SEREMBAN: Pakatan Harapan (PH) candidate in the Rantau state seat by-election Dr S. Streram (pix) has denied that the party exploited children in one of its campaign programmes.
He said the programme was organised by a non-governmental organisation where the children only used the stage for a prize-presentation ceremony after an art competition.
“They only held the prize presentation for the competition. They did not used it for political reasons. They did not have a stage so they used a truck which had stage facilities for the prize-presentation. If you were there, you would understand.
“It is not true that PH exploited children, in fact we were looking out for them,” he said at the walkabout programme with members of the Man Nam Kong Soh Association at Rantau here yesterday.
The media reported yesterday that former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak alleged in his Facebook account that PH used children in the Rantau by-election and uploaded a photo of a group of children who were taken into a lorry used by the PH campaign machinery.
The Rantau by-election is seeing a four-cornered fight between Streram, the Barisan Nasional’s Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan who is also former Negri Sembilan mentri besar, and two independent candidates, a former radio presenter R. Malarvizhi and ex-lecturer Mohd Nor Yassin.
The by-election has been necessitated by the Federal Court’s dismissal of an appeal filed by Mohamad to set aside the Nov 16 Seremban Election Court’s decision declaring his unopposed victory in the 14th General Election as null and void. — Bernama
