GE14 | PKR vice-president Shamsul Iskandar Md Akin has decided not to contest in any state seats in the coming election, despite earlier being named for the Rembia state seat in Malacca.

The incumbent Hang Tuah Jaya (formerly Bukit Katil) MP will instead focus his attention on his second showdown with former Malacca chief minister Mohd Ali Rustam.

Shamsul Iskandar managed to beat the odds in Bukit Katil in the 2013 election when he defeated Ali – the state’s chief minister for close to 14 years – which earned him the moniker ‘giant killer’.

Though he will not be contesting any state seat, the Malacca PKR chief said today that he would have preferred being picked for Kelebang instead of Rembia, because that would have pitted him against state MCA chief and incumbent assemblyperson Lim Ban Hong.

“The (party) president did not want to give me Kelebang so it’s okay,” he told Malaysiakini at the official announcement of the Malacca Pakatan Harapan candidate list in Bukit Baru.

An earlier ‘unofficial’ list of PKR candidates had Shamsul Iskandar standing in the Machap Jaya state seat.

However, he reportedly said he did not want it and backed Ginie Lim for the seat instead, as she had been working hard in that constituency.

Lim was PKR’s candidate for Machap Jaya (formerly Machap), in the last two general elections, losing to the BN candidate by just 152 votes in 2013.

When the official list of candidates was announced, she was named for Machap Jaya again, and Shamsul Iskandar for Rembia.

BN also took Rembia and Kelebang in the last election, with more than 2,000-vote majorities.

Second showdown

Despite the ‘giant killer’ label, Shamsul Iskandar may find it difficult to overcome Ali again in GE14.

The Election Commission’s recent redelineation exercise did not just see Bukit Katil renamed as Hang Tuah Jaya, but also several opposition-leaning polling stations being moved out of the constituency.

The five polling districts – Taman Melaka Baru, Batu Berendam, Taman Merdeka, Taman Asean and Malim Jaya – collectively made up 13,831 PKR votes and 5,856 BN votes in the last general election.

With all else being equal, this would leave Shamsul with a 7,975-vote deficit, effectively erasing his 5,447-vote majority win, and could even give BN up to a 1,242-vote surplus.