CAMERON HIGHLANDS, Jan 27 — Pakatan Harapan (PH) only has itself to blame for losing Cameron Highlands in yesterday’s by-election defeat, Ganapathy Ponnusamy said.
Despite being known as a Barisan Nasional (BN) fortress, the Seputeh PKR division chief said PH could have taken Cameron Highlands like how it wrested so many of the Umno-led coalition’s strongholds in GE14.
“Promises were not fulfilled, MPs and ministers doing work carelessly, poor appointments in government-linked companies and decisions taken which did not concern the interest of the people,” he said in a statement late last night after the Election Commission declared BN the winner.
Ganapathy, who said he helped campaign for PH candidate M. Manogaran, observed poor communication among the four component parties and poor administration, which he said hurt the coalition.
He also claimed the choice of Manogaran, a lawyer and the Pahang DAP deputy chairman, to be poor and could have contributed to PH’s loss.
He said the federal ruling coalition made too many blunders and hopes it will take yesterday’s defeat as a lesson to buck up for future by-election
“There are a lot of weakness the party has to improve immediately. I hope PH will be more concern about the people in carrying out the reformation agenda,” Ganapathy said.
BN retained the Cameron Highlands parliamentary seat by a comfortable lead of 3,238 votes.
Its candidate Ramli Mohd Nor won 12,078 votes against Manogaran’s 8,800 votes and independents candidates Sallehudin Ab Talib, a former lecturer (314 votes) and farmer-activist Wong Seng Yee (276 votes)
