PHOTOS of Pakatan Harapan chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad and PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim have been cut out from a PH election billboard, Bayan Baru candidate Sim Tze Tzin said.

The PKR leader, who is defending the Bayan Baru parliamentary seat in Penang for a third term, said it was “outrageous” of the Election Commission to have sent officers to cut out the two iconic PH leaders’ pictures.

He was informed about the incident, which occurred yesterday.

“I called up the EC but did not get a clear answer… In defiance, we must stand up and object against this new election regulation. We never had such issues in the past.

“I urge all Malaysians to post Anwar and Dr Mahathir’s photos on their Facebook pages,” he said at a press conference today on Jalan Dato Ismail Hashim, where the billboard was located.

Sim said a Bersatu operations centre in Bayan Baru was also instructed by the EC to remove a photo of Dr Mahathir, who is Bersatu’s founding chairman, from the premises.

“Our candidate in Lembah Pantai, Fahmi Fadzil was also told by the EC he cannot wear a T-shirt bearing Anwar’s picture. This kind of enforcement is outrageous,” he said, asking why the EC feared Dr Mahathir and Anwar.

PH’s Batu Maung candidate Abdul Halim Hussain also hit out at the EC, branding its action “unfair, ridiculous and unreasonable”.

Similar incidents have been reported recently by PH in Johor and Negri Sembilan, where Dr Mahathir’s picture was cut out of PH billboards.

The EC recently imposed new rulings that candidates are only allowed to use the photos of their party presidents and deputy presidents or the equivalent in their campaign materials, apart from their own photos. They are not allowed to display the images of other officials. – May 1, 2018.