NO NEED for individual SDs, PAS as a party already supports Azizah as MB in Pakatan letter sent to Sultan - Anwar

Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said that Pakatan Rakyat had agreed to nominate Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail as the sole Selangor menteri besar candidate and the issue of two names being submitted to the palace did not arise any more.

He said the letter nominating Dr Wan Azizah for the position had been sent to the palace.

Although two names were initially proposed, including that of PKR deputy president Azmin Ali, the latter had ruled himself out.

"So there was just one candidate and that letter was duly signed by the PR leaders, Guan Eng, Mat Sabu and myself and that was sufficient," he said in Kuala Lumpur referring to DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng and PAS deputy president Mohamed Sabu.

Anwar said this in response to a PAS central council meeting, which was meeting now, to decide on whether to send the Selangor sultan a letter of support for Dr Wan Azizah.

"We will have to meet again as our earlier decision was to nominate two people.

"But now that the Pakatan leadership had decided on only Dr Wan Azizah, we will meet again,” a party source had told The Malaysian Insider on Saturday.

But Anwar maintained today the issue of two names did not arise any more as Azmin had declined being nominated for the MB post.

Anwar added that there was also no need for the coalition parties to send individual letters of nomination to the sultan.

"The respective party leaders would have been required to send letters of nomination to the sultan if there was no statutory declaration by the 30 assemblymen.

"For now ,the letter we have sent to the sultan is sufficient and as far as I understand, the Istana did not suggest anything else, they have acknowledged receipt of the letter with Wan Azizah's name," he added.

The PAS central committee had on August 17 nominated Dr Wan Azizah and Azmin Ali to replace Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim.

A PR leadership council meeting on the same day, however, decided to submit only Dr Wan Azizah's name to the palace for consideration.

The source had revealed that PAS has decided that two names be submitted to the sultan.

“We will now have to meet to endorse the Pakatan leadership council decision or maintain our stand to send two names,” he had said.

“Monday's (today's) meeting will decide if we are sending two names or only one as decided by Pakatan leadership council,” the source had said two days ago. –TMI