SEREMBAN: Pakatan Harapan must leverage its home-ground advantage to secure victory in the upcoming Aug 1 Negri Sembilan polls, says DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke.
Drawing a football analogy, the DAP secretary-general said the coalition did not do as well as expected in the Johor state election where it won only eight of the 56 seats as it was playing an away match.
"This (Negri Sembilan) is our home ground as we are the incumbent state government. We will have to provide the best and fiercest competition to emerge victorious and as such, we will have to give our best during the two-week campaign," he said when launching the Pakatan Harapan Temiang operations centre for the state polls.
Loke, who is also state DAP chief, said with the caretaker Mentri Besar also hailing from Pakatan, the coalition must use all its strengths which include mobilising its entire machinery effectively.
This, he said, was important as rivals would use whatever narrative they could to discredit the coalition.
"They know that if they want to weaken Pakatan, they will have to target the DAP. They will blame the DAP for whatever problems there are and we need to explain this to the voters," he said, adding that on the contrary, Pakatan has served the state well since coming into power in 2018.
Citing another example, he said PAS had supported Barisan Nasional openly in the Johor election to defeat Pakatan as it knew it could not win on its own. One senior leader, he said, had also stated on his Facebook account that "If you cannot win, you can still make your enemy lose."
"This is a strategy that has been adopted by Perikatan Nasional in Johor. That is why they did not field candidates in many constituencies and told their supporters to vote for Barisan instead," he said.
Asked about a statement by PAS president Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang that the party was in talks with Umno to form a pact to face the Negri Sembilan polls, Loke said Pakatan had no issues with it.
On Sunday (July 12), Abdul Hadi had during a party fundraising dinner said part of the negotiations with Umno was that the party will get to keep the 14 seats it bagged in the Aug 2023 election, while PAS will keep the three they won.
The remaining 19 seats will be divided amongst them and other component parties.
Earlier at the event, Loke announced Ho Weng Wah, 42, as the Pakatan candidate for Temiang.
He replaced four-term incumbent Ng Chin Tsai who first won the seat in 2008.
Ho, who is from Temiang, started off by serving as Loke's assistant since 2009 and was in 2022 made his political secretary in the Transport Ministry.
"I have full faith in him as he has, among others, been handling my allocations annually since and there hasn't been a single complaint.
"He has also been working closely with the NGOs, schools, representatives of places of worship and associations for years and knows them well," he said.
