KUALA LUMPUR: Pakatan Harapan (PH) is to field Pahang DAP deputy chairman M Manogaran to contest the Cameron Highlands parliamentary by-election on Jan 26, Prime Minister and PH chairman Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad announced yesterday.
Manogaran was the coalition’s candidate for the seat in the 14th general election (GE14) in May last year.
Dr Mahathir said Manogaran would be able to garner the support of the voters in the constituency.
“We will win the by-election. ‘Insya-Allah’ (God willing), we will win.
“We do not know who our opponents are. Whoever contests, we believe we can beat our opponents,” he told reporters after chairing a meeting of the PH Presidential Council here.
The Election Court had, on Nov 30 last year, annulled the GE14 victory of Datuk C Sivarraajh of Barisan Nasional after establishing there had been vote-buying during the election campaign.
Manogaran had filed a petition seeking a declaration to annul the election of Sivarraajh of the MIC, citing the offence under the Election Offences Act 1954.
On Dec 28, the Election Commission announced that Sivarraajh, an MIC vice-president, was ineligible to contest the by-election.
In GE14, Sivarraajh had secured 10,307 votes to win by a majority of 597 votes in a five-cornered contest. Manogaran had polled 9,710 votes; Wan Mahadir Wan Mahmud of PAS, 3,587 votes; Mohd Tahir Kassim of Berjasa,81 votes and B Suresh Kumar of Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM), 680 votes.
Nomination for the by-election is on Jan 12, early voting on Jan 22 and polling on Jan 26. – Bernama
