KUALA LUMPUR, July 28 — The outcome of the Sungai Kandis by-election will indicate if the negative politics used by former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak in the general election was still viable, said DAP’s Lim Kit Siang.

The Iskandar Puteri MP also said the contest for the Selangor state seat will show whether the former Barisan Nasional (BN) chief has been successful in linking his party’s professed defence of Islam to the kleptocratic rule, of which the latter was previously accused.

Lim said the section of Malay voters who rejected Umno and BN during the general election did not subscribe to "Najib’s vicious and toxic politics of race, religion, fear, hate and lies.”

"They do not want, in particular, to equate Malays and Islam with kleptocracy,” he said in a statement today.

He noted, however, that the same type of negative campaigning was reappearing in the Sungai Kandis poll, in which BN candidate Datuk Lokman Adam from Umno has been accused of playing on racial and religious sentiments.

This was aided by the covert support of PAS, which has all but openly endorsed the Umno man’s campaign, he noted.

PAS yielded in the contest to ensure BN would be able to present the best possible challenge against Pakatan Harapan, and urged supporters to vote for the candidate whom they believe would best uphold Malay-Muslim interests.

Umno is pushing a campaign message that the Malays and Muslims are likely to regress under the current government, which it has accused of neglecting both communities’ interests.

"Will the voters in Sungai Kandis by-election succumb to the Umno/PAS false propaganda that the Malays and Islam are perilously under threat under the Pakatan Harapan government, and misled into believing the vicious and toxic politics equating the future of Malays and Islam with Najib’s kleptocracy?”

Lokman is taking on PKR’s Mohd Zawawi Ahmad Mughni and independent candidate K. Murthy in a three-cornered fight for Sungai Kandis following the death of its representative Mat Shuhaimi Shafiei from cancer on July 2.