The Malaysian Insight

PENANG PKR, which has been without a chairman since Permatang Pauh MP Nurul Izzah Anwar declined the appointment last month, will be headed by two deputy ministers for now.

Deputy Tourism Minister Muhammad Bakhtiar Wan Chik, who is the Balik Pulau division chief, will be acting chairman for now.

Meanwhile, Deputy Agriculture and Agro-based Industries Minister Sim Tze Tzin, who heads the party’s Bayan Baru division, will serve as deputy.

Both deputy ministers are known within PKR to be aligned with Rafizi Ramli, who had challenged PKR deputy president Mohamed Azmin Ali for the party number two post in last year’s party election and lost.

Penang Deputy Chief Minister I Ahmad Zakiyuddin Abdul Rahman, who heads the party’s Kepala Batas division, is the new state party vice-chairman.

Zulkifli Saad and Francis Joseph both remain state party secretary and treasurer.

The positions were announced in a statement issued by the state party leadership council this evening at Yayasan Aman in Permatang Pauh following a meeting attended by a majority of the 13 division leaders in the state.

Nurul Izzah, who chaired the meeting, declined to take questions from the media after the meeting ended.

“I already said we have prepared a written statement,” she said before leaving the building.

All the other division leaders also avoided the media when they left.

Penang was the only state left without an appointed chairman when all other state chapters had theirs appointed by the central party leadership.

Last Monday, Permatang Pauh division deputy chief Afif Bahardin urged Anwar to appoint a chairman for Penang PKR as soon as possible because the state chapter needed a leader to do its job as part of the state administration.

“There are many issues in this new year that involves the state party leadership. The state government operations also requires Penang PKR to give its views.

“If we do not immediately appoint a state chairman, then Penang PKR’s effort to play its role in the state government may be affected,” he had said. – January 13, 2019.