GEORGE TOWN, May 12 — Barely moments after throwing its hat into the ring in Bukit Gelugor, Parti Cinta Malaysia (PCM) has written off any chance of upsetting DAP in the May 25 poll.

Up against the heavily-tipped favourite and two other independent candidates, PCM vice president Huan Cheng Guan said he is simply aiming for an eighth of the vote to allow the party to keep its poll deposit.

“I’m being realistic, I know we are going up against a giant so I only hope we get back our deposit of RM15,000,” PCM Vice President and candidate Huan Cheng Guan said.

Each candidate must deposit RM15,000 with the Election Commission (EC) when submitting their nomination forms to contest in by-elections.

The must then obtain at least one eighth of the total votes for the by-election or his deposit will be forfeited by the EC.

“It’s a free country so anyone can contest,” he said, following the glum assessment.

Huan said he will only start his campaign on Wednesday, and will mostly go house to house.

“I won’t be organising ceramah because there’s only me, one speaker, unlike Pakatan Rakyat that has so many leaders to speak,” he said.

Four candidates will be fighting for the Bukit Gelugor parliamentary seat that has more than 82,000 registered voters.

Huan will face DAP’s Ramkarpal Singh Deo, 38, and independent candidates Mohd Nabi Bux Mohd Abd Sathar, 63, and Abu Backer Sidek Mohammad Zain, 46.

Mohd Nabi said his decision to contest is to fight for the rise of Islam in Penang.

Lawyer Abu Backer Sidek said he wants to fight for the people’s rights.

This morning, he created a brief commotion when he said he will not “behave like a pariah” to go up against demonstrators like former Bersih chair Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan, but would do his “protests professionally” in Parliament if he wins.

His remarks were construed as him calling Ambiga a “pariah”, prompting a Tamil press photographer to demand that he apologise, DAP supporters then joined in the demand that he apologise.

“Pariah” is a lower caste in Indian society and is considered a pejorative.

Abu Backer refused to apologise and explained that he did not label anyone as “pariah”.

“I just want to say that I’m in this contest to fight for everyone’s rights, whether they Chinese, Indian or Malay and I am not afraid to speak out against any parties, whether DAP or Barisan Nasional, that did anything wrong,” he said.

The Bukit Gelugor seat fell vacant after the late MP Karpal Singh was killed in a car crash last month.

MCA, which had traditionally held the seat before Karpal won it in 2004, is sitting out the contest, saying that it needed to focus on its campaign against hudud, the Islamic penal law.

Karpal had held the seat under DAP since 2004, winning huge majorities of 21,015 votes in 2008 and 42,706 votes in 2013 against MCA.

DAP is heavily-tipped to retain the seat.