MIC decides to contest in GE15

MIC has decided that it will contest the 15th general election (GE15), following an emergency central working committee meeting today.

It was previously reported that the BN component party was considering pulling out of the upcoming polls due to unhappiness over seat allocations.

However, MIC president SA Vigneswaran said his party is satisfied with the seats given.

“I would like to inform everyone that after BN announced the MIC parliamentary candidates, MIC has decided that it is a fair decision from the coalition leadership with regard to the seats given to our party,” Vigneswaran (above) said.

He said this at a press conference after the meeting, which took place at the MIC headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.

There were speculations that MIC may boycott GE15 after party representatives were not spotted at the BN candidate announcement event at the Kuala Lumpur World Trade Centre last night.

BN chairperson Ahmad Zahid Hamidi announced 10 MIC candidates during the event, even though none of them was in attendance.

Zahid said MIC’s absence was because they had a meeting to attend, which Vigneswaran corroborated later.

It was speculated that MIC was unhappy with the seats they had to give up as well as the inclusion of “friends” of BN such as Makkal Sakti, Indian Progressive Front (IPF) and Malaysian Indian Muslim Congress (Kimma) on the coalition’s list of candidates.

No boycott plan

After MIC’s emergency meeting today, which started around 11am and lasted almost two hours, Vigneswaran denied there were any plans for a boycott.

Instead, he said, the meeting was held because he wanted to discuss with MIC’s supreme council on all election-related decisions.

The MIC president added that the party’s supreme council unanimously agreed to accept the candidacies of the “friends” of BN.

Now that seat allocations have been completed, Vigneswaran said he hopes the finalised candidates will be accepted with open hearts by the machinery and grassroots of all the constituencies, regardless of which coalition party they are from.

“We don’t want divisions to make their own decisions which would cause the candidates to lose votes,” he added.

Regardless of differences in opinions, he hopes BN component parties can work together to bring victory to all coalition candidates.

MIC will contest 10 parliamentary seats in GE15 including Padang Serai, Sungai Siput, Tapah, Teluk Intan, Hulu Selangor, Kota Raja, Kuala Langat, Batu, Port Dickson and Segamat.

Emergency meet of MIC heads on 'family thing', skip Pahang do

Friends of BN to debut in GE15, MCA swoops up most Gerakan seats

MIC skips BN candidate launch, mulls withdrawing from GE15

My service track record in Tapah will be BN manifesto - Saravanan