KUALA LUMPUR: The Democratic Action Party (DAP) has agreed to appoint a Umno assemblyman to represent Barisan Nasional (BN) as a member of the Penang State Executive Council in the spirit of the Unity Government, said its secretary-general, Anthony Loke (pix).
Loke who is also Transport Minister said the matter was unanimously agreed in the DAP central executive committee (CEC) which met tonight.
“DAP is leading Penang with the Chief Minister. The CEC agreed that we propose to the Chief Minister to appoint an exco member from Umno to represent BN.
“As there are two BN candidates who won in Penang, we will appoint a BN representative to sit in the Penang state government executive council,“ he said in a press conference here tonight.
Also present were DAP chairman Lim Guan Eng, Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow, DAP deputy chairman Gobind Singh Deo, DAP national publicity secretary Teo Nie Ching and the party’s top leadership.
Yesterday, Chow, who is also the Penang PH chairman, was sworn in as Chief Minister for a second term after the PH-BN coalition won 29 out of 40 Penang State Legislative Assembly seats in the state election.
Of that number, DAP won all 19 contested seats, with PKR winning 7, BN (2) and Amanah one. The two seats won by BN were Bertam represented by Datuk Seri Reezal Merican Naina Merican and Rashidi Zinol in Sungai Acheh.
Meanwhile, Loke said, the party will also submit the names of candidates representing DAP to the Menteri Besar and Chief Minister to be appointed as state councillors in the three states led by the BN-PH coalition, namely Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Penang in the near future.
Regarding the post-mortem after the state polls among parties in the Unity Government, Loke said that at the moment it has not been done yet, but said that it does not only involve the seats lost but also the seats won by the BN-PH coalition.
“What is clear is that the seats we won show good cooperation between PH and BN, this is very clear in Negeri Sembilan where we won 31 out of 36 seats due to the cooperation between the two coalitions even though it is a new cooperation but it is a formula for success in the general election,“ he said.
For DAP, Loke said the Sungai Pelek seat in Selangor, which was won in this state election, was DAP’s ‘seat of pride’, considering that almost 60 per cent of the voters were Malays with about 20 per cent Chinese voters and 15 per cent of Indian voters.
“We fielded a Chinese grassroots leader as a candidate who managed to defeat the PN candidate from Bersatu, this is a very significant example of success and it shows that voters in Selangor, including the Malays, can accept the PH candidate,“ he said.
In the just concluded state elections, DAP won 46 of the 47 state seats contested in four states, namely 19 seats in Penang, Selangor (15), Negeri Sembilan (11) and one seat in Kedah. - Bernama
