Hazan Khalid, a businessman and PKR member for 13 years, recently said he would contest in the polls and questioned the party’s move in choosing Dr Streram Sinnasamy, claiming he was not popular there.
Speaking to FMT, Universiti Malaya’s Awang Azman Awang Pawi said conflicts like this would only affect the image of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) which was already being seen negatively by many people.
“It is a given that there are some from within PKR who wanted to contest in Rantau in the beginning, but who were sidelined. They will get voters to shun Streram by telling them not to vote.
“So, efforts to stand together within PKR and Anwar Ibrahim’s role in uniting the Indians, Chinese and Malays in Rantau needs to be intensified as only Anwar is seen as capable of taking care of this,” he said.
Political geo-strategist Azmi Hassan from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia said it was clear the move was engineered to discredit the PKR president’s decision to name Streram as the party’s candidate.
“It is a well-known fact that nominating Streram was Anwar’s decision and this is now being used by anti-Anwar Ibrahim camps in PKR and within PH to discredit him,” Azmi told FMT recently.
“With a PKR and now an Amanah member willing to be independent candidates, it basically demonstrates that these groups are willing to sacrifice Rantau just to discredit Anwar’s leadership,” he added.
Tandiko Dalusin from Amanah Rasah is also said to be considering contesting as an independent candidate as he considers PH to be on the “verge of collapse” as it is “practising cronyism and nepotism”.
“With all the infighting, Tok Mat’s (Mohamad Hasan) positive standing among Rantau voters and him getting the full backing of BN and PAS, it looks like Streram will be facing an uphill task to unseat Tok Mat,” Azmi added.
Awang Azman agreed. He said Streram would also find his chances at winning slim if any other candidate who might be facing him were Indians or locals, as they would almost certainly be more popular.
“Of course, the biggest challenge for Streram is Tok Mat who has held the seat for three terms and who is also a local from Rantau, which cannot be said of Streram, who is seen as an outsider here.”
Streram hails from Klang, Selangor.
So for PKR to win Rantau, Azmi advised Anwar to take to distancing the “perception” that Streram was his choice.
The only other choice is to convince dissidents to abandon their decision to go against the decision to field Streram, which is fairly unrealistic to be done now.
Singapore Institute of International Affairs senior fellow Oh Ei Sun gave other reasons why PKR would lose in Rantau. He said the 55% Malay voters here would go for PAS and Umno, which favours Tok Mat.
This follows the Umno-PAS alliance. The vote share from PAS supporters would now go to Tok Mat, said Oh.
“PKR’s game is such that it is confident of almost all the 20% Chinese voters’ unconditional support. So by putting up an Indian candidate, they hope to sweep most of the 27% Indian votes too.
“PKR’s calculation is when the Indian and Chinese votes are combined with a tiny fraction of Malay votes going for them, then they may just squeeze out a razor-thin win in Rantau.
“But I think that is a tall order to achieve, as many Chinese voters may not bother to turn out to vote, and Indian votes are not all for PH too,” he said, adding PH must win the support of the rural Malays.
A total of 11,283 voters, or 55.11%, of the electorate, is Malay, 3,849 or 18.80% is Chinese, 5,336 or 26.06% is Indian and four or 0.02% others.
The fact that Mohamad was now the acting Umno president and a three-term incumbent, combined with the fact that Umno would pool all resources available to help him win, made Streram’s loss certain, Oh added.
In the earlier three elections, Mohamad had emerged victorious, always securing a majority exceeding 3,000 votes.
James Chin from the University of Tasmania’s Asia Institute is also pessimistic of PKR’s chances of winning.
“But I am more interested to see if PH resorts to the racial stuff that BN will use. If it does, then we are back to square one.”
The by-election is underway because the Federal Court dismissed an appeal filed by Mohamad to set aside an Election Court decision declaring his unopposed victory in the last general election null and void.
Last year, Mohamad was declared the winner of the seat after Streram, the PH candidate, was prohibited from entering the nomination centre as he did not have a pass from the Election Commission (EC).
Nominations take place today morning. Campaigning will last for 14 days beginning today.
Early voting has been fixed for April 9, while polling will take place on April 13.
The by-election is the seventh to be held in the country since GE14, after the by-elections for the Sungai Kandis, Seri Setia, Balakong and Semenyih state seats in Selangor and the Cameron Highlands and Port Dickson parliamentary seats in Pahang and Negeri Sembilan respectively.
PH won four of the six by-elections, with BN winning the Semenyih and Cameron Highlands seats.