KUALA LUMPUR, March 9 — Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said today he is confident Perikatan Nasional (PN) can form the Selangor state government despite allegedly not having any money to campaign for the state election.
Muhyiddin also announced that his party’s Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali and Datuk Radzi Md Jidin would be leading the coalition during campaigning.
“We got no money so I hope the members don’t come to me asking for aid. What I can say is that despite having no money, we can still do a good job. So start finding ways to raise some cash and get close to the voters,” Muhyiddin told reporters after his closing speech at Bersatu’s fifth Annual General Meeting (AGM) here.
“We’ll have Azmin and Radzi leading the charge. We have some ideas and plans I won’t reveal here but hopefully, we can win Selangor and reduce the [incumbent government’s] majority in Penang.”
Bersatu’s accounts have been frozen while investigations are conducted into Muhyiddin’s money laundering and corruption case following the charges in court last week.
PN are a coalition consisting of Bersatu, PAS, Gerakan, Parti Solidariti Tanah Airku (STAR) and Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP). Seat allocations were always a thorny issue when it comes to coalitions with some feeling they have a better chance to win than the incumbents.
Muhyiddin was also asked how the coalition would allocate the seats seeing as this will be the first time PN components are competing in a state election together, to which he said it has a system of incumbency and negotiations.
The Pagoh MP said it would favour allowing incumbents to compete again and will look to see how to separate the other seats focusing mainly on the opposition parties’ seats.
“We hope to still maintain the same number of candidates or something that is reasonable after negotiations. Once we know which seats belong to which party we can start [campaigning]. The issue of funding will come into play when it is timely to do so.
“We do believe that states like Kelantan, Terengganu and Kedah because PAS is leading the others will cooperate with them and they help us like what we did at the previous elections. PAS has no problems with funding while we have and we need to figure out a way to solve that,” he added.
PAS holds the state governments in Perlis, Kelantan and Terengganu. The Islamist party won 74 seats at GE15.
