it chose to make good on its threat to contest for the seat.
Meanwhile, PH secretary-general Saifuddin Abdullah told FMT that nothing was set in stone yet.
“We are still in the negotiation phase and this includes negotiating with Jeyakumar on the Sungai Siput seat,” he said.
“We would caution friends that we don’t do this publicly.”
On whether PH was still concerned about three-cornered fights, Saifuddin said: “We are still trying to avoid three-cornered fights but if we can’t avoid them, then we want to minimise them.”