DAP has a daunting challenge in defending all 42 parliamentary seats the party won in the 14th general election (GE14), Anthony Loke said.

Although hopeful, the newly appointed DAP secretary-general admitted that the party was in “some” danger of losing a few seats it won in the last election based on the new voting pattern seen in the recent Johor state polls.

Loke, however, said they would not give up those seats without a fight.

“My mission as the new leader of the party is to maintain and defend every single seat we won in the last election and hopefully we can achieve even more but the very minimum is to defend every single seat that we won in the last GE.

“Of course that is a heavy task (defending all the seats). We know certain seats are tough but we should give our best and we should prepare to the best of our ability to defend those seats,” the Seremban MP told The Malaysian Insight.

DAP, as part of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition, won 42 parliamentary seats in GE14, and went on to become part of the federal government for 22 months.

The PH government collapsed following the defection of Bersatu and several PKR MPs in the infamous “Sheraton Move”.

Last month, DAP chairman Lim Guan Eng said the party expects to lose up to five parliamentary seats from its present 42 after taking into account the voting pattern in Johor.

In the Johor state elections, Umno/Barisan Nasional won the super majority, leaving all other parties trailing.

Referring to the statement by Lim, Loke said the party was well aware of those five seats at stake for the upcoming elections but added the assumption could not be made solely based on the voting pattern of a single state-election result.

“I’m very cautious but at the same time realistic that we can’t make our assumptions based on the voting pattern in one state.

“We, the party, know that there are at least five parliamentary seats that we are in danger of losing,” he said.

Loke did not name the seats but spelled out why he felt that they were at risk.

“These are the seats that we won marginally in the last elections. Seats we know where the demographic is semi-rural with a large percentage of Malay voters is definitely quite vulnerable for us, and seats that we won for the first time in the last election,” he said.

Based on Loke’s explanation and a check with the Election Commission’s (EC) data, the five parliamentary seats the former transport minister might have indicated are, Raub and Bentong (both Pahang), Labis (Johor), Tenom (Sabah) and Mas Gading (Sarawak).

Four of them, Bentong, Labis, Tenom and Mas Gading, were all Barisan Nasional (BN) strongholds previously.

These seats were won for the first time by the opposition in GE14 by a small majority, not exceeding 4,000 in each constituency.

The Raub constituency in Pahang was a BN stronghold until 2013, when it was won over by DAP.

In 2018, DAP’s Tengku Zulpuri Shah Raja Puji retained the seats for the party with a majority of 3,159 against BN’s Chew Mei Fun.

Loke said that the party will be having a national retreat among the MPs and the Central Executive Committee (CEC) next week to discuss preparations for the election and also on these marginal seats. – April 8, 2022.