An Umno supreme council member has mooted that BN maintains the status quo in Tanjung Piai and let MCA contest the by-election next month.
Lokman Adam said this would be a benchmark for whether voters would support a non-Malay candidate from the opposition.
He said there is a perception that a candidate from Umno or PAS needs to be fielded if they want to win the seat, where 57 percent of voters are Malay.
"However, there are no facts to support this. So one way to determine whether it is right or not is to ensure an MCA candidate contests.
"Some say that Malays won't vote for a Chinese. If this was the case, Wee Jeck Seng would have been soundly beaten in the last general election.
"(Instead) Wee only lost by 524 votes. I am confident the majority of votes came from Malays who are not racist," he was quoted as saying by Berita Harian today.
