SHAH ALAM, 7 May: PKR Vice President, Azmin Ali does not blame PAS regarding the party candidate that was adamant to continue to compete for the Kota Damansara constituency, causing Umno-BN to win during the past 13th General Election (GE-13).
BN candidate, Halimaton Saadiah Bohan won 16,387 votes while the PKR candidate, Mohd Nasir Hashim lost with 14,860 votes and the PAS candidate, Ridzuan Ismail received 7,312 votes.
According to Azmin, PKR respects and understands the problems faced by PAS during the division of seats and guaranteed to not prolong the issue.
“I want to confirm that PKR will not point fingers at PAS. We respect and understand the problems at that time and I, on behalf of PKR, will continue to move forward and to not look back,” he said in a press conference at the Shah Alam Member of Parliament’s Office today.
Shah Alam Member of Parliament, Khalid Samad said that PKR deserved the seat if the PAS candidate withdrew because both votes from PAS and PKR could have managed to beat Umno-BN with a larger majority.
“The candidate from PAS was directed to pull out but at the last minute, refused to a point that the PAS Secretary General, Datuk Mustapha Ali had to hold talks there and announce that the PKR candidate is the official candidate from PR.
“But they were still persistent and for that reason, we lost another seat for PKR and PR,” he said.
The 3rd Selangor PAS Deputy Commissioner said that the incident of the vote breakdown in Semenyih, Kota Damansara and Sungai Acheh, gave a lesson to PR candidates to not be arrogant and too confident that it betrayed the trust of the people.
In regards to that, Khalid said that Selangor PAS will send a report to the Central PAS to investigate the issue and to take appropriate action on the incident.
During the GE-13, Selangor PR managed to win a majority of 2/3 of the seats with PAS winning 15 seats, DAP with 15 seats and PKR with 14 seats.
