State Umno information chief Samsol Bari Jamali says Pagoh is not like Permatang Pauh which has continued to vote in Anwar Ibrahim or his wife after he was sacked from Umno and government.
PETALING JAYA: Johor Umno believes it is possible for the party to wrest back the Pagoh parliamentary seat held by former deputy prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin in the upcoming 14th general election (GE14).
Its information chief, Samsol Bari Jamali, said voters in the constituency would reject Muhyiddin, who is now president of PPBM, for embracing DAP.
He said the people of Pagoh felt that the move by Muhyiddin, who was sacked from Umno in June 2016, to work with the opposition party was a betrayal to Umno.
He said Pagoh was not like Permatang Pauh, which was held by Anwar Ibrahim when he was with Umno and in the federal cabinet in the 1980s and 1990s.
The seat continued to be won either by him or his wife, Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, after he was sacked from the party and became part of the opposition in 1998.
Muhyiddin first won Pagoh in the general election of 1978 when he was with Umno, under the Barisan Nasional (BN) ticket.
He later contested and won the Bukit Serampang state seat during the elections of 1986 and 1990, enabling him to be appointed as Johor menteri besar from 1986 to 1995.
He returned to win Pagoh again in 1995 and was appointed as a federal minister, later serving as deputy prime minister and Umno deputy president from 2009 to 2015 when he was removed from his ministerial position in a cabinet reshuffle.
The constituency was said to be a BN fortress until Muhyiddin was expelled from Umno and co-founded PPBM with former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad in September last year.
Of the 40,604 registered voters there, 60.05% are Malays, 35.19% Chinese and 4.75% Indians.
Samsol said Muhyiddin had benefited from the support given to him by Umno and BN when he won the seat earlier.
“He dishonoured his own statement for people to be loyal to Umno when he himself betrayed the party by making a U-turn and supporting the opposition, especially DAP,” he said.
“This is unacceptable to all quarters, including the people of Pagoh,” Samsol, who heads Umno’s Ayer Hitam division, told FMT.
Samsol also said Johor Umno would ensure it retained the seats it now held and won those it lost in the last election in May 2013.
He claimed the opposition could not be expected to do well in the next polls as it did not have a viable plan for Johor.
BN currently occupies 20 parliamentary seats in the state , while PAS holds 8, DAP 4, and PKR and PPBM hold one each.
In the state assembly, BN holds 37 seats, DAP 13, and PKR and PPBM have one each.
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