UMNO secretary-general Annuar Musa does not see anything wrong with Barisan Nasional’s (BN) decision to field MCA’s Wee Jeck Seng as for the Tg Piai by-election despite talks of “recycling” its candidate.

Annuar said Pakatan Harapan chairman and Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad is also “recycled”.

“It is okay, we have a prime minister whom we have recycled many times. I think there is no problem.

“If you can have a recycled prime minister, what’s wrong with a candidate?” he told reporters at the Parliament lobby today.

BN named the former two-term Tg Piai MP Wee to carry its banner in the by-election on November 16.

Earlier, there were talks that Umno had wanted to contest the seat.

Annuar said it is normal for the grassroots to be unhappy over the choice of the MCA man for the seat.

“We had lengthy discussions and agreed, in the interest of BN, the seat be contested by MCA.

“From the beginning, we looked at all angles. We had to take into consideration PAS’ view on this matter,” he said referring to the Islamist party which had inked a political charter with Umno.

The Tg Piai seat was declared vacant after incumbent Md Farid Md Rafik died last month due to heart complications.

Wee was Tg Piai’s MP before losing to Farid by 524 votes last year.

In 2013’s general election, Wee won the seat with a 5,457-vote majority.

Last year, PAS candidate Nordin Othman received 2,962 votes, while Wee got 20,731, for a total of 23,693, which would be about 2,000 more than Farid’s.

This by-election will be the first since Umno and PAS signed the pact last month, and will test the widely held belief that the combined support bases of the two Malay parties could defeat Pakatan Harapan.

PAS has announced it will not contest the seat.

Tg Piai has 52,986 registered voters, with 26,565 in the Kukup state constituency and 26,421 in Pekan Nenas.

The racial breakdown of voters is 57% Malays, 42% Chinese and 1% Indian. – October 31, 2019.