Lau said despite only having one elected representative in its ranks, Kulim assemblyman Wong Chia Zhen, Gerakan has been able to help resolve many issues in Kedah.
Wong, the Gerakan secretary-general, is a member of the Kedah executive council led by menteri besar Sanusi Nor of PAS.
Lau said Gerakan had a proven track record, having governed Penang for 39 years, adding that it was proof that the party has the administrative capability and tact to lead.
“Give us a chance. Give us the platform. All the non-Malay, non-Muslim issues (in Kedah), we’ve been able to solve with just one representative only.
“If you give me 10 elected representatives, I think we can solve even more problems faced by the country,” he said in an interview with selected media.
Gerakan is a component of opposition coalition Perikatan Nasional (PN), which made substantial inroads in Penang during the 2023 state election by winning 11 seats.
However, these seats were all won by PN’s Malay-based parties, PAS and Bersatu, with seven and four seats, respectively.
In contrast, all Gerakan candidates in Penang lost at the polls, including Lau, who lost in Bayan Lepas.
Gerakan was a dominant force in Penang politics for nearly four decades but suffered a crushing defeat in the 2008 general election. The party, then part of Barisan Nasional, lost all its state assembly seats, and the DAP-led opposition took over the state government for the first time.
Since then, it has failed to regain any seat in Penang, even after breaking away from BN following the coalition’s loss of federal power in the 2018 general election (GE14).
Focus on key seats in each state
For GE16, Lau said Gerakan would concentrate on key parliamentary and state constituencies to better optimise its campaign resources.
He said the party would target one parliamentary and two state assembly constituencies in each state, while still contesting several additional seats.
“Gerakan plans to focus its efforts on a limited number of key seats, rather than spreading itself thin. Rather than contesting many seats and losing all of them, I would rather win a few.
“So that’s why we came up with this idea: one parliamentary seat and two legislative assembly seats in each state,” he said.
The PN deputy chairman added that Gerakan had already identified the key seats and has begun preparing for candidates to go to the ground, to make themselves known to voters early.
“We are already moving. We can’t field last-minute candidates. It won’t work,” Lau said, adding that this was a hard lesson from previous elections.