SHAH ALAM - Despite another massive beating in a state election, PKR has no plans to relook at its top leadership, arguing public perception and fear of the Covid-19's Omicron surge as its main fallback during the Johor Polls held yesterday (March 12)
Perak PKR interim chairman Dr Lee Boon Chye said there have been no discussions on reviewing or reshuffling the party’s leadership leading up to the 15th General Election (GE15), which is expected to be held in July this year.
"At the end of the day, it is not about the leadership but how the people perceive the party,” he told Sinar Daily today.
He said the role of PKR seemed to have been subdued due to the Sheraton Move back in February 2020.
The party’s main priority now, he said, was to think of a strategy to attain the needs of the people.
"In the setting of the Covid-19 pandemic and economic hardship, the people are not interested in democracy or co-governance but more concerned about their immediate livelihood,” he added.
This, he said, led to PKR’s decision analyse their next move to improve the general well-being of the people.
On the PH-PKR logo debacle, Dr Lee said it was a non-issue seeing that Amanah was also defeated when using the PH logo.
He said it was not about the logo but due to the poor voters' turnout during the election as well as BN having a strong foothold in the state.
Back in January, PKR president Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim announced the party’s decision to contest under its own flag in the Johor snap election, while Amanah and DAP would use the PH coalition banner
DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng had been quoted saying despite differences with PKR, both Amanah and DAP respected their decision to do so but would have preferred if all PH allies unite under the same symbol with a common purpose and a shared political agenda.
Meanwhile, PKR communications director Fahmi Fadzil said the trend of split voting during Johor polls had contributed to the victory of BN.
This, he said, was an issue that the leadership needed to look into.
"From the 20 PKR contested seats, if there was no split voting - BN could have been denied at least, not just one seat, but 10 seats," he said
Fahmi said PKR and PH would need to gather the data and go through the figures to find the best strategy forward and ensure they are able to as many as they can in the upcoming GE15.
Touching on the Covid-19 virus, he said although it was a major factor for the poor voter turnout but it was just one among the many factors that hindered people from casting their vote.
He said Johoreans who worked in Singapore and outside Johor could not return back to their hometown to vote.
He also said financial factors could also be the reason why voters could not make it back home.
As for the PKR’s GE15 strategy, Fahmi Fadzil told Sinar Daily that they will be looking into the specific information channel and analysing what went wrong at the 20 contested seats.
He said they will look at the effectiveness of its machinery and address the topic of candidate choices in the Johor polls post-mortem.
"This is to step up our game,” he said.
In November, PKR was totally wiped out during the Melaka state election. They did not win any seats out of the 11 contested.
The same thing happened the next month in December during the Sarawak state election when they failed to win a single seat out of the 27 contested.
Since then, rumours of PKR vice-president Rafizi Ramli making a comeback into the political arena after taking a break in December 2019 have been swirling around the political pundits and supporters. Many of his followers believe he could change PKR around.
Rafizi’s short response in February was "InsyaAllah (God willing), I will perform the istikarah prayer”.