As speculated, Johor Opposition chief Liew Chin Tong will be contesting the Iskandar Puteri parliamentary seat in the 15th General Election (GE15).
DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke made the announcement, along with the candidates for three other seats that the party would be vying for in the upcoming polls.
Liew is also the assemblyman for Perling, a state seat adjoining the Iskandar Puteri parliamentary seat.
He will be replacing two-term incumbent Lim Kit Siang for the seat, which was previously known as Gelang Patah.
The Iskandar Puteri seat was said to be among those with the highest number of voters with around 222,000 registered voters this time round.
DAP would be contesting in a new seat – Mersing – for the first time and a new face has been fielded to take on the challenge at the Umno stronghold, said Loke at an appreciation dinner organised for Lim in Taman Sutera on Sunday (Oct 30).
First-timer Fatin Zulaikha Zaidi, 29, was named as the candidate for Mersing, a parliamentary seat that was contested by PKR in the 14th General Election (GE14).
She was a former Pasir Gudang City Council’s Rinting 1 zone councillor when Pakatan Harapan was in government and she is also one of Johor Jaya assemblyman Liow Cai Tung’s assistants.
Loke also announced that incumbent Kulai MP Teo Nie Ching and Kluang MP Wong Shu Qi will both be defending their respective seats in GE15.
Former deputy education minister Teo is also the party’s assistant national publicity secretary while Wong is the party’s national political education assistant director.
With this, DAP has announced that it would be contesting in seven seats, an increase from the six parliamentary seats the party contested in GE14.
They announced the candidates for Bakri, Ayer Hitam and Labis on Oct 27.
In GE14, DAP veteran Lim garnered 80,726 votes to beat MCA’s Datuk Jason Teoh who received 35,862 votes in Iskandar Puteri.
In Kulai, Teo won with 55,312 votes compared with her opponents Tang Nai Soon from MCA (22,564) and Juwahir Amin from PAS (6,667) while in Kluang, Wong also gained victory with 47,671 votes against MCA’s Gan Ping Sieu (24,618) and PAS’s Hasbullah Najib (8,242).
In Mersing, Datuk Dr Abdul Latiff Ahmad won with 19,806 votes against PKR’s Md Nasir Hashim (11,347) and PAS’ A Rahman A Hamid (6,215).
Abdul Latiff won under the Barisan ticket in GE14 before defecting to Bersatu. The five-term Mersing MP recently said he would be bowing out of the upcoming general election.
Nomination day for the polls is set for Nov 5 and Malaysians will cast their ballots on Nov 19. – The Star