DATUK Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has defended Barisan Nasional’s (BN) over the coalition’s lack of female candidates for the forthcoming 15th General Election (GE15), saying that the coalition had faced opposition from certain former MPs over the matter.
Rejecting accusations of gender bias, the UMNO chairman said the coalition has tried its best to fulfil the demands for a 30% women representation among its candidates as he had pledged earlier this month.
“We tried our best to fulfil [the demand] but there were objections from certain parties, for example from incumbent male candidates who didn’t want to give way as they wanted to consolidate their power, like in Padang Besar, Perlis.
“We also placed a female candidate in Tanjong Karang as a recognition of women’s struggles,” he said in a Facebook post without directly naming anyone.
Incumbent Padang Besar MP Datuk Zahidi Zainul Abidin and incumbent Tanjong Karang MP Tan Sri Noh Omar were both dropped from the list of candidates that Zahid unveiled last Tuesday (Nov 1).
Despite being dropped as a BN candidate, Zahidi, who is the former deputy communications and multimedia minister, announced that he will be defending the Padang Besar parliamentary seat.
However, he did not say whether he would be contesting as an independent candidate, nor did he name the party he would be representing.
Earlier this week incumbent Kuala Kangsar MP Datuk Mastura Mohd Yazid, who was similarly snubbed from the candidate list, had raised questions about the lack of women representation in the list of candidates fielded for GE15.
She said that despite the promise to field 30% women candidates, there wasn’t a single UMNO Wanita candidate in the list of parliamentary seats in Perak and Negri Sembilan.
Mastura also noted that of the 160 BN candidates announced by Zahid, it has been noted that only 18 (11.25%) are women.
Meanwhile, on the topic of ethnicity, Zahid pointed out that a candidate’s selection for a particular parliamentary seat transcended their skin colour and gender.
He conceded that there was a need for valued candidates as part of the party’s revival for continued relevance.
“In other words, if we were to surmise, ‘it doesn’t matter what colour the cat is or whether the cat is [male or female] as long as it is capable of defeating the mice’ then issues like gender or ethnicity biases will not arise,” he remarked.
He also denounced critics hiding behind religion for failing to understand the coalition’s strategy.
“Such desperate accusations come from leaders who use religion to remain in power but yet fail to portray the true meaning of the struggle,” he said. – Nov 4, 2022