Rafizi Ramli acted like a sore loser when he discounted voters' democratic right to choose whom they deem fit at the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections, MIC treasurer-general S Vell Paari said.

He said the results of last Saturday's polls showed the public do not trust the opposition, and the PKR secretary-general should come to terms with this.

"Basically the rakyat do not trust the opposition anymore. So Rafizi Ramli must stop blaming the rakyat for his party's poor showing.

"Rafizi must stop being a sore loser. If he can't stand politics or losing, he should take a sabbatical," Vell Paari said in a statement.

Rafizi in a Facebook posting after the June 18 polls said he was shocked that voters continued to vote in BN despite issues like the higher cost of living, goods and services tax (GST) and 1MDB.

He surmised it was because voters were "infected by two severe illnesses" that he said BN had used for decades. They are religious and racial sentiments, and materialism.

However, Vell Paari said BN won because voters were tired of the opposition raising "old ideas of hate politics" and "lying about basically everything".

He added that people could see that BN, under Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, brought about development.

"So my advice to Rafizi and his colleagues is don't blame the rakyat. Times have changed and people are smarter now with social media; all information is at our fingertips," he said.

BN won Sungai Besar by 9,191 votes and Kuala Kangsar by 6,969 votes.