By-elections: Pakatan will decide tomorrow

(Bernama) – The Pakatan Harapan opposition alliance, comprising Parti Keadilan Rakyat, DAP and Parti Amanah Negara will make a decision tomorrow on which of them will contest in two parliamentary by-elections due next month.

The by-elections on June 18 are to fill the vacancies in Sungai Besar, Selangor, and Kuala Kangsar, Perak, with the deaths of deputy minister Noriah Kasnon, and Wan Mohammad Khair-il Anuar Wan Ahmad in a helicopter crash in Sarawak last week.

Amanah president Mohamad Sabu said the meeting would be held at the Amanah office in Kuala Lumpur.

“We will field a candidate either from the DAP, PKR or Amanah,” he told reporters after attending dinner function here last night.

PAS deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man has urged the Pakatan partners not to field a candidates in the two seats which, he said, were traditionally contested by PAS. The party would defend its right to contest, he said.

The party was once a partner in the former opposition alliance which collapsed out of differences between the DAP and PAS, and the formation of Amanah as a splinter party by former PAS leaders.

Mohamad said PAS was not part of the Pakatan Harapan coalition and if the party wished to contest in the by-election it was the right of PAS.

The Election Commission has announced that the by-elections would be held simultaneously, with nominations accepted on June 5, early voting on June 14 and polling on June 18.