GEORGE TOWN, March 11 — Gerakan will never go back to Barisan Nasional (BN) and will face the next general election on its own, its president Datuk Dominic Lau said today.
He said the opposition party is now fronted by a new line of leaders who did not hold posts and were never ministers or elected representatives under BN previously.
“We are starting anew, just like how we started 51 years ago, as an independent party on our own,” he told reporters after a market walkabout in Bayan Baru here.
He said the party is already preparing to face the general election due in 2022.
He said the machinery was already initiated and respective state chairmen are identifying their target constituencies.
“Now that we are no longer under BN, there are no more limitations for us to contest in any seat, we can contest in any of the 222 parliamentary seats in the country,” he said.
He said each state will be submitting the names of potential candidates to the central committee meeting in Ipoh on March 16.
He said Gerakan will be celebrating its 51st anniversary on March 24 as a “50+1” anniversary as it will be the first year for the party to be a standalone party.
“We started out as a standalone party 50 years ago before merging with BN and now we are being as a standalone party,” he said.
He said Gerakan lost everything in the last general election and lost Penang which was its home state.
“We will start fresh from where we first started, here in Penang, and we want to win back some state and parliamentary seats in the next election,” he said.
Gerakan was formed in 1968 and won most of the seats in Penang in 1969.
It later joined Alliance Party to form BN in 1972 and was part of the coalition until June 2018.
Gerakan, under BN, held the Penang state administration until they lost it to the then Pakatan Rakyat in 2008.
The party had failed to win back any seats in Penang in the past 10 years.
