KUALA LUMPUR: Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) will be looking for a fresh start instead of revenge by only contesting in two Barisan National-held seats in the 15th General Election (GE15), says Dr Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj (pic).

The PSM chairman announced that the party would field two candidates for the highly contested Rembau parliamentary seat in Negri Sembilan and the N48 Ayer Kuning, Perak state seat during his speech at the PSM rally on Wednesday night (Nov 2).

PSM Negri Sembilan state secretary Tinagaran Subramaniam was revealed as the P131 Rembau seat candidate and would be facing off against PKR’s Jufitri Joha and Umno deputy president Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan for the BN-held seat.

PSM deputy secretary-general and PSM Perak chairperson Bawani KS would be contesting for the Ayer Kuning state seat in Perak which is a traditional Barisan stronghold.

PSM deputy chairman S. Arutchelvan said that PSM’s restraint in competing for only two seats was due to the recent last-minute scrapping of its electoral pact with Pakatan Harapan for GE15.

Despite being snubbed by Pakatan, Arutchelvan said that PSM would not be looking to take revenge on Pakatan as the reason why the party would not be fielding Dr Jeyakumar for the highly contested Sungai Siput parliamentary seat.

“We do not wish to sabotage Pakatan’s chances of winning, especially as they’ll be going up against MIC party president and Barisan vice-chairman Tan Sri SA Vigneswaran in Sungai Siput,” he said.

Arutchelvan added that the party’s goal in GE15 would be to branch out to states it had never contested in before and begin building PSM’s election machinery in those states in preparation for future elections.

The PSM-Pakatan electoral pact had fallen apart after PSM was informed that Pakatan would not be giving any seats for PSM to contest in the upcoming GE15 through a letter from Pakatan on Sunday (Oct 30).

This was despite PKR deputy president Rafizi Ramli seemingly hinting that three seats in Sungai Siput, Tapah and Sembrong would be allocated for Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (Muda) and PSM at a rally on Oct 28.