“Who told him? I did not even announce that I want to contest in Ampang,” Anwar told reporters after officiating at a party event in Batu Kawan today.
“If he (Rashid) wants to defend Zuraida, this is not the way. Where is she contesting? In Ampang?”
Yesterday, Rashid, who is now with Bersatu, said in a statement that he had received news that Anwar would be contesting in Ampang.
He said that Ampang was the “seat of choice” for Pakatan Harapan (PH) leaders who are not confident of winning in Malay-majority areas as Ampang is a demographically mixed seat comprising 56% Malay voters, 35% Chinese voters, 7% Indians and others (2%).
He also claimed that Anwar, being PH’s prime ministerial candidate, was afraid of facing the Malay voters in his current seat of Port Dickson.
However, Anwar said that as a leader of a Malay-majority political party that is multiracial, he does not push for Malay-centric politics as Bersatu and Umno do.
The PKR president took a shot at Rashid, who is MP for Batu Pahat, saying he was moved from Penang to Batu Pahat at the 2018 general election because of his poor performance as Penang’s deputy chief minister from 2013 until 2018.
Rashid, then with PKR, was fielded in Batu Pahat as a PH candidate and won the seat.
He defected to Bersatu in February 2020 after the Sheraton Move, a political move engineered by Muhyiddin Yassin and former PKR deputy president Azmin Ali which led to the collapse of the PH-led federal government. Zuraida was also among those who defected to Bersatu.
On a separate matter, Anwar lambasted Barisan Nasional and Perikatan Nasional for lacking the political will to amend the Federal Constitution to grant equal rights to women to confer Malaysian citizenship for their overseas-born children.
In his speech at the Wanita PKR assembly, he said that it was nonsensical that the Federal Constitution stated that it was only from the father that these children may derive the right to Malaysian citizenship.
“That is why I support the initiatives undertaken by the women MPs to sign a pledge to push the government to amend the constitution immediately to recognise the rights of both father and mother,” he said.