MIC did not attend last night’s Barisan Nasional (BN) candidate announcement as its members were busy with preparations for the upcoming general election, M. Saravanan said.

“All of us were busy at the ‘kawasan’ (constituencies). 

“Seriously, I was in the constituency,” the caretaker human resource minister told reporters today after the party’s central working committee met this morning at its headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.

The MIC deputy president said he was also in his Tapah constituency before making his way to capital for the meeting today.

Pressed on the sudden central working committee’s emergency pow wow today, Saravanan said it was a ‘routine meeting’. 

“Before an election, all our decisions have to be endorsed by the party.  It was just a routine meeting,” he said.

Despite Saravanan’s effort to make light of the party’s unhappiness regarding BN’s choice of candidates for the national polls, its Pahang chapter will not be attending the candidate unveil for state assembly seats in Kuantan today.

Yesterday BN chairman Ahmad Zahid Hamidi revealed that  MIC candidates will stand in Sungai Siput (S. A. Vigneswaran), Tapah (M. Saravanan), Hulu Selangor (T. Mohan), Teluk Intan (T. Murugiah), Padang Serai (C. Sivarraajh), Batu (A. Kohilan Pillay), Port Dickson (M. Kamalanathan), Kuala Langat (M. Mohana), Kota Raja (D. Kajendran) and Segamat (M.P. Ramasamy).

Pahang MIC leaders will not attend the state BN candidate announcement this morning, said its chairman V. Arumugam.

He was on his way to Kuala Lumpur to attend the party’s central working committee meeting this morning.

“I was informed about today’s meeting last night. I have notified Pahang BN chairman (Wan Rosdy Wan Ismail) that I will be absent,” he was quoted as saying in a New Straits Times report.

Yesterday, MIC president S.A. Vigneswaran said the party would not attend the meeting to announce BN candidates at World Trade Centre Kuala Lumpur.

In a WhatsApp message to The Malaysian Insight, Vigneswaran said the party’s emergency meeting would decide if MIC will accept or reject the seats it is offered, or remain uninvolved in the election. 

The MIC president said he did not want the party to be drawn further into the matter.

In the 2018 general election, the party contested in nine seats with its deputy M. Saravanan retaining the Tapah seat and then Youth chief C. Sivarraajh winning the Cameron Highlands seat.

However, the Cameron Highlands constituency was lost in 2019 after the election court annulled Sivaraajh’s win for alleged vote-buying.

In the subsequent by-election, BN fielded Ramli Md Noor, who went on to win and become the country’s first Orang Asli MP.

The MIC kerfuffle adds to the Barisan Nasional drama that has been unfolding since the start of the week.

Lynchpin party Umno has been grappling with fallout as several top veterans were dropped from its general election line-up. – November 2, 2022.