AYER HITAM, April 28  ― A three-cornered contest among Barisan Nasional (BN), PAS and Pakatan Harapan (PH) in Ayer Hitam has been confirmed in the upcoming GE14.

The candidates are Datuk Seri Wee Ka Siong of BN, Mardi Marwan of PAS and Liew Chin Tong of PH.

The Election Commission’s returning officer Mohd Hafiz Aliman announced the names of the candidates at 10.25am after the one-hour nomination on Nomination Day closed at 10am.

"After evaluating their nomination papers, the EC is satisfied with all the candidates who have presented their papers.

"I am pleased to announce that no candidates were rejected and all of them will be allowed to contest,” he said.

For the state seats, Semarang would be contested by PH’s Zais Mohd Akil, PAS’s Mohd Bakri Samian and incumbent Datuk Samsol Bari Jamali from BN.

For Yong Peng, it would be contested by incumbent Chew Pek Choo from PH, BN’s Ling Tian Soon and PAS’s Muhammad Abdullah.

Wee said BN was counting on incumbent Semarang assemblyman Samsol Bari to lead the coalition to victory to retain their seat.

"I have faith in his leadership as a general on the field and an excellent track record to ensure our victory,” he said.

He said every vote in the constituency counts and hoped to give a good fight to those that challenged us.

"We will get to work at this very moment as a team until Polling Day and I am confident we will be able to retain and wrestle our seats back in the election,” he said.

SMK Dato Seth, Yong Peng where the nomination took place, was bathed in colours of red, blue and green with about 1,000 supporters from three divide.

Wee is MCA deputy chairman and Johor MCA chairman while Liew is DAP Johor chairman.

In GE13, Wee defeated PAS candidate Hu Pang Chaw with a majority of 7,310 votes.

Ayer Hitam has 46,157 constituents with Malay (58 per cent), Chinese (38 per cent) and Indians (4 per cent).