The party’s deputy president, Ahmad Faizal Azumu said the machinery assembled by Azmin, the Selangor Bersatu chief, was solid.

“In my view, it was among the best machinery put together. Unfortunately the results did not favour us,” he told reporters after the unveiling of the candidates for the Bersatu polls next month.

Faizal, better known as Peja, said the entire party leadership, including president Muhyiddin Yassin, secretary-general Hamzah Zainudin and Azmin will work even harder at the next election, following PN’s thumping loss last Saturday.

He was responding to a report by FMT, quoting two unnamed opposition leaders, who claimed that Azmin did not do a good job coordinating the machinery, which led to election workers from other states not turning up and that he had relied too much on his inner circle.

One of the sources also claimed that the election result might have been different if someone else had been chosen to lead PN’s campaign in the by-election.

On Saturday, PN was roundly defeated after its candidate, Haizan Jaafar of Bersatu, managed to secure only 7,347 votes compared with Barisan Nasional’s Syed Hussien Syed Abdullah, who received 27,995 votes.

BN’s 20,648-vote majority was four times higher than the 5,166-vote margin BN achieved in the 2022 state election.

Yesterday, Bersatu Youth permanent chairman Akmal Zahin Zainal Zahir dismissed the claim that Azmin was partly to blame for the loss as the personal views of certain people.