IT is not suitable to hold the general election in the near future with the country currently facing concerns about the spread of Covid-19, United Progressive Kinabalu Organisation (Upko) president Wilfred Madius Tangau said.

The Tuaran member of Parliament said, apart from being concerned about the safety of voters, Upko felt that it also made it difficult for political parties to convey their message to voters due to relatively limited campaign space.

He said apart from that, the spread of Covid-19 also caused the public to be afraid to go to the polls, which in turn could cause voter turnout to be poor.

“The SOP (standard operating procedure) for campaigning during the recent Malacca state elections saw the contesting parties not able to speak or convey information well so that voters could understand and make wise decisions.

“Voter turnout was also low. Since we want to give the opportunity to many people to vote, why not wait for a more suitable time, we also have the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) until next July,” he told a press conference in Penampang today.

Earlier, he officiated the Upko 2021 Extraordinary Delegates Conference and launched the MyUpko digital application, a smartphone application to channel party information, at the Dewan Kebudayaan.

Asked about the seats to be contested by Upko in GE15, Tangau said, as a component party of Pakatan Harapan (PH), the matter would be discussed jointly within the coalition.

Yesterday, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin was reported as saying that GE15 was not suitable to be held at this time due to the increasing number of Covid-19 cases, hospital admissions and the emergence of Covid-19 variants in the country.

The MOU on Transformation and Political Stability between the federal government and PH was signed on September 13, which agreed that Parliament would not be dissolved before July 31, 2022 in an effort to achieve political stability in the country to combat the epidemic. – Bernama, November 27, 2021.