KUANTAN: Independent candidate Wong Tack is not letting up on hitting back at DAP, this time accusing his former party of using race to fish for votes.
The incumbent Bentong MP said he had received many questions from supporters and voters asking why DAP dropped him as a candidate.
"One of the many questions asked was why DAP dropped me. What did I do wrong?
"The first reason DAP gave was that a Merdeka Centre report said that the people of Bentong did not support me and another representative was more 'popular' than me.
"However, DAP did not say that this study interviewed only 301 people out of 87,058 voters in the Bentong parliamentary constituency and only 109 people out of the 30,758 voters in the Ketari state seat," said Wong.
He said this meant that the top DAP leaders had decided to place their Bentong parliamentary candidate based on the opinion of only 0.3% of Bentong voters.
"The second reason DAP used was that the composition of the Bentong voters this time consisted of 50.6% Malays. This is a very disappointing excuse to me.
"For a long time the party's top leaders repeatedly shouted out the principles and policies of 'Malaysian Malaysia' but this time they are not ashamed of using race to fish for votes," said Wong.
DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke reportedly cited the findings of a Merdeka Centre survey commissioned by the party as the reason why Wong had been dropped in favour of incumbent Ketari assemblyman Young Syefura Othman.
Loke said Young Syefura enjoyed higher support across the board, particularly among Malays while Wong's approval plunged among Malay voters.
Wong said the most important value in the political arena was integrity and the people must not be regarded as pawns in a political game.
"All this time, I have not 'played politics', especially party politics. I am not in favour of any factions in the party.
"My politics is the politics of the people. My focus is on the people," he said.
Wong contested the Bentong parliamentary seat in GE13 and GE14 as a candidate from DAP.
In GE14, he successfully defeated former MCA president Tan Sri Liow Tiong Lai in their rematch by a margin of 2,032 votes.
This GE15, Wong is contesting as an Independent in a five-way fight against Liow, Pakatan Harapan's Young Syefura, Perikatan Nasional's Datuk Roslan Hassan and another Independent candidate Mohd Khalil Abdul Hamid.
