REMBAU: Perak PKR vice-chairman Tan Kar Hing believes the numbers are in favour of Pakatan Harapan (PH) in the Rantau by-election.
Tan said PH candidate Dr S. Streram would have won the seat in the 14th general elections (GE14) had he been allowed to file his nomination papers.
Tan based his findings on the results for the Rembau parliamentary seat in GE14. Rantau is one of four state seats in the Rembau constituency, the others being Paroi, Kota and Chembong.
Tan pointed out that the BN candidate for the Rembau seat, Khairy Jamaluddin, won most of his votes in Kota and Chembong, while his opponent Lt-Kol Roseli Abdul Gani of Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia, a component of PH, scraped through in Paroi but won the votes in Rantau.
Khairy won the Rembau seat by a 4,364-vote majority. The constituency has 88,365 registered voters.
“Datuk Seri Mohamed Hasan won the Rantau seat by default,“ he said. “Technically, Streram won the seat, given that majority of the votes from that constituency went to PH.”
Tan said the numbers have given PH reasons to be optimistic.
Streram was barred from filing his nomination papers for the seat for GE14 because he forgot to bring his identification tag along, paving the way for Mohamed to win the seat unopposed.
The election court has declared his victory null and void. The by-election has been fixed for April 13.
Tan believes the demographics was also in favour of Streram. Of the 29,926 registered voters in Rantau, 55% are Malays, 26% are Indians and 18% are Chinese.
He felt that with the voters split almost evenly between Malays and non-Malays, the results could likely be in PH’s favour.
He added that the lack of balanced development in Rantau would also work in Streram’s favour. “Apart from Sendayan, the other parts of the constituency are still not developed,“ he said.
Parti Amanah Negara president Mohamed Sabu also expressed his confidence that the PH candidate will prevail.
Mohamed, popularly known as Mat Sabu, said the readiness of the PH election machinery was at its optimum.
“They (BN) will play up the economic issues but we will be ready for them,“ he added.
