MIC's weak leadership has made it difficult for the BN to choose the candidate for the Sungai Siput parliamentary seat.
BN top leaders, sources reveal, are at their wits’ end in trying to solve the issue of seat allocation and one of their main worries is former president S Samy Vellu.
Samy Vellu, the former works minister and party president for nearly
three decades, over the past week has been going around giving
statements that he is a winnable candidate for the Sungai Siput seat,
which he held from the early 1970s to 2008.In 2008, he lost the seat by 1,800 votes to Pakatan Rakyat’s Dr Michael Jeyakumar, who was termed as a giant killer then. This ended his active political career and forced him to resign as president of the largest Indian-based political party in the country in 2009.
He was replaced by his hand-picked successor G Palanivel. Palanivel himself lost the Hulu Selangor parliamentary constituency at the 2008 general election. This seat was won back by MIC in a subsequent by-election by P Kamalanathan in 2010.
Palanivel failed to win the trust of the BN leadership, then, which did not regard him as a “winnable candidate”.
Samy Vellu, after his election defeat, was appointed special envoy to India and South Asia for infrastructure with ministerial status. On the political front, he was left in the wilderness until two months ago.
Making a comeback
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