An Umno supreme council member has mooted that BN maintain 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.

Tanjong Piai has been traditionally contested by MCA, although there are now calls for Umno to take over the seat.

This is after Umno and PAS sealed a pact to formally work together, on the basis of Malay and Muslim unity.

This has raised concerns that non-Malays would be sidelined by the alliance, although they assure that they will champion all Malaysians.

Besides the Malays, Chinese voters make up 42 percent of the electorate and Indians one percent.

The Tanjung Piai parliamentary seat in Johor fell vacant following the death of its incumbent, former deputy minister in the Prime Minister's Department Dr Md Farid Md Rafik.

In GE14, Farid defeated Wee, who was a two-term incumbent, by a slim majority.

Farid bagged 21,255 votes against Wee's 20,731. The other candidate was PAS' Nordin Othman with 2,962 votes.

Amanah president Mohamad Sabu has said that this would be a difficult seat for Pakatan Harapan to defend.