AMPANG, Oct 25 — With PKR deputy president Rafizi Ramli having declared his intention to again contest the Pandan parliamentary seat in the 15th general election, Parti Warisan (Warisan) could be setting up a major showdown in its electoral debut here.

In September, Warisan vice president Junz Wong teased the possible entry of a "VIP candidate” into the party, sparking rumours that this would be ex-MCA president Tan Sri Ong Tee Keat, a former Pandan MP.

In an interview with Malay Mail, Warisan Selangor and KL deputy chairman Bryan Lai Wai Chong spoke highly of the former minister but declined to confirm the rumour. Instead, he said he was confident his party has "a very good weapon” in hand.

"Anyway, we have very much confidence in our chances if Ong Tee Keat contests under Warisan; I think our chance to win would be more than 60 per cent,” he told Malay Mail.

A former transport minister, Ong was a four-term MP for Ampang Jaya from 1990 until 2004, before the constituency was abolished and replaced with Pandan, which he went on to win twice more.

After he lost the MCA presidency in a power struggle against Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek, Ong was dropped as a candidate for the 2013 general election.

Traditionally an MCA seat, Rafizi wrested it from Barisan Nasional (BN) in 2013, defeating Ong’s replacement, Gary Lim, with by 26,729 votes during the political "tsunami” that year.

However, Rafizi did not defend the seat in 2018 due to an undischarged conviction from one of his exposes of the National Feedlot Corporation (NFC) scandal, prompting PKR to field its president at the time, Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, who won with a 52,543-vote majority against her closest challenger.

Under the parliamentary constituency of Pandan are two state seats, Teratai and Pandan Indah.

Izham Hashim of Parti Amanah Negara under is the incumbent assemblyman for Pandan Indah while Lai is the assemblyman for Teratai.

Lai, who won the state seat on a DAP ticket before quitting the party last year over a corruption scandal, had announced his entry into Warisan in January as part of the Sabah-based party’s national expansion.

According to the Election Commission’s data as of 2018, Pandan is an urban seat with a voter demographic that was 46 per cent ethnic Malays, 46 per cent ethnic Chinese, seven per cent ethnic Indians and one per cent other races.

In the interview, Lai went as far as claiming that Teratai could be considered a Warisan stronghold, and would become more so with the addition of Ong as its federal lawmaker.

"His (Ong) name and support from people, as per our interviews with various people here, is evident that everyone knows him,” Lai added.

When pressed on when an official announcement would be made if Ong were indeed joining Warisan, Lai played coy and merely said to anticipate one within the week.

While Pakatan Harapan and Warisan have made known their intention to contest the seat, it remains to be seen if BN would field former candidate, Datuk Leong Kok Wee, the Pandan BN chairman and MCA chief, again.

Separately, Perikatan Nasional may yet choose to field a candidate from PAS or Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia.

Following the 2018 general election, Warisan cooperated informally with the PH coalition to form the federal government as well as the Sabah government.

After the Sheraton Move of 2020, however, ties between Warisan and PH, particularly PKR, became strained after Warisan president Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal proposed himself as a candidate to be prime minister, spoiling the contest between Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim then.

Since then, Warisan has drifted steadily away from PH, leading to the party’s expansion here and culminating in its declaration that it would contest all the federal seats in Sabah during GE15, eschewing cooperation with its former allies.

The Election Commission has set nominations for GE15 to be held on November 5 and polling on November 19.