PKR supremo Anwar Ibrahim plays it cool on the prospect of facing Umno in this month's Penanti by-election, saying such electoral challenges were normal in democracy.

anwar ibrahim nizar jamaluddin lim kit siang perak ceramah in pj 130509 04 "It's okay. Never mind even if Umno were to field a candidate. We are prepared to deal with it," he told reporters after a meet-the-people session in Penanti, Penang yesterday.

He said that Pakatan Rakyat and PKR were ready to fight Umno in the by-election for the state seat.

The Permatang Pauh member of parliament revealed Pakatan would carry out an issue-based campaign touching on current political and economic issues, such as the Perak crisis.

"We will not carry out a smearing or character assassination campaign against anyone. We will leave that to Barisan Nasional and Umno," he said.

On Friday, Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin and Wanita chief Shahrizat Jalil made the rounds in separate fact-finding tours in Penanti, heightening speculations Umno would field a candidate for the by-election.

Polling is on May 31 and the nomination day is on May 23.

Confident voters will make right choice

When asked on PKR's candidate Mansor Othman chances of winning against an inevitable strong Umno challenge, Anwar was modest in his assessment.

penanti state seat penang 200409 "Penanti voters have gone through a great deal of turbulence over the past 10 years. They have gone through a lot of pain due to harassment by Umno.

"I am confident that they would make the right and wise choice on polling day.

"Hopefully, God willing, we can weather the storm and handle the electoral challenge, and convince the constituents to support us," said the Pakatan leader.

On Umno's accusation that he drew first blood in the current Perak political impasse by engineering the defection of Bota assemblyperson Nasarudin Hashim to PKR in early February, Anwar said he never lured the Bota representative with attractive offers or deployed intimidating tactics.

"He came to me and said he wanted to join PKR," he said, arguing that Umno leaders were blaming him for the crisis to cover up their wrongdoing. Nasarudin later rejoined Umno.

Why is BN afraid of fresh polls in Perak?

He reiterated Pakatan’s stand that the opposition coalition was open minded towards the proposed talks by Umno to resolve the Perak crisis.

But he criticised Umno for offering an olive branch with one hand while deploying undemocratic tactics to conceal the truth with the other.

He cited the smearing campaign carried out by the Umno-controlled mainstream media on Pakatan and the ban on television channels not to show the video footage on the manhandling of Perak speaker V Sivakumar as examples.

He also question why BN dare not dissolve the Perak assembly and allow a fresh election.

Nonetheless, he said, Pakatan was willing to talk provided that BN was willing to listen and consider seriously the opposition coalition's strong views on the issue.

"BN must be willing to hear us out. We have stated our stand (in favour of the meeting). Now it’s up to BN to call for the meeting," he said.