KUALA LUMPUR: MIC president Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam will not be defending his party post.
The former Health Minister said he will not be contesting in party polls slated to be held this October.
This follows the dismal showing of the Barisan Nasional (BN) component party in the 14th General Election (GE14).
“I will not be contesting,” he said in a press conference at the MIC headquarters here today.
“I will nominate anyone and I won’t stop anyone from running. I hope more young people will come up and contest (in the polls,,” Dr Subramaniam added.
He also said that the party is now in the midst of a two-day GE14 post-mortem to determine its way forward and reassess its position in the BN.
Dr Subramaniam also said that the party had set up a committee to look at MIC relevance in the wake of its poor performance in GE14, where it only won two Parliamentary and three seats.
Meanwhile, he agreed there was a need for a strong multiracial coalition as the younger generation had rejected race based parties.
He was referring to Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin’s proposal for Umno to be opened up to all races.
Dr Subramaniam also said there would be a retreat end of the month where the subject would be discussed further.
“We have to ensure we survive in the next four years as we had never been an opposition party.”
“I will also be looking into the financial sustainability of the party as previously we had the Prime Minister and government to support us. Now we don’t.”
“We may have done things correctly but we are in this predicament due to certain issues,” he said while elaborating on their defeat.
Meanwhile, Dr Subramaniam said he would leave it to the Pakatan Harapan new government to decide the fate of Socioeconomic Development of Indian Community Programme (SEDIC) and the Malaysian Indian Blueprint.