The Penang Pakatan Harapan announced its leadership lineup today with Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng as its state chairperson.

Lim also announced four deputy chairpersons - state PKR chief Mansor Othman, state DAP head Chow Kon Yeow, Parti Amanah Negara state commissioner Mujahid Yusof Rawa and Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia state chairperson Marzuki Yahya.

Lim said the four component parties held its inaugural meeting in Penang on Jul 23.

This follows the Pakatan Harapan national level alliance, which announced its leadership structure on July 14 with Anwar Ibrahim as its de facto leader, Dr Mahathir Mohamed as its chairperson and Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail as its president.

“In the first meeting, we discussed how to strengthen Pakatan Harapan’s structure to prepare for the coming national polls,” said the DAP secretary-general, at a press conference held at the party state headquarters on Jalan Rangoon.

“We also decided to hold our first state convention on Sept 24, at the Seberang Perai Arena, in Seberang Jaya,” he added.

“With this, the state Pakatan Harapan leadership will ensure that the four component parties work towards the goal of maintaining Penang and capturing Putrajaya by defeating BN at the national level,” Lim stressed.

Lim urged Penangites and all Malaysians to support Pakatan Harapan to “create history and bring changes to the government”.

Other leaders in the line up include:

Secretary: Wong Hon Wai
Treasurer: Jagdeep Singh Deo
Information chief: Dr Afif Bahardin
Manifesto committee chief: Chow Kon Yeow
Election machinery committee: Mustapha Kamal
Penang youth chief: Dr Afif Bahardin
Penang Wanita chief: Lim Siew Khim

Later, at a press conference, Lim said today’s development is historical as Penang was the first Harapan administration, comprising DAP, PKR and Amanah.

Lim declared Penang as a Harapan government on Sept 23, 2015, after PAS decided to cut ties with DAP for opposing its efforts to table the hudud law in Parliament.

“We believe and we are confident that we will be able to form a Harapan federal government next,” Lim said, flanked by his new committee.

Welcoming Bersatu leaders with an open heart, Lim said the new party’s involvement would definitely help Harapan’s effort to seize Putrajaya.

“Of course we need time to adapt to each other, they used to be in different camps, but even back then we were friends privately,” Lim quipped. 

“Since we are now enemy turned friends, our relationship will definitely be closer than before, especially when we have a lot of similarities now, we all are committed to fighting against the 1MDB scandal”.

Chow said the committees and bureaus in the party’s Penang structure will start to do their jobs.

This includes the election machinery bureau, manifesto and seat negotiations committees, added Chow.

“We hope all units will report their outcome during the Sept 24 convention, except the announcement of candidates,” Chow said.

Mansor said Umno and BN will be suffering from “sleepless nights” as they did not expect Harapan to form a pact at the national or state levels.

Marzuki said it was not easy for the four component parties to come together, but “we are willing to put aside our differences to topple Umno and BN”.

Mujahid said Penang leads once more with the announcement of a Harapan state leadership.

“We hope that after we submit our application to register Harapan at 10am tomorrow in Putrajaya, we will able to launch it soon,” said the Parit Buntar MP.