KUALA LUMPUR – Pakatan Harapan (PH) will be standing by their decision to field opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim as the coalition’s candidate for prime minister, DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke has confirmed.
He said that the call to field Anwar, who is also PKR president and the coalition’s chairman, was established a long time ago and will remain such in the absence of new resolutions.
“As long as there’s no new decision (on PH’s choice for its prime ministerial candidate), then the decision still stands,” he was quoted as saying yesterday by the Malay Mail.
He also said that other parties who want to name their prime ministerial candidates are free to do so, adding that DAP and PH have worked together in coming to a shared decision.
“For DAP, definitely, we are in PH, whatever PH’s decision must be made together, in consensus,” he said when met after an engagement session with the DAP grassroots and leaders from the Indian community last night.
In November last year, Loke, transport minister during PH’s short-lived tenure as the federal government, stoked controversy when he reportedly called for Anwar to stop being made the sole PH prime ministerial candidate.
He was reported as saying this by the Malaysian Insight following the coalition’s heavy defeat in the Melaka election.
He said that the coalition should instead talk more about the reform agenda, and not just on whether Anwar should be prime minister.
Loke was appointed as DAP’s new secretary-general at the party’s national congress last month.
On Thursday, Umno secretary-general Datuk Seri Ahmad Maslan announced in a statement that the party will field Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob as their prime ministerial candidate in the coming 15th general election.
Meanwhile, Bersatu supreme council member Datuk Razali Idris said party president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin will be proposed as the party’s choice for prime minister if Perikatan Nasional wins the polls.
Anwar is now scheduled to engage in a live debate with Umno’s Datuk Seri Najib Razak, the party’s former president and a former prime minister, on May 12. – The Vibes, April 17, 2022
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