GERAKAN WILL CONTEST 11 PARLIAMENT SEATS AND 31 STATE

Gerakan will field a total of 11 parliament candidates and 31 state candidates under the Barisan Nasional (BN) banner in the forthcoming 13th General Elections (GE13), announced National President, Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon, today.

There is a reduction of one parliament seat compared to 12 parliament and 31 state seats in the 12th General Elections (GE12) in 2008. Hence, Gerakan will contest a total of 42 seats.

Of the total of 42 candidates, 22 or 52.4 per cent are new faces who have not contested before, five or 12 per cent are women and three or 7 per cent are leaders of Indian origin, the rest being Chinese. The youngest candidate is 31 years old.

For the first time, Gerakan will contest two state seats in Sabah in the state constituencies of N45 Elopura and N46 Tanjong Papat as a result of Aw Kam Wah and Raymond Tan Shu Kiah from SAPP joining Gerakan in May 2009 after the pull-out of SAPP from Barisan Nasional in August 2008.

In Pahang, Gerakan and MCA agreed to an “exchange-loan” arrangement of two seats for GE13 only, whereby Gerakan took over MCA’s Tanah Rata state seat, while MCA took over Gerakan’s Ketari state seat. Ho Yip Kap won the Tanah Rata seat as an independent in March 2008 and joined Gerakan in January 2010.

Based on BN’s overall strategic considerations and BN’s spirit and goodwill to enable every component party to have the opportunity to contest some seats, Gerakan has “loaned” to PPP, the Kepong parliamentary seat in KLFT and the Kota Alam Shah state seat in Selangor and also to MCA the Skudai state seat in Johor, all three also for GE13 only.

Since 1974, Gerakan won Kepong only once in 1978 in a three-corner fight, but came close thrice by less than 2,000 votes in 1982, 1999 and 2004. In 2008, the margin of loss was 23,848. Gerakan first won Kota Alam Shah by 2,743 votes in 2004, but lost by 7,184 votes in 2008, while Skudai was lost by 12854 votes in 2008.

Dr Koh expressed hope that, with a new line-up comprising more than 50 per cent new faces and with better preparation in terms of publicity and grassroots organisation, Gerakan will strive to achieve a better performance as compared to 2008 when it won only two parliament and four state seats. In 2004, Gerakan won 10 parliament and 30 state seats.

http://www.gerakan.org.my/

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