KUALA LUMPUR, July 21 — DAP’s Liew Chin Tong clarified that his strategy to win the next general election meant diverting resources from 30 Umno and Barisan Nasional (BN) bastions and not abandoning them, after an ally labelled the move “morally irresponsible”.

He explained that his advocating for the opposition to focus their energy on the “middle-ground” seats where their chances of winning were better, while still fielding challengers in Umno strongholds.

“It doesn’t mean we don’t contest in the seats that are tailor-made for Umno, but instead we focus on what I call the middle-ground seats which is about 39 seats in Peninsular Malaysia which are mostly multiracial communities in the west coast,” he said in a phone interview to Malay Mail Online.

He was responding to PKR vice-president Nurul Izzah Anwar who said it was “morally irresponsible” to forgo Umno strongholds in order to focus marginal seats, in a bid to defeat the BN government.

“When I wrote ‘conceded’, I didn’t mean that we wouldn’t contest those seats. Just that we’ll focus more on the others in the west coast of Peninsular, the multi-ethnic and the semi-urban areas,” Liew added.

He further explained that apart from targeting Umno’s marginal seats in Peninsular Malaysia, his plan also focused on winning over young Malay voters.

“The dispute is that to win the Malays, you have to be more Malay, but that’s not true. You just have to have more economic policies and ensure that their rights are not threatened.

“There’s already a Malay tsunami, they’re concerned mostly about economic issues like high cost of living, GST, Felda, 1MDB; there is anger among the Malays, especially the young Malays,” he said.

He also responded to criticisms by BN’s Pulai MP Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed who claimed that Liew did not take into consideration the dynamic state of Malaysia’s politics, adding that people may not be swayed to support a coalition that is not secure.

“In depicting this scenario, it doesn’t mean I’ve discounted all others,” he said.

“In the event there is a Malay tsunami, we’ll focus on economic policies and we’ll show that we can produce good economic policies and a new government to provide for all the multi-ethnic communities consistently,” he added.

He also said that the formation of a new coalition would be the key to capturing the interest of voters, especially by putting forth strong economic policies.

“We need a new coalition to capture the imagination of the voters. I don’t think PAS captured the imagination and we need a new coalition with consistent policies,” he said when responding to claims made by Kota Belud MP Datuk Abdul Rahman Dahlan that the opposition was shaky after the split between DAP and PAS.

In his GE14 analysis, Liew proposed that the opposition avoid focusing on 30 BN strongholds and instead prioritise its resources on 38 marginal seats to make Umno fall like dominoes.

Liew stressed that this is the best strategy for “the new Opposition” to form a stable government with a strong legitimacy as “elections are won or lost in marginal seats”.

For the 14th general election due no later than 2018, Liew said all the opposition has to do to win the peninsular Malaysia battle is to concede 30 small rural seats “tailor-made” for a safe win by Umno and focus on getting 6 per cent of vote swing away from BN in 38 marginal seats.

In Election 2013, BN kept Putrajaya with a haul of 133 out of 222 federal seats, while Pakatan Rakyat (PR) won 89 seats. A win of 112 seats is needed for a simple majority and to form government.

PR, however, was declared dead by the DAP recently following its recent fallout with PAS over hudud.

PAS’s DAP-friendly leaders who were voted out during the party’s recent election are now planning to form a new party that it hopes will replace the Islamist party in a new opposition alliance currently referred to as “Pakatan 2.0”.