PKR has been urged to postpone its party elections in order to ensure that party members are able to concentrate on the forthcoming Port Dickson by-election.

Party vice-president Shamsul Iskandar Mohd Akin said it was important to ensure that no group would be marginalised in the by-election campaign.

"I believe that internal consensus within PKR will work well for the party and therefore guarantee a comfortable victory for (PKR president-elect) Anwar Ibrahim.

"This will facilitate his return to Parliament and to lead the reform agenda," he said.

The PKR elections for its divisional and national leaders will kick off on Sept 22 and take place every weekend until mid-October.

The run-up to the election has seen the party split into two main camps – one aligned with PKR vice-president Rafizi Ramli and the other aligned to PKR deputy president Mohamad Azmin Ali.

So far, the campaign has been a bruising, public and one-sided affair, with Rafizi repeatedly lobbing salvos against an unresponsive Azmin.

According to Danyal Balagobal Abdullah, who resigned as the Port Dickson MP yesterday to trigger the by-election, he had conveyed his wishes to do so to Rafizi and PKR secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution.

Moreover, Rafizi had unilaterally announced that a by-election would be triggered this week, without the knowledge of other key party leaders, leading to widespread speculation that he was instrumental in the engineering of the event.