KUCHING: Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) has announced that it will contest in all the three state seats in Puncak Borneo (formerly Mambong) parliamentary constituencies, namely (after delineation) Mambong, Serumbu and Tarat in the upcoming state election.
The announcement was made by its deputy president Mohamed Azmin Ali when officiating at the PKR Mambong Elections Operations Room at Siburan, near here, yesterday.
“I want to tell you that hearing the feedback from the grassroots (in Puncak Borneo), they want PKR to contest in the three state seats, if they (Election Commission) were to use the seats from the new delineation exercise.
“Therefore, on behalf of the PKR election committee, I would like to announce that we will put our candidate to contest in all the three state seats (Mambong, Surumbu and Tarat). This is not my desire but the people’s desire,” the Selangor Mentri Besar said.
Azmin, who is also Gombak MP, also warned the state Barisan Nasional that the party is ever ready to face the state election.
“If they (BN) want to hold it next week or next month, we are ready. If they hold next year, we will be even more ready.”
Despite being well prepared this time to face the state election, Azmin said Pakatan Rakyat (PR) would still have to work hard on the ground as he claimed that their opponent had monetary and machinery advantage.
Meanwhile, when met after the event, Azmin said he had a meeting with the state party leadership and was happy to note that all the branches were more prepared than before, adding that they had even identified some of the focus areas and new candidates to represent PKR in the next state election.
“We also shared with the state leadership our commitment to support PKR in this coming state election and play our role to ensure there will a very strong machinery for the state election.”
On DAP Sarawak’s decision to pull out from Sarawak PR last year, he believed that with the courage and conviction from the coalition leaders, they would be able to hold discussion and ensure that allocations of seats could be resolved way ahead before state election.
“We still believe that we should stick to earlier principle that there should be a one-to-one fight (between PR) and BN because PR is based on common policies and framework and we should defend the similar position as taken by PR in West Malaysia.”
Although the seat allocation among the partners in PR has yet to be resolved due to overlapping seats, Azmin believed that with the wisdom of PR leadership, the coalition would be able to resolve seat allocations much earlier than anticipated.
On hudud, he said it is not an issue at all as hudud is not part of the common policy for PR. He explained that there is a common policy framework in PR and that all the parties in PR would have to stick to the framework.