PARTI Warisan will contest in areas where there is a sizeable increase in the number of voters, its state co-ordinators said.

They felt the party will be able to make its case better with young first-time voters following the automatic registration of 18-year-olds last year.

The party is also cautious with its recruitment of new members and for now is keeping its state outfits small.

It wants to focus on quality rather than quantity.

Penang Warisan co-ordinator Jeff Ooi told The Malaysian Insight, the seats with a large older population were mainly the domain of the established parties.

“We only enter areas that show a rapid increase of voters.

“We want to create an attraction in areas where there are young people and people who are still productive, working and still paying taxes. We focus on areas like that,” he said.

The special Penang Warisan committee will evaluate and reject the seats considered “old” without any increase of new voters.

“We will be selective. There is a body set up to shortlist the areas to contest and the possibility of winning.

“We won’t go into areas with an ageing population, from where the younger generation has migrated.

“(Voters) in the old areas are staunch supporters of the established parties, and will not move, we avoid areas like that,” he said.

He said response to the party has been positive and having a former Sabah chief minister at its helm has helped it attract members, especially its young target group.

The Warisan committee will, among other things, take into account the political “temperature” in the area before considering fielding a candidate, the former DAP MP said.

“We (assess) based on data, (intelligence) on local political unrest. We also use guerrilla tactics, we will surround (the targeted constituency),” he said.

In addition, the committee that he leads also evaluates potential candidates, especially in Penang.

“Our condition must be between 35 and 50 years old to be considered, must have a degree,” he said.

He added that Warisan Penang is examining about 10 of the 13 parliamentary seats in the state, but has not decided the exact number of seats to be contested so far.

Warisan Johors’s Suhaimi Salleh said the party will filter applications and not accept any applicant easily, because the party wants quality.

The former Kukup assemblyman said that Warisan avoided opening branches in the state, focusing instead on the quality of its service.

“For the next general election, Warisan does not intend to have many divisions – so far only four to five – next year two or three more divisions will be added.

“We are a new party, and we want to create a party as a third force that is an alternative to the existing political spectrum.

“Perhaps in a few years the whole state will have Warisan,” he told The Malaysian Insight.

Suhaimi, who is also the former deputy head of Umno Tanjung Piai division said, so far Warisan Johor has around 1,000 members.

“We don’t want a lot of members but members who work for the community and the community supports us. So far, the people’s acceptance is OK. There is no trouble,” he said.

However, he admitted that the people of Johor still see Warisan as a Sabah-based party, given that it was established in that state.

Unlike his previous party, Suhaimi sees Warisan adopting a different approach by giving greater power to the state to manage the party.

“What’s fun about Warisan is that there are flexible leaders and the way we manage. More autonomy is given to the state,” he said.

It is clear that freedom, among other things, includes efforts to promote the party’s ideology such as combating corruption and abuse of power in a multiracial society.

“The party gives the state full authority to prepare the line of state and division leaders,” he said.

He also said that Warisan is aiming to contest in 10 of the 26 constituencies in Johor, especially in areas with mixed voters.

“We don’t have many members, so we placed unelected leaders who have already served the community.

“Our concept is people who help people a lot in a personal capacity and we extend it by making him or her a candidate, hopefully helping more people when elected.

Johor was the first state that the Sabah-based Warisan entered on the peninsula, after dominating Sabah politics for two years.

However, they party failed to win any of the six seats it contested: Pekan Nanas, Bekok, Mahkota, Johor Jaya, Bukit Batu and Permas.

Nevertheless, Suhaimi said he was happy to see Warisan had the opportunity to make an offer to the voters.

“The important thing is that we want the people to understand what we can offer, but to make people understand us will not be easy.

“It was an encouraging response from the people, and we want to become the third force to our political scene,” Suhaimi reiterated.

In addition, Warisan is also careful in appointing leaders as it does not want leaders to tarnish the image of the party.

“We are a new party, we don’t want to be corrupted by the old political culture. We want to prevent money politics, misuse of power, and internal conflict, which will be difficult to control later.”

Meanwhile, Warisan lost control of Sabah in the 2020 state election and some of the party’s leaders also left the party soon thereafter. – August 15, 2022.