KUANTAN, April 2 – Pahang Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Adnan Yaakob(pic), said Parti Keadilan Rakyat’s (PKR) decision to pick its Pahang liaison chief Datuk Fauzi Abdul Rahman to contest the Indera Mahkota parliamentary seat would not be a hurdle for Barisan Nasional (BN) to recapture the seat.
He was confident that BN would wrest back the seat in the upcoming general election if it fielded the right candidate with a lot of potential.
“Datuk Fauzi is an experienced leader and formerly from BN but he has brought little benefit to the people while support for him has waned,” he said after the ground-breaking ceremony for the building of the new state public library in Kemunting, here, today.
Last Saturday, during a ceramah in Balok Makmur, here, PKR de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim announced that Fauzi would be the party’s candidate for the Indera Mahkota seat, replacing incumbent Azan Ismail who would be
contesting in Terengganu. In the 2008 general election, PKR won the seat when Azan defeated BN candidate Salamon Ali Rizal Abdul Rahman with a majority of 1,027 votes.
Fauzi was parliamentary secretary to the Information Ministry from October 1990 to May 1995 and was then the parliamentary secretary to the Land and Cooperative Development Ministry from 1995 to 1997. From 1997 until 1999, he was deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Department and was once Kuantan Umno division chief. On July 23, 2008, he quit Umno to join PKR.
Adnan said Fauzi’s nomination was not surprising but this would not be taken lightly by BN and the focus would be on strengthening unity among BN members to achieve a win. On another development, Adnan hoped the people, especially students, would make full use of the new state public libary costing RM45 million to build. Scheduled to be ready next year, the library can accommodate 2,500 visitors at any one time.
BERNAMA
