SEBERANG PERAI, May 1 — The Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (PPBM) candidate for Penaga, who was disqualified from contesting over an insolvency issue apologised to Penaga constituents for his “carelessness”.
Penang PPBM information chief Yaacob Osman said he had never received any official notices that led to him being declared bankrupt.
“My lawyer found the documentations and the insolvency was due to a credit card debt from 20 years ago and the notices were sent to my old address 20 years ago so I never got the notices,” he said.
He apologized for his negligence for overlooking this, but insisted that he had conducted searches four times before Nomination Day.
“The state level PPBM conducted checks and the national level PPBM conducted checks too,” he said.
He reiterated that the PPBM legal bureau chief Azlina Mehtab also did another check on the night before nomination day but nothing came up.
“This is not an excuse, I just want to explain what happened and how this could have slipped through because it doesn’t make sense that it was not in the system on the night of April 27 but suddenly it was in the system on April 28,” he said during a ceramah in Kepala Batas tonight.
He stressed that if he knew about the credit card debt, he would have settled it.
He said it was an old credit card under the then MBF bank which merged with another bank many years ago.
He believed that due to the merger, there was some issues with the credit card statements and his debt did not turn up in the system.
“As far as I know, I had paid all my debts so I don’t even know I have this debt, otherwise I would have paid it up, I never have debts, I always made sure I paid all my debts,” the financial consultant said.
He added that it was odd that as a bankrupt, he wasn’t on the no-fly list and all his bank accounts are active.
“I can still leave the country anytime and all my accounts are active and as normal,” he said.
He said the Election Commission (EC) officer should have informed them the moment they found his bankruptcy status instead of waiting until 10.30am.
“If they had told us earlier, we have a backup candidate on standby to be a candidate but they only informed us after the nomination time was closed,” he said.
He said this is an obvious persecution and betrayal of the Penaga voters as they were denied their rights to a Pakatan Harapan (PH) candidate.
Yaakob said he lodged a police report over the way the matter and he will be considering filing an election petition on this.
“Our PPBM lawyer, Azlina, will look into the filing of the petition because it would be for PH, not for me,” he said.
Yaakob said when he first came to Kepala Batas, it was only to help with the election machinery.
“I wasn’t in the candidates list, I was here to manage the election machinery, there were two other potential candidates,” he said.
He said he was only asked to be a candidate after the two other potential candidates did not pass the stringent checks for candidates.
He called on voters not to let this incident pass but to use this to vote for PH candidates for Kepala Batas parliamentary constituency, Pinang Tunggal state seat and Bertam state seat.
“One vote for Dr Zaidi Zakaria is a vote for me and a vote for Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad,” he said.
Dr Zaidi is Parti Amanah candidate, under PH, for the Kepala Batas parliamentary constituency.
Yaakob’s disqualification left a straight fight between incumbent Penaga assemblyman Mohd Zain Ahmad and PAS candidate Mohd Yusni Mat Piah.
