IT’S up to the Pakatan Harapan leaders to decide if the Tanjung Piai by-election results should be viewed as a referendum on Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s leadership, said Hishammuddin Hussein.

The former Umno vice-president said it was a matter for them to resolve among themselves.

“As far as we are concerned, the candidate that they put forward was (representative of) the PH coalition so if they want to point fingers at different factions, at different parties within their coalition, that is their internal problem, not ours,” he said in the Parliament lobby today.

Saturday’s defeat has renewed calls for Dr Mahathir to speed up the handover of power to PKR president Anwar Ibrahim.

The Sembrong MP declined to comment on what the Chinese voter swing to the opposition, as indicated in the Tg Piai polls, augured for Barisan Nasional.

“I think there is a lot of unhappiness and again I’ve voiced this out before, the government has got to perform. We have to fulfil the promises we have made to voters in Tg Piai. We have to deliver. And that’s all there is to it,” he said.

PH suffered a humiliating defeat on Saturday when BN’s Wee Jeck Seng won by a 15,086-vote majority over its candidate, Karmaine Sardin.

The MCA man got 25,466 votes and Bersatu’s Karmaine, 10,380.

Gerakan’s Wendy Subramaniam won 1,707 votes, Berjasa’s Badhrulhisham Abdul Aziz (850), and independents Ang Chuan Lock (380) and Faridah Aryani Abd Ghaffar (32).

The by-election was called following the death of Md Farid Md Rafik, 42, on September 21 due to heart complications. – November 18, 2019.