PONTIAN: Pakatan Harapan is confident that its candidate for the Tanjung Piai by-election has the necessary criteria that appeal to voters in the constituency.
Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said besides being a local, Karmaine Sardini has good academic qualification and family background.
"The PH leadership has scrutinised the list of names that was submitted and decided that Karmaine is the most suitable candidate.
"We are confident that with his criteria, we will be able to retain the seat and Karmaine will be able to continue the work of the late Datuk Dr Md Farid Md Rafik," said Muhyiddin after announcing the candidate and launching the machinery for the Tanjung Piai by-election here.
Karmaine, 66, the Tanjung Piai Bersatu chief, is a businessman and was a former architect at Kuala Lumpur City Hall.
Muhyiddin said it would be advantageous for the voters to choose Karmaine considering that PH is the government at the Federal and state level.
"It is logical for the voters to choose PH so that we can continue to help the people and bring development to the area. Why choose the opposition when they can't do much?" said Muhyiddin.
However, he said PH does not take the challenge in the by-election lightly.
"We are not concerned about who our opponent would be, but we don't want to be overconfident. We are working hard and engaging the voters to find out their problems and issues because in an election, the voter is king," said Muhyiddin.
He also said that he is satisfied with the preparation made by PH for next month's by-election.
"Our machinery has been mobilised over a month ago and preparations have been made. We need to ensure that everything goes along smoothly.
"We have also taken notice of the voting districts (PDM) that we lost in the last general election and we will give more focus on them. We want to defend the PDM we won and win those that we lost," said Muhyiddin.
In the 14th General Election, Dr Md Farid defeated Barisan Nasional's Datuk Seri Wee Jeck Seng, who was the incumbent, and Nordin Othman of Pas with a majority of 524 votes.