Khalid insists will remain Selangor MB until next general election

(Malay Mail Online) – Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim today rebuffed renewed speculation that he will be made to step down as Selangor mentri besar, reiterating that he will stay on until the end of his term.

Conceding that he is facing pressure from leaders within his own PKR party to step down, Khalid stressed that he will not do so and that he was already “used to the pressure”.

“I think I have stated that I am going to serve until the end of my term, I have to keep my promise to the people of Selangor when I took my oath as mentri besar,” Khalid told reporters at a news conference here.

“I took my oath to manage the state until the next election,” the Port Klang assemblyman asserted.

The Malay Mail Online understands that while some key PAS leaders like Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad want a change in MB, both PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang and PAS secretary-general Datuk Mustafa Ali are in full support of the current Selangor MB and have made that clear last week during a private meeting.

It is also understood that PR has yet to decide on who should be the next Selangor MB.

While some within the pact want PKR president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail to take over, several leaders in PKR’s Selangor chapter still prefer her deputy Azmin Ali, who is now making a renewed bid for the post by lobbying among DAP and PAS.

It is understood that Hadi had given Khalid a “personal guarantee” that PAS would support him to stay as MB until the end of his term even if DAP or PKR decided otherwise.

But according to an anonymous source quoted in news reports in Astro Awani and The Star yesterday, the decision to appoint Azmin as the next MB is awaiting the endorsement of Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

The source had said that Azmin is believed to have been chosen over PKR president Wan Azizah as PAS reportedly has issues with her gender.

But Azmin himself later rubbished reports of him winning DAP and PAS’s support to replace Khalid as Selangor mentri besar, saying he was not even present at a closed-door tripartite meeting where the decision was supposedly made.

The PKR deputy president said yesterday that not only was he not at the meeting purportedly held on Monday night, he was not even in the country.

“I have no idea. I am in Medina (Saudi Arabia). Already left KL yesterday (Monday),” Azmin told The Malay Mail Online via text message yesterday.

Khalid’s position as mentri besar has remained contentious since his own party, PKR, initiated the so-called “Kajang Move” to oust him from the position in March.

The move was ostensibly engineered to remove Khalid and to replace him with PKR’s de facto leader Anwar, who had intended to contest the Kajang state seat which was vacated in February.

But the “Kajang move” fell through after the appellate court overturned his sodomy acquittal and sentenced him to five years in jail, days before the by-election’s nomination. Anwar has filed for an appeal against this decision.

Although Anwar’s disqualification had then appeared to put to rest plans to remove Khalid, recent controversies involving the Selangor administration have prompted new agitations for his removal.

Among others, these include the still-unresolved row over the seizure of bibles in the state and Khalid’s perceived partiality towards the developers of the proposed Kinrara-Damansara Expressway that is facing mounting resistance from state residents.

A major barrier to Khalid’s removal was the absence of a clear candidate to replace him, with Azizah previously being touted as the most likely candidate.