Responding to PAS’ remarks that Amanah was small and weak, its communications chief Khalid Samad said PH’s seat allocation was based on strategy, not size.
“The number of seats are decided not based on how strong or big the parties are, but the strategy that they are using to win GE14,” he told FMT.
“The coalition decided the number of seats based on the winning strategy that we came up with.
“To argue which party is stronger, you will end up arguing until the cows come home as you can see that PAS thinks it is very strong.”
Khalid acknowledged that many saw Amanah as a small party, but said even big parties needed others to win an election.
“We are a small party, that is why we need to be in a coalition.
“I think Malaysian politics is such that no one party can win on its own. Even Umno, a big party, needs to be in a coalition and they know they can’t win on their own.”
Khalid said victory was determined by the people, and that Amanah needed to be in a coalition to instil confidence in its ability to achieve victory and govern the country responsibly.
“If the definition of small and weak is that we have to be in a coalition, then yes, we have to be in one, and we have to realise the political reality of Malaysian society.”
Yesterday, PAS Research Centre director Mohd Zuhdi Marzuki said Amanah deserved to get only 27 parliamentary seats to contest under PH as it was not as strong as the other components and not supported by a strong party machinery.
This followed PH’s announcement of its seat allocation agreement for Peninsular Malaysia, which saw PPBM assigned 52 seats; PKR, 51; DAP, 35 and Amanah, 27.
PH chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad had thanked Amanah president Mohamad Sabu for his party’s “generosity”, saying it was Amanah that had made the negotiations for seat allocations a success.
The decision however caused disappointment within the party, with Johor Amanah chief Aminolhuda Hassan expressing dissatisfaction over the number of seats.
Amanah was allocated only two seats in Johor: Pulai and Parit Sulong.
Khalid said the pact’s strategy was designed to handle the Malay votes and instil confidence in the voters.
“This is why we agreed that PPBM should be given 52 seats, which is a significant number, to assure the people in the villages that they will not be dominated by DAP, as that is the hurdle.”
He said PAS believed it could win the election on its own, given the number of its members and its party machinery.
However, this was a “false illusion”, he added.
“Victory is determined by the people’s support, not the number of your members.
“PAS believes they can win alone because they genuinely think that their victory lies in the number of supporters that show up for their events.
“As a result, they have big gatherings, and this leads them to believe they can go it alone.
“They forget that we (while in PAS) have been having that all the while but we never could win enough. So they have a false illusion about strength and grandeur which is going to be their downfall,” he said.
PAS: ‘Small party’ Amanah deserves only small number of seats