PJ FAVOURITE Maria Chin Abdullah being dropped by the party is another case of Klang MP Charles Santiago who was dropped by DAP as a GE15 candidate for the Klang seat after serving the people of Klang for three terms.
The Petaling Jaya MP exit has saddened the community with many unhappy with the decision made by the top PKR leadership. FMT reported a former MBPJ councilor Richard Yeoh who expressed his puzzlement by PKR deputy president Rafizi Ramli who claims that the former PJ incumbent was dropped in order to “meet the demands of the electorate”.
Replacing Maria’s place is PKR’s communications director Lee Chean Chung. PKR’s reasoning was due to the constituency which requires a “highly educated Chinese” who is also younger, hence having the energy to move around and handle civil society groups.
The residents want a candidate who is close to the grassroots and understands their grouses well enough, and with that have placed their trust in Maria who has been doing just that even before she became PJ MP. She was always advocating for the PJ residents and has brought many changes and resolved issues concerning the community.
The newcomer on the other hand has yet to form a relationship with the PJ community, hence he has a long way to go in terms of understanding their problems.
Pakatan Harapan in its bid to reach the young electorate is reshuffling the coalition’s seat allocation process by replacing the older incumbents with fresh and new faces. Added along with the Muda electorate, Pakatan is probably the coalition with the most number of young faces.
During GE14, Maria won the Petaling Jaya constituency under the PKR ticket with 78,984 votes against Barisan Nasional‘s (BN) Chew Hian Tat (21,847) and Gagasan Sejahtera‘s Noraini Hussin (14,448).
Several claims have pointed out that Maria was dropped as candidate for being aligned to Datuk Seri Azmin Ali, although Batu independent candidate Tian Chua has denied so stating if she were, like him who is also claimed to be associated with Azmin would have left when the incumbent Gombak MP exited the party for Perikatan Nasional. Whilst some also felt that Maria was dropped as a candidate due to her inability to assimilate with the PKR culture.
Was the removal of Maria, the founder of the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections 2.0 (Bersih 2.0) necessary? Would it matter much if she was an ally of Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim or Azmin if she was doing a good job in her constituency? – Nov 2, 2022
Main photo credit: Star Online
