HOURS after the Perak Muda chief announced that he would be contesting the Tapah parliamentary seat in the coming general election, party information chief Luqman Long rebutted the statement, saying that was not the case.

Luqman said so far, the party has only announced that it will be contesting three seats after discussions with Pakatan Harapan, namely Kepala Batas, Tanjong Karang and Tanjung Piai.

“As for the Tapah seat, Muda would like to inform that it belongs to Pakatan, and not Muda,” he said.

“Muda-Pakatan’s commitment is to avoid any clashes over seats.

“Any statement which is in contradiction of this Muda-Pakatan commitment is not an official statement from Muda.

“All our official announcements on seats will be made by our election director Amira Aisya.”

Earlier today, Mutalib Uthman announced that he would be Muda’s candidate in Tapah, taking on three-term incumbent member of parliament M. Saravanan, in the upcoming general election.

Mutalib made the announcement in his Facebook today, adding that the seat was allocated to Muda after discussions with Pakatan Harapan (PH). PKR had been contesting this seat in recent elections.

Muda is an ally of PH in the November 19 polls.

“For the record, the Tapah seat is a rural seat, which is a Barisan Nasional (BN) stronghold and its incumbent is Human Resources Minister Saravanan,” said Mutalib.

He said Muda’s decision to contest the seat is in line with its approach of taking on BN cabinet members in three other seats.

Saravanan, who is also MIC deputy president, has held the Tapah seat since 2008. This constituency was created in 1984 and had been in the hands of BN/MIC since the 1986 general election.

In the last general election, Saravanan retained the seat with a slim 614-vote majority in a three-cornered fight.

So far, Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s Pejuang has named its candidate, Mior Nor Haidir Suhaimi, to contest in Tapah.

Perikatan Nasional is also expected to name a candidate from PAS for this seat.  

Last night, Muda announced that it will contest in three BN strongholds – Kepala Batas, Tanjong Karang and Tanjung Piai.

All three are rural seats where the incumbents held portfolios in the cabinet.

The party is also in talks with PH on contesting the Sembrong seat in Johor, held by Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein.

Muda is also planning to contest in Sabah, with a decision to be made soon.

It was reported last week that Muda had asked for fewer than 15 parliamentary seats in the polls.

On October 12, PH chairman Anwar Ibrahim said the coalition would work with Muda in the elections. – October 30, 2022.