KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 2 — Despite failing to form an electoral pact with Pakatan Harapan (PH), the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) has announced it will contest in Barisan Nasional’s (BN) incumbent federal seat Rembau and Perak’s state seat of Ayer Kuning.

The contesting candidate for Rembau is PSM’s Negri Sembilan secretary Tinagaran Subramaniam, while activist and lawyer KS Bawani will be contesting in Ayer Kuning.

The party said the decision was made based on the principle of not contesting in any PH incumbent seat while attempting to take on areas they have never contested but have a strong presence.

"PH has indirectly rejected the electoral pact with PSM by not giving us any seats in GE15, and we have decided not to work with any coalition because we don’t see the need for it,” said PSM’s deputy president S. Arulchelvan in the candidate announcement event tonight.

The party added that both candidates originated from their contesting seats and had a long history of assisting the bottom 40 per cent (B40) households and farming communities in their day-to-day challenges.

They also added that party president Dr Michael Jeyakumar had decided to step down from contesting in his former parliamentary seat Sungai Siput to avoid clashing with PH and splitting their votes.

"We don’t want to make PH fight with other parties such as BN and Perikatan Nasional (PN) harder, and our supporters prefer a non-BN party to win,” he said in tonight’s announcement.

"A lot of PSM supporters in Sungai Siput wanted Dr Michael to stand but we don’t want to take revenge on the failed electoral pact,” said Arulchelvan while explaining that the pact was dismissed due to PH’s unwillingness to give up their incumbent seats.

The party added that they will utilise the two-week campaigning period to let voters understand their manifesto which focuses on providing job stability, food and housing security, climate change issues, and rights of sexual minority groups.

Umno’s deputy president Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan, also known as Tot Mat, will contest Rembau along with PH’s Jufitri Joha among others.