Parti Keadilan Rakyat (Keadilan) will battle to the end in retaining the Permatang Pauh parliamentary seat which was held by jailed former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim prior to his sacking in 1998.

To lose the constituency - which is now under his wife and Keadilan president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail - would prove detrimental to the opposition party's future.

Keadilan supreme council member Dr Mansor Othman, who held a briefing session for Penang division leaders and members in Bukit Mertajam yesterday, stressed that if the party lost the seat it would have a protracted effect.

"We must defend Permatang Pauh. Umno was really angry because it suffered the most here in the last general elections," he told the 80-odd people who attended the meeting.

"We have to work really hard here. We have to defend this seat badly or else Keadilan's image will suffer throughout the whole country," he stressed.

'Cause problems

'

Keadilan state members met for three-hours to analyse the last election results and plan strategies for the coming general election, highly rumoured to be between September and December 2004.

Also discussed was why Keadilan leaders should contest in some Malay and Chinese majority seats in the state.

It was later learnt that Mansor conceded that such a move could cause problems with other opposition parties, namely PAS and DAP, who were also vying for the seats.

Twenty state seats and eight parliamentary seats were being negotiated with DAP but the talks broke down when Keadilan leaders openly accused DAP of insisting on contesting all Chinese-majority seats.

However, it was uncertain how many Malay-majority seats were up for grabs between Keadilan and its Barisan Alternatif ally, PAS.

In another development, Gerakan leader and Machang Bubok state assembly representative Dr Toh Kin Woon said following the recent redelineation exercise, the electorate in his constituency was more mixed than before.

Toh, who is also a state exco, revealed that the constituency comprised of Malays (40 percent), Chinese (51 percent) and Indians (9 percent) as compared to Malays (33 percent), Chinese (58 percent) and Indians (9 percent) previously.

"Given that Keadilan has a strong presence here, aside from Permatang Pauh, Machang Bubok has become more marginal," he said in an article published in the latest issue of Aliran.

"Assuming the same pattern of voting in the next general election as that in 1999, Barisan Nasional can still retain the seat but with its majority, already reduced from 5,000 plus to just over 2,000 in 1999, further reduced to just over a thousand votes.

"A shift of a few hundred votes from BN to the opposition in the next general elections will spell trouble for BN," he warned.