KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 3 — Pakatan Harapan (PH) leaders campaigning in the Tanjung Piai by-election have two herculean tasks ahead of them to ensure the positive outcome of the seat on November 16, DAP’s Lim Kit Siang said today.

Firstly, Lim said, leaders would have the monumental task of transforming Tanjung Piai voters into the most media literate within the country that could successfully identify the stream of misinformation being spread on social media.

"The Tanjong Piai voters are now the target of the highly-funded and creative "influencers” on social media, producing and circulating at a great speed their latest lies, fake news and hate speech,” he said in a statement here.

He said it was evident that these "influencers” had been working overtime going by the volume of their products since nomination on Saturday.

Among the undesirable contents that were being disseminated in the by-election was the allegation that it had been 18 months since PH became the government but the coalition has failed to fulfill any of its promises in its manifesto, Lim pointed out.

"If such an allegation, which could be easily shot down as untrue could be spread, it should not be difficult to imagine the monstrous lies, fake news and hate speech which could be disseminated in the by-election,” he added.

The Iskandar Puteri MP said the second great task for PH leaders was to convince the voters why the real battle in the by-election is between PH and Umno-PAS’s Muafakat Nasional, along with their respective visions of Malaysia’s future. 

"Although there are six candidates in the by-election, the real battle is between the PH coalition comprising Bersatu, PKR, Amanah and DAP and the new Muafakat Nasional, comprising PAS and Umno, with two remaining Barisan Nasional parties — MCA and MIC — in tow,” he said.

The Election Commission has set November 16 as polling day for the Tanjung Piai parliamentary by-election.

The by-election was triggered after incumbent, the late Datuk Dr Md Farid Md Rafik, died of heart complications on September 21.

Dr Md Farid won the seat in the previous general election after he defeated Wee and PAS’s Nordin Othman in a three-way contest.

The Tanjung Piai constituency is a mixed seat comprising 57 per cent Malays, 42 per cent Chinese and 1 per cent Indians.

The seat has been traditionally contested by MCA and DAP since 2004. In 2018, DAP ceded the seat to Bersatu to contest under its PH campaign.