Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) advisor Anwar Ibrahim admitted today to have wrongly picked some candidates to be the party's parliamentary elected representatives in the last general election in 2008.

Anwar, who is opposition leader, said the party would be extra careful in the selection of electoral candidates for the next  general elections to ensure that they were unwavering, strong and clean.

penang pkr cny open house 160210 anwar 02 "I selected the candidates for the parliamentary seats. PKR was new then. We had to field them," he said when speaking at a Chinese New Year celebration organised by the PKR in Penang reports Bernama .

The Star , meanwhile, reports that Anwar also  apologised for his choice of candidates in the 2008 general election.

Anwar said he was responsible and had made some mistakes by choosing ‘shaky and unclean’ candidates.

“I feel sad that I asked you to vote for these people - I apologise. Now I have been stabbed in the back,” he said

Last week, Bayan Baru MP and former Penang PKR chairperson Zahrain Mohamed Hashim resigned from the party, citing disappointment over the leadership of Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng and the PKR struggle within the opposition pact.