WARISAN and Pejuang will not be part of Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) “big tent” in the upcoming Johor state elections, sources told The Malaysian Insight.

The main opposition pact, however, is open to sharing some seats with youth-centric party Muda, they said.

“It’s hard to include Warisan and Pejuang as both don’t appear interested in sharing seats,” said a source from the PH presidential council.

“The initial comments from both parties are unreasonable as they want to contest the majority of the seats. What does that leave us?”

Following the dissolution of the Johor legislative assembly on January 22, the state’s Pejuang chief, Shahruddin Md Salleh, said the party plans to vie for 42 seats while Warisan president Mohd Shafie Apdal said the party wants to debut in Peninsular Malaysia in the Johor elections.

Earlier this week, however, PH chairman Anwar Ibrahim had said the pact will rope in all the opposition parties, including Pejuang, Warisan and Muda, to contest all 56 state seats in the Johor polls.

He had said this is to ensure Umno and Barisan Nasional (BN) will be defeated in the next general election, starting with the Johor polls.

“A preliminary agreement has been made where we will open the space to rope in all opposition forces and civil society groups to make sure there is a change. It is not going to help if there is a hairline crack (in the opposition),” the opposition leader had said after chairing a PH presidential council meeting.

“We have to have one voice, one action and one strategy to ensure Umno/BN is defeated, starting in Johor.”

Another PH leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said recent statements from Warisan made it impossible for the coalition to cooperate with the Sabah-based party in the Johor polls.

“It’s one thing for Warisan to take some of our former leaders and lawmakers after its launch here, it’s another to make statements attacking our constituencies,” said the leader.

Warisan has been on a membership recruitment drive in the peninsula, largely attracting members from DAP.

Just days after announcing that he had joined Warisan, former Jelutong MP Jeff Ooi said the party planned to contest all the state and parliamentary seats in Penang in the next general election.

Apart from Ooi, other former DAP leaders who have joined Warisan are former Penang exco Danny Law and Teratai assemblyman Bryan Lai, who quit the party last year.

The PH leader said some of the events leading up to the Sabah state elections in 2020 also left a bitter taste in the mouth.

“Warisan was very unaccommodating to Pakatan, especially PKR, during the seat negotiations (in Sabah),” he said.

Meanwhile, Amanah president Mohamad Sabu said PH has completed seat negotiations with PKR for the Johor polls, with Amanah and PKR contesting 20 seats each and DAP, 16.

This is after the coalition divided the 18 seats previously contested by Bersatu, with PKR and Amanah taking eight additional seats each and DAP, an extra two, in the 56-seat Johor assembly.

Mohamad, however, said the door is still open to Muda and that negotiations are ongoing.

In the 2018 general election, Bersatu (then part of the PH coalition) contested 18 seats; DAP, 14; and PKR and Amanah, 12 each.

Prior to the dissolution, Umno and DAP had the largest number of seats in the Johor assembly with 14 each, followed by Bersatu (11), PKR (7), Amanah (6), MIC (2) and PAS (1), totalling 55 after the death of Kempas assemblyman Osman Sapian last month.

In 2018, PH unseated BN after winning 36 seats. BN won 19 seats and PAS, one.

But following defections by Bersatu and PKR elected representatives in 2020, BN partnered Perikatan Nasional to rule the state with a simple majority of 29 seats. That simple majority, however, was reduced to 28 after Osman’s death on December 22. – January 28, 2022.