This is despite his personal preference for the candidacy of PKR’s Ahmad Nizam Hamid, whom he beat in the 2008 contest for the seat.
He told FMT yesterday he had confidence in Amanah’s ability to wrest the seat from PAS in the coming general election.
Saifuddin was a BN candidate when he lost the seat to PAS’s Nasruddin Hassan by 1,070 votes in the 13th general election. The former deputy minister of higher education left Umno in October 2015, after almost three decades in the party, to join PKR.
Two weeks ago, he told FMT he would personally back “Temerloh boy Nizam” for the GE14 contest, describing him as a “seasoned guy”.
Explaining his current stance, he said his earlier comments were based on what he believed would be the ideal situation.
“Sometimes we are faced with a situation where we try to make an ideal decision in a not so ideal situation,” he said.
He said Pakatan’s decision to field an Amanah candidate was based on its reckoning of the number of parliament seats allocated for each component party at the peninsula level as well as the number of parliament seats versus the number of state seats in Pahang.
“That’s how Temerloh ended up being allocated to Amanah,” he said, adding that he believed Amanah would do better than both PAS and Umno in the event of a three-corner contest.
“I believe Amanah can secure the required number of Malay votes in Temerloh and, with the help of PKR and DAP, it would also be able to get the non-Malay votes.
“The current assemblyman for Kuala Semantan, Syed Hamid Mohamed, is quite well-liked among the non-Malays in Temerloh. So he can play a major role in the campaigning.”
Syed Hamid, now an Amanah member, got 52% of the votes as a PAS candidate against BN’s Mohammad Anuar Mohd Yunus in GE13. He announced his resignation from PAS in September 2015.
In the previous interview, Saifuddin said Temerloh was a “naturally good seat for PKR” because of the racial make-up of the constituents.
According to the statistics department’s 2010 census, Malays make up 75.7% of Temerloh residents, Chinese 15.8%, Indians 7.8% and other races 0.7% .
In GE12, Saifuddin won more than 53% of the votes against Nizam. In GE13, Nizam contested for the Lanchang state seat within Temerloh and lost to BN’s Mohd Sharkar Shamsudin by 1,100 votes.
Saifuddin backs former rival as Pakatan’s candidate in Temerloh