SHAH ALAM, 2 June: DAP is ready to place Malay candidates in any election despite their Malay candidate in the Teluk Intan by-election, Dyana Sodya Mohd Daud, losing narrowly to the Barisan Nasional (BN) candidate, Datuk Mah Siew Keong, in the parliamentary area with a majority of Chinese voters.
The DAP Publicity Chief, Tony Pua, said that DAP is more concerned with candidates that are able to serve the people by upholding the image and principles of the party, which places priority in the harmony of societies in the country.
“DAP has never opposed or prevented candidates among the non-Chinese community in DAP. We have many representatives from the Indian community and we have two Malay MPs.
“However, in a by-election in a Chinese majority area, the candidacy of a Malay candidate can easily become the focus. This is a major concern of attacks and manipulation by BN.
“After this, if there is suitable candidacy among DAP activists, we will highlight them. We do not care about race as long as the person is able to support the party’s image and work hard to serve the people,” said Pua when contacted by Selangor Kini.
Pua said that the people in this country should be educated to accept politics based on principles and reject racial politics, which is BN’s main weapon to retain their power.
In the Teluk Intan parliamentary by-election, which took place on 31 May, BN was seen as ‘winning’ in manipulating racial politics with different messages to increase votes in the Malay majority areas and also in Chinese majority areas.
In areas where the majority of voters are Chinese, BN highlighted the message ‘Chinese for Chinese’ but instead carried the message ‘Malays should reject DAP’ in Malay majority areas.
The Election Commission (EC) announced that BN defeated DAP with a majority of 238 votes after obtaining 20,157 votes against DAP, which received 19,919 votes, and 543 damaged votes.
The by-election this time witnessed a low turnout percentage of 66.67 percent compared to the 13th General Election, which had a turnout of 80.7 percent.
