PETALING JAYA: The scramble for seats in the 15th general election among Perikatan Nasional’s component members has heightened with the youth and women’s wings of PPBM today setting their own quotas within the party.
Its Youth chief, Wan Ahmad Fayhsal Ahmad, wants 20% of the candidates for both the federal and state seats to come from his movement.
In addition, he has asked for the same allocation for the appointment of senators and municipal councillors.
The PPBM women’s wing, on the other hand, wants 30% of the seats that the party will be contesting in GE15 to be given to its candidates.
Its chief, Rina Harun, said these candidates should be placed in winnable constituencies, instead of just any seat.
Elaborating on the youth wing’s demand, Wan Fayhsal said 20% was not much.
“We need to do this to convince students and young professionals to join us.
“Our movement needs to reorganise to attract the country’s students under the PPBM umbrella,” he said.
This was among five core proposals that he made in his policy speech at the third PPBM annual general assembly today. He posted it on PPBM’s Facebook.
Rina, who also posted her policy speech at the women’s assembly on her Facebook, said it was time women played a bigger role.
Rina, who is also the women, family and community development minister, called on all women members to continue to empower themselves and prepare themselves to be future elected representatives.
She said the wing would hold leadership courses.
“Look at how many PPBM women members are elected representatives now. How many ministers and deputy ministers are there?
“This is why we need to train ourselves to be effective leaders at all levels of the society.”
Rina said the wing had 200,000 members currently, adding that this must be increased in order to strengthen the movement.